Valery Larbaud, arpenteur et citoyen de l’Empire

This study investigates Larbaud’s conception of imperialism and the resonance of the Western Roman Empire and the Roman model in his work. Empire is a guiding theme in this work, from his earliest writings until his project L’Amour et la Monarchie in the 1930s, when the author became increasingly preoccupied with imperialism in the face of the rise of “nationalisms favorable to socialism.” This study focuses on the relationship between the writer’s cosmopolitanism and his thinking about imperialism.