The French Foreign Legion

"The French Foreign Legion" cultivates a mystique which has proved quite irresistible to outsiders: this iconic fighting force has been the subject of a staggering number of different popular representations across a variety of national cultures. This book explores the perennial popularity of the Legion, and asks questions about the meanings attached to texts and images produced internationally on the subject of the Legion and its Legionnaires, assessing the ways in which images, ideas and meanings are transmitted across national borders and cultural boundaries. This book does not distinguish between a 'real' Legion and a plethora of 'fictional' ones as have previous studies, but meshes the Legion's versions of itself with a variety of representations emanating from other nation's cultures.It shows not only how the Legion's versions of its identity have changed and evolved over time in response to different historical circumstances, societal challenges, and perceptions of its own popularity and changing function, but focuses on the mythologisation of the Legion through a number of national popular cultures and the ways in which this has allowed for the accretion of layers of meaning which can be either reiterative of, or antithetical to, the Legion's own propaganda and myth-making. By meshing a series of complementary methodologies (from the fields of film studies, gender studies, colonial studies, and transnational studies), this book provides a broad historico-cultural account of the shifting uses of the legionnaire across national and cultural boundaries.