Chactas: Natchez Native American who serves as the main character and narrator for the whole story except the prologue.Some critics, however, argue that this is a deliberate decision, intended to relate the landscape of America to that of biblical and Miltonesque Eden, creating an extended metaphor of a paradise both post and pre-fall, symbolizing the internal conflict of the character's hearts. While the book's accuracy on the subject of the North American flora is a controversial matter, it seems to be agreed that Chateaubriand never saw much of the southern territories he describes and his descriptions are based on naturalists' books. Throughout the text, this image of the New World as empty wilderness is also used to overlook the presence of indigenous peoples. The expanse of wilderness is portrayed as empty and its nature as an Eden, referring to the biblical Garden of Eden. In the prologue, Chateaubriand starts the novella with a vividly detailed description of the natural environment of formerly French North America more than two pages long. In 1802, both Atala and René were published as part of Chateaubriand's Génie du christianisme. It was adapted frequently for stage, and translated into many languages.Īlong with René, Atala began as a discarded fragment from a long prose epic the author had composed between 17, Les Natchez, which would not be made public until 1826. The work, at least partially inspired by his travels in North America, reflects the eighteenth-century French Romanticism and exoticism of its time and went through five editions in its first year.
The story is told from the point of view of the 73-year-old hero, Chactas, whose story is preserved by an oral tradition among the Seminoles. Atala, ou Les Amours de deux sauvages dans le désert ( English: Atala, or The Loves of two Indian savages in the desert) is an early novella by French author François-René de Chateaubriand, first published on 12 germinal IX (2 April 1801).
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