Désir Colonial et 'Conscience Historique Authentique': 'La Belle Dorothée' de Charles Baudelaire

Contemporary critics of Charles Baudelaire's 1863 prose poem "La Belle Dorothee" have interpreted the figure of the liberated female slave Dorothee as a slave of imitation of whiteness. Drawing on colonial history, postcolonial theory, as well as recent developments in Baudelairean criticism, this article focuses on the poem's formal features to argue for a reading of Dorothee as a successful embodiment of emancipation without cultural assimilation. (In French)