Why “Frantsuzik”? Why “Bordeaux”? Gallophobia, Intersectionality and Colonial Anxiety in Griboedov’s Woe from Wit

This talk offers a close-reading of the expression “Frantsuzik iz Bordo” (“The little Frenchman from Bordeaux”), a famous quote from Alexander Griboedov’s classic comedy Woe from Wit (Gore ot uma). Relying on existing scholarship on the history of Gallophobia in late Eighteenth- and early Nineteenth-century Russia, it focuses on the emergence of the diminutive form “Frantsuzik”, its evolving meaning throughout the 1810s, and the social, political and gendered connotations attached to it. In a second section, the talk sheds light on the reason why the Russian playwright chose Bordeaux over other French cities as the home town of Famusov’s obnoxious French guest. Drawing on Russian geographical literature from the 1810s and early 1820s, it reconstructs the significations of Bordeaux in the Russian cultural imagination at the time, and explores the identity insecurity it triggered among Griboedov and his contemporaries.

Speaker: Rodolphe Baudin (Sorbonne University).

Discussant: Catherine Phillips (Independent Scholar).