Author: BRIONY NEILSON
The French Australian Review No 65 (Australian Summer 2018-2019): 23-47.
https://doi.org/10.62586/IMTV8942
This article offers a contextualised analysis of the published writing of the French convict-poet Julien de Sanary. Transported from France to the penal colony in New Caledonia in 1881, Sanary spent almost forty years of his life incarcerated in the archipelago before his case was taken up by an Australian woman, Wolla Meranda, who successfully petitioned for his release in 1920. The first extended study of Sanary’s life and work–and the first ever in English–this article discusses the meaning of the act of writing for the French convict and provides an analysis of some of the major themes of his poetry. In addition it points out the greater significance of Sanary’s life and poetry, arguing that his experiences and relationship with Meranda are illustrative of a prevailing trope in the early twentieth century concerning the backwardness of New Caledonia as a European settler colony relative to Australia.
Keywords: bagne, convict poetry, bagnard-poète, prison writing, New Caledonia, convict transportation, Julien de Sanary, Wolla Meranda, penal colony, criminal justice