Cock and Bull Stories

In the French Camarguethe delta surrounding the mouth of the Rhone River and part of the southern nation of Occitaniathe bull is a powerful icon of nationalism, literature, and culture. How this came to behow the Camargue bull came to confront the French cock, venerable symbol of a unified and republican Franceis the story told in this ingenious study. Robert Zaretsky considers how in fin-de-sicle France the young writer Folco de Baroncelli, inspired by the history of the American West, in particular the fate of the Oglala Sioux and other Native American peoples, reinvented the history of Occitania. Galvanized by the example set by Buffalo Bill Cody, Baroncelli recast the Camargue as le far-west of France, creating the immemorial traditions he battled to protect. Zaretskys study examines the creative tension between center and periphery in the making of modern France: just as the political and intellectual elite of the Third Republic invented a certain kind of France, so too did a coterie of southern writers, including Baroncelli, invent a certain kind of Camargue. The story of how the Camargue bull challenged the French cock in this ideological and cultural Wild West deepens our appreciation of the complex dynamic that has created contemporary France.