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Abstract
Pan-Latinism, one of the nineteenth century's pan-nationalist movements, appeared in different Romance-language countries. In France, it developed strongly at the turn of the nineteenth century and became a major paradigm in the vision of nationalist writers who reflected the Germanophobia following the defeat of 1870. Nationalism, Germanophobia and pan-Latinism all grew in French intellectual circles during World War I, even among the internationalized avant-garde Parisians. The case of Guillaume Apollinaire is particularly revealing in this respect: influenced by French cultural nationalism, both as a foreigner and as an avant-garde creator, he himself adopted pan-Latinism in order to obtain cultural legitimacy. Pan-Latinism was also used by French intellectuals anxious to promote their country's influence in Italy and Hispanic America, namely in other 'Latin' countries. Although it never reached the stage of concrete political realization, new avatars of pan-Latinism, conveyed by the Latin Union founded in 1954, are still present in the world today.
Keywords: nationalism; pan-nationalism; Third Republic; Italy; Latin America; avantgarde
In this article, I will analyse the context and the conditions in which pan-Latinism emerged in French intellectual circles. Pan-Latinism, one of the nineteenth century's pan-nationalist movements, developed in various 'Latin' countries.1 In France, it flourished at the turn of the century as a counterbalance to another pan-nationalist movement, pan-Germanism, and became a major paradigm in the nationalist vision of dominant French literary figures, such as Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras, who reflected the Germanophobia resulting from the defeat of 1870 in the war against Prussia. I will then pass to the period of World War I, in which cultural activity in France was submitted almost totally to the nationalist ideology and discourse. In this context, even the internationalized Parisian avant-garde underwent processes of 'nationalization'. This will be shown through the case of Guillaume Apollinaire, who, as a foreigner and a major avant-garde figure, was denounced by the nationalist writers as a stranger to the French spirit. In these circumstances, Apollinaire himself adopted pan-Latinism in order to obtain cultural legitimacy. In the following sections, I will show how pan-Latinism was used by French intellectuals anxious to promote their country's influence in Italy and Hispanic America, namely in other 'Latin' countries, and, in order to do so, I will first examine the evolution...