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The Sins of the Father: Colonialism and Family History in Diderot's Le fils naturel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Caroline Weber
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Abstract

The self-abnegating, even self-flagellating, virtue promoted by the protagonist of Diderot's Le fils naturel is a function not of the text's incest plot, as critics have traditionally asserted it to be, but of the drama's colonialist subtext. This essay highlights the involvement of the play's aging patriarch, Lysimond, in the slave-based commerce of the West Indies and suggests that the old man's son, Dorval, preaches a strict and selfless brand of morality in order to overwrite this shameful aspect of his family history. If, in the end, Dorval and his kinfolk prove unable to commemorate and celebrate their supposedly virtuous birthright, this result is due to the abiding, irrepressible specter of Lysimond's colonialist transgressions.

Type
Special Topic: Imagining History
Information
PMLA , Volume 118 , Issue 3: Special Topic: Imagining History , May 2003 , pp. 488 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2003

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