Page - 241 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal, Vol. 6 2020, 241–243 Extended Abstract Open Access: content is licensed under CC BY 3.0 Mobile Image Inventories in Jean-François Regnard’s Pastiche The Provencal A ‘misguided’ Grand Tour in the intermedial field of tension between buccaneering, gallantry and Orientalism Extended Abstract Daniel Winkler Early modern Barbary Coast literature has often been discussed as a subgenre of the travel narrative. By focusing on ‘autobiographic’ reports of North European and American travellers, this research was frequently interested in ‘authentic’ experien- ces of abduction and enslavement in Northern Africa. My contribution, “Mobile image inventories in Jean-François Regnard’s pastiche The Provencal”, takes a slightly different approach by looking at a marginal text by the author. Regnard (1655–1709) came from a wealthy Parisian merchant family and, from the 1680s onwards, was a successful comedy writer. He performed at the Comé- die Italienne and Comédie Française, but also on diverse pan-European stages. In his youth, Regnard travelled extensively throughout France, Northern and Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean. An early Grand Tour led him to Italy in the late 1670s. At the end of the voyage, however, when he was returning from Genoa to Marseilles, the ship on which he was travelling was kidnapped by Algerian privat- eers. The Provencal — published, along with his theatre plays, after his death — was long considered an autobiographical report of these experiences. Starting in the 1970s, scholars such as Guy Turbet-Delof began to express doubts both about the ‘report’ (which contains many commonplaces and some errors in the descriptions of Algiers) and about its authorship. Although these questions seem to have been largely resolved since then, I argue that these critical stances on the text can serve as a basis for a re-reading of The Provencal that is interested less in questions of authenticity than in formal aspects of the text. My central argument is that, with The Provencal, Regnard creates an extre- mely dense, intermedial and ironic text shaped by a great variety of popular cul- tural trends and genre traditions. It was written in the late 17th century but was not published until 1731, in the author’s posthumous Collected Works. Thus, my contribution clarifies how the author delivers, against the backdrop of the trends of gallantry and preciosity (and in fewer than fifty pages), a manifold and hybrid text.