A history of remembering: The French and Spanish in Florida, 1562--1565.

I contextualize the writing and reception of accounts of the French Huguenot expeditions to Florida in the sixteenth century in order to show how they were strategic acts of negotiation and resistance in the complex play of interests attempting to define and redefine French national identity. Concentrating on the intervention of a non-elite Protestant, I elucidate social, political, and religious forces at play in the Wars of Religion. This dissertation is also a larger investigation of changing characterizations of French national identity as seen in the process of (re-)writing France seen in subsequent representations of the Spanish massacre of French Huguenot colonists in Florida in 1565. This project offers a reflection on historical practice relevant to the current discussions regarding history and memory (chapter one). My focus on a carefully contextualized rhetorical interpretation of primary histories denies that such rhetoric makes the past inaccessible, and seeks to contribute to our historical understanding of the Wars of Religion, early colonization, and French-Spanish rivalry. From the first published account of the violent conflict, Nicolas Le Challeux's Discours de l'histoire de la Floride (1566), the history of the events in Florida became a playing field for working out an understanding of French identity. In writing a carefully contextualized analysis of the Discours I bring a new voice and perspective to our understanding of the Wars of Religion in France (chapters two and three). Concentrating on texts of the French Renaissance (Laudonniere, Gourgues, Basanier, Chauveton, de Bry, Le Moyne, La Popeliniere, Lescarbot), I then examine the reuse of the events in Florida. I show how the retelling of the conflict in Florida shifts from a defense of the Huguenots and of the Reformed faith, to an appeal to England, and ultimately to the exclusion of any discussion of Protestant and Catholic violence or conflict within France (chapter four). Already in the sixteenth century, and increasingly in later accounts (Gaffarel, Guenin, Chinard, Lestringant), Florida is remembered as an example with which to promote peaceful, friendly French colonization and to promulgate concomitant anti-Spanish stereotypes (the Black Legend) (chapter five).PhDComparative literatureEuropean historyLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsRomance literatureSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132706/2/9977280.pd