SUMMARY

In 1791, Chateaubriand spent a month in the company of a Native American tribe in Louisiana: the Natchez. The author describes the American territory as being untouched by corruption, an unexplored space where he can renew and reinvent itself. This a young Chateaubriand, before Le Génie du Christianisme, imbued with Rousseauism, a philosopher of skeptical thought. The author is searching for himself: he lays the foundation for his style and the character of René is clearly the double of Chateaubriand. This process of introspection is the gateway to the emergence of a style that will define the 19^th century: Romanticism.