The Art of Coping: Huguenot Refugees’ Autobiographical Writing and the Emotional Afterlives of Persecution

Abstract The wave of repression that afflicted France’s Huguenot population in the 1680s, incarnated by Louis XIV ’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, saw 150,000–160,000 Protestants abandon their homeland and resettle abroad. This essay explores the messy psychological aftermath of this mass migration, contending that focusing scholarly attention on the underlying affective experience of writing about oneself, particularly accompanying mental processes of emplotment, offers an invaluable window into refugees’ idiosyncratic coping strategies. Considering instances of familial dislocation, incarceration and internal displacement, it highlights diverse and sometimes surprising considerations and dynamics that informed Huguenots’ attempts to interpret and navigate their lived experience of persecution over the course of their lives.