From author to saint: the appropriations of Victor Hugo and Les Misérables in colonial Vietnam

Do, Tess

Contemporary French Civilization (2017), 42, (1), 113–129.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/cfc.2017.7
Language: English
Pages: 17

Abstract

This paper argues that during the French colonization of Vietnam the emergence of Les Misérables as a transnational work and Victor Hugo as a global figure can be traced back to their successful and seamless integration into local literature and religion. Based on the concept of appropriation, a process in which the target text “takes over” the source text, subjecting it to different forms of transformation, a rereading of Hugo and his masterpiece will be proposed through three of these forms: a translation of Les Misérables by Nguyễn-Văn-Vĩnh, an adaptation of the same novel by Hồ-Biểu-Chánh, and an indigenization of Spirit Hugo in Caodaism by Phạm-Công-Tắc. In the light of anticolonial resistance, this study investigates the extent to which the subversive act of literary and cultural appropriation carried out by these three Vietnamese authors in the 1920s can be seen as a reversed assimilation that transgresses the boundaries between dominant and dominated, colonizer and the colonized.

Pendant la colonisation française du Vietnam, l’émergence de Victor Hugo et des Misérables comme auteur et roman transnationaux pourrait être renvoyée à leur parfaite intégration dans le champ littéraire et religieux local. S’appuyant sur le concept d’appropriation qui décrit un processus dans lequel l’hypertexte “reprend en main” l’hypotexte l’exposant à différentes formes de transformation, cet article propose une relecture de Hugo et son chef-d’œuvre à travers trois instances: la traduction des Misérables par Nguyễn-Văn-Vĩnh, l’adaptation du même ouvrage par Hồ-Biểu-Chánh et l’indigénisation de l’Esprit Hugo dans la religion Caodai par Phạm-Công-Tắc. Il s’agit ici d’examiner à la lumière d’une résistance anticoloniale la mesure dans laquelle l’acte subversif d’appropriation littéraire et religieux de ces trois auteurs vietnamiens des années 1920 pourrait se lire comme une assimilation renversée qui transgresse les frontières entre le dominant et le dominé, le colonisateur et le colonisé.

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