Archaeology – A Passion of George Sand
Claire Le Guillou
Abstract: In contrast to Balzac, George Sand’s engagement with archaeology was a very practical matter. Throughout the 1850s she collected artefacts retrieved from archeological digs, financed
excavations in her local Berry and took part in other archaeological
ventures in the area. This interest necessarily translated into her later
works, in the characters of archaeologists and antiquarians that figure in them and also, the chapter argues, in the construction of narrative and in the inscribing and “unearthing” of the values of a much
earlier Stone and Iron Age France in her fiction of the period.
George Sand’s intellectual curiosity was quite dazzling. She threw
herself into the study of botany, geology, entomology and, although it
is less widely known, archaeology and one of its branches in particular, numismatics. Her archaeological interests have often been overlooked by critics,
1 due to the fact that they have been either largely
hidden by her research into folklore and ethnography or have, alternatively, been understood as forming part of those activities.
2
___________________________
1 See, however, Marie-Louise Vincent, Le Berry dans l’œuvre de George Sand
(Marseille: Laffitte Reprints, 1978), Chapter II. Equally worthy of note are the two
following articles, written by the archaeologist Gérard Coulon, to whom our grateful
thanks are due: “George Sand et la passion de l’archéologie”, Magazine littéraire,
janvier (1992), n
o 295, p. 47, and “George Sand et l’archéologie”, La Lettre d’Ars,
mai 1996, n
o 2, pp. 5-6.
2 A. van Gennep, “George Sand folkloriste”, Mercure de France, 1
er juin 1926, no.
671, and Daniel Bernard, “George Sand pionnière de l’ethnographie”, in George
Sand, une Européenne en Berry (Le Blanc, Châteauroux, la Châtre: Amis de la
Bibliothèque municipale du Blanc et Comité du Bicentenaire George Sand, 2004), pp.
121-49.
Claire Le Guillou
Abstract: In contrast to Balzac, George Sand’s engagement with archaeology was a very practical matter. Throughout the 1850s she collected artefacts retrieved from archeological digs, financed
excavations in her local Berry and took part in other archaeological
ventures in the area. This interest necessarily translated into her later
works, in the characters of archaeologists and antiquarians that figure in them and also, the chapter argues, in the construction of narrative and in the inscribing and “unearthing” of the values of a much
earlier Stone and Iron Age France in her fiction of the period.
George Sand’s intellectual curiosity was quite dazzling. She threw
herself into the study of botany, geology, entomology and, although it
is less widely known, archaeology and one of its branches in particular, numismatics. Her archaeological interests have often been overlooked by critics,
1 due to the fact that they have been either largely
hidden by her research into folklore and ethnography or have, alternatively, been understood as forming part of those activities.
2
___________________________
1 See, however, Marie-Louise Vincent, Le Berry dans l’œuvre de George Sand
(Marseille: Laffitte Reprints, 1978), Chapter II. Equally worthy of note are the two
following articles, written by the archaeologist Gérard Coulon, to whom our grateful
thanks are due: “George Sand et la passion de l’archéologie”, Magazine littéraire,
janvier (1992), n
o 295, p. 47, and “George Sand et l’archéologie”, La Lettre d’Ars,
mai 1996, n
o 2, pp. 5-6.
2 A. van Gennep, “George Sand folkloriste”, Mercure de France, 1
er juin 1926, no.
671, and Daniel Bernard, “George Sand pionnière de l’ethnographie”, in George
Sand, une Européenne en Berry (Le Blanc, Châteauroux, la Châtre: Amis de la
Bibliothèque municipale du Blanc et Comité du Bicentenaire George Sand, 2004), pp.
121-49.