Abstract
In his Impressions de voyage: Midi de la France (1835–1840), Alexandre Dumas compared the local population to the Spaniards, the Saracens, and the Indians, transforming southerners into exotic figures for his readers in or from northern France. A few years later, he wrote the novel The Three Musketeers (1844), in which he recounted the adventures of d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. While d’Artagnan existed and was a genuine Gascon, one may wonder about the narrative voice’s insistence on his stereotypical physiognomic, cultural, and linguistic characteristics. This article examines how Dumas, who was the target of racist attacks and who did not openly respond in writing, used an oblique strategy, displacing the question of race by evoking the stereotype of the Gascon.