An imperiled inheritance: The decline of politeness in 20th century French literature (Marcel Proust, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and Michel Houellebecq)

I describes and examines the ways in which politeness has been constructed, defined and privileged in French literary, historical and theoretical texts. The thesis proposes that the centrality of politeness to Ancien Regime French identity---a centrality assured and enforced by the figure of the Sun King and by the etiquette due him---is only partially weakened by the subsequent destruction of the monarchy and the rise of republicanism in France. Under the Ancien Regime, French-ness and politeness, politeness and literariness---in speech, gestures, fashion and writing---came to be equivalent. The 20th century witnesses the struggle to maintain this equation even in the absence of the political structure which founded, enforced and maintained it. The thesis maintains that 20th century French literary texts are a privileged terrain on which politeness and politics, including fascism, collide. French historians such as Robert Muchembled are just coming to terms with the persistence of this model of male masculinity into the 20th century and French sociologists believe it to have been neglected by their discipline which, consequently, lacks tools necessary for understanding the persistence of aristocratic emotions such as contempt and other obstacles to the practical enforcement of the Rights of Man. The thesis turns to French literary texts of three distinct moments in the 20th century. These texts provide thematic illustrations of the persistence of monarchic-style politeness as a perceptual grid, as a model for behavior as well as for the construction of hierarchies and of meaning. Politeness also figures as a haunting psychological and paternal presence that remains pronounced despite its apparent anachronism. The thesis argues that the cultural specificity of French politeness goes some way toward explaining the consistency with which its perceived disappearance is not only expressed throughout the 20th century, but fraught with literary and political significance in French literary texts.