SOURCE: Cropper, Corry L. “Fictional Documentary: The Other as France in Mérimée's ‘Les Mormons.’” In The Documentary Impulse in French Literature, edited by Buford Norman, pp. 51-63. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001.

In the following essay, Cropper traces connections between Mérimée's essay “Les Mormons” and his story “The Venus d'Ille.”

Appointed Inspector General of Historical Monuments in 1834, Prosper Mérimée became one of the first Frenchmen to have as his full-time job the responsibility of documenting France's artistic and architectural treasures for the state. Over the years, Mérimée's official travel reports and his fiction would intersect at many points to such an extent that his short stories are frequently read as extensions of his official notes de voyage. “La Vénus d'Ille,” for example, has been connected with his tour of southern France in 1834,¹ Carmen with an 1845 visit of Spain (Cogman 17), and many have...