The history of the future: “Tombouctou”, by Guy de Maupassant

Abstract

In 1881 Guy de Maupassant visited Algeria for the first time in a trip that would not only change his political perspective on the French colonization, but also influence his fiction-writing in indelible ways. This article aims to identify the echoes of this experience in “Tombouctou” (1883), a pseudo-historical short story that, although pertaining to Maupassant’s group of so-called African narratives, proves to be a unique object in this context. The textual analysis I present here focuses specifically on aspects of rhetoric, discourse-making and pluralized meaning typically neglected in the author’s criticism. The purpose of this study is to offer a radically new perspective on “Tombouctou”, considering it an exemplary case in the works of Maupassant, which is apt to deconstruct the same literary and cultural commonplaces it seems to rely upon.