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.23111456789201111234567893011112345678940111121111111124Performing the Noble3Savage4567891011123111Dans la semaine précédente4Encor que la Cour soit absenteLes Masques ont si bien troté5Qu’un seul soir on en a compté6Chez Monsieur Janin de Castille7(Assez bonne et grosse famille)8Les uns vêtus en Africains,9Les autres en Américains,20111En Polonais, en Moscovites,1En Tartares, en Troglodites,2En Indiens, en Irroquois,3Avec leur arc et leurs carquois,4En Bohèmes, Otomans, et Perses,5Qui trois nuits durant ont couru;En bonne-foy, l’eusses-tu-cru?6( Jean Loret, in a letter dated731 January 1660)8930111In the French court, as in its Spanish and English counterparts, there 1existed a fascination with the nation’s exotic colonial Others.Throughout 2the sixteenth century, a dazzling array of masques and pageants depicting 3encounters between Frenchmen and the indigenous peoples of Canada 4were performed both in France and in the New World.As we have 5seen in the previous chapter, these performances (whether theatrical or 6textual, as was the case with Fontenelle’s putative dialogue between 7Montezuma and Cortés) underwent a marked transformation at the end 8of the seventeenth century, with the locus of discursive (and consequently 9political and cultural) authority hotly disputed between the Old World 40111and the New.In this chapter, in order to contexualize the emergence 1of certain Enlightenment discourses that question the validity of existing 21111European social and cultural structures, I begin by providing a briefPerforming the Noble Savage1611111overview of events related to the colonization of New France, and go 2on to examine the ways in which the genre of the royal entry was used 3both by Huguenot writers such as Marc Lescarbot and by the Jesuits 4to articulate and reinforce the notion of France’s Atlantic empire.I then 5look at one of the most influential performative texts in New World 6writing, Baron Lahontan’s Dialogues with Adario, and its construction of 7the Noble Savage.Finally, I analyse French playwright Louis-François 8de la Drevetière Deslisle’s drama Harlequin Sauvage, which draws heavily 9on Lahontan’s ideas and casts the Noble Savage as one of the characters 1011in the genre of the commedia dell’arte.12Marc Lescarbot31114Although Jacques Cartier, a Breton mariner first commissioned by 5Francis I, had explored the Bay of Chaleur and the St Lawrence River 6in 1534, it was only in the seventeenth century that French colonial 7endeavours gained real impetus.For the astute Henry IV, whose power 8had been consolidated with the Edict of Nantes granting freedom of 9conscience to the Huguenots, it was imperative that the financial reserves 20111of the monarchy be enhanced.He was aware of the lucrative possibil-1ities of the Canadian fur trade, and in 1602 granted a charter awarding 2a monopoly to a group of investors from Rouen.Further colonization 3efforts in the region of Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia) ensued, most 4notably under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain (who founded 5the settlement at Pont-Grave) and the Sieur de Monts (at Tadoussac) 6in 1603.1 After enduring the long and difficult winter of 1604, however, 7de Monts decided to move his settlement to the other side of the bay to 8Port-Royal, where it would be sheltered from the freezing winds from 9the northwest.He then returned to France to drum up support for his 30111ventures.There, he came into contact with Jean de Biencourt de Poutrin-1court, a noble from Picardy who was reputedly a man of learning and 2a lover of music, with scholarly interests in history, philosophy and the 3Classics and a fascination for mathematics.2 Poutrincourt took part in 4de Monts’s expedition of 1604, and then returned to France in August.5There he obtained from de Monts a grant consisting of the bay of Port-6Royal and the surrounding lands, and organized an expedition of his 7own to explore his newly acquired possessions.8One member of Poutrincourt’s 1604 expedition was Marc Lescarbot, 9an ambitious young lawyer from Picardy.In Paris, Lescarbot had already 40111acquired a minor reputation as a writer, and had produced a poem that 1was read before the Papal Legate to commemorate the 1598 peace treaty 21111signed between France and Spain.He, like Poutrincourt, was well versed162Colonial encounters in New World writing1111in the Classics, and in 1599 had translated Cardinal Baronius’s Discours 2sur l’origine des Russiens from Latin into French.In 1606, Lescarbot arrived 3in Port Royal Bay, and when Poutrincourt left along with de Champlain 4and two native chiefs to continue his explorations further to the south, 5the young lawyer was left in command of the settlement.Poutrincourt’s 6voyage, however, was not a notably successful one; three of his men 7were killed, and many more were injured.Poutrincourt then organized 8a punitive expedition that merely succeeded in alienating most of the 9tribes to the south
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