Resistance Heroism and the End of Empire

This book introduces an English-speaking public to the life of Madeleine Riffaud - one of the last living leaders of the French Resistance. It considers the nature of the rebel hero in France's founding historical narratives (revolution, insurrection, resistance) while asking what contributions such a hero might make to debates on national identity today.

Keren Chiaroni is Programme Director for French in the School of Languages and Cultures at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research interests include cultural/war history and design for performance. She is the author of The Last of the Human Freedoms (2011) and Editor for the Pacific in the World Scenography Project, vols I and II (OISTAT and York University, 2012, 2014).

Introduction: portrait of a rebel - Dramatis personae - Defining features: Riffaud and the Résistance - Vietnam: a love story - Algeria and France: a crime passionnel - Poetry as a weapon of war: 'L'arme pour l'homme désarmé' - Edme Liron: the ancestral portrait - The portrait revisited: Rainer or Riffaud? Index