Georges de la Fouchardière
Georges de la Fouchardière
Oppositional Journalism, Involuntary Heroism, and Bourrage de crâne
One tactic of the trench soldier is the ability to see through patriotic bombast and blustering of all types, to approach the war through a form of patriotism that is quietly pragmatic. This chapter explores the uniquely modern mass-media phenomenon of bourrage de crâne (skull-stuffing) through a study of the oppositional journalism and new patriotism of the now largely forgotten humorist Georges de la Fouchardière. A popular wartime journalist and serial novelist, La Fouch’, as he was affectionately called, was crowned by wartime readers of the satirical newspaper Le Canard enchaîné as one of the “most courageous contemporary thinkers.” Like Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk, La Fouchardière’s characters occupied the position of dissenters within the dominant war culture, embodying opposition through humor, not so much to the way the war was being conducted as to the way it was being depicted in the mass media.
Keywords: patriotism, bourrage de crâne, skull-stuffing, Le Canard enchaîné, L’Œuvre, mass media, oppositional journalism, Georges de la Fouchardière, Maurice Barrès, serial novels
Yale Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.