SOURCE: Lowrie, Joyce O. “Motifs of Kingdom and Exile in Atala.” French Review: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of French 43, no. 5 (April 1970): 755-64.

In the following essay, Lowrie asserts that the themes of exile and kingdom are unifying components in Atala and that the work presents the Romantic estranged hero as separated from Divine Unity. Lowrie then argues that Atala offers Nature as a refuge for the hero in a depiction which ultimately reifies the individual and exile itself over the divine.

The portrayal of man as an expatriate who is in literal and symbolic exile from his true abode is a commonplace in nineteenth-century literature. More than any of the other so-called precursors of Romanticism, Chateaubriand contributed to the diffusion of the themes of kingdom and of exile by elevating them to an especially privileged position in his work. This article will examine Chateaubriand's treatment...