ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on music in travel narratives by Vicomte Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, Alexis de Tocqueville prominent Frenchmen who trekked across former French territories in North America. It examines with Chateaubriand remembering how he boisterously celebrated carnival with his French hosts in Carthage, 'thinking of nothing but to be joyful, in spite of the Moors'. The chapter concerns the musical apprehension of the imperial past, specifically by examining how, during the years in which France became divested of most of its overseas holdings, musical encounter played a part in the cultural and historical construction of France's 'lost empire' in North America. Chateaubriand's Romantic iteration of the Orpheus trope in the wake of France's colonial losses and the Revolution, however, deserves special scrutiny. As in Chateaubriand's writings, Tocqueville's account of his encounter with a musical reminder of France enabled him to allude to the experience of revolution and exile.
