La Notion de l’inceste heureux dans la littérature utopique de la fin du xviiie siècle

This article examines ways in which the existence of incestuous relationships at the heart of the utopian project at the end of the Eighteenth century poses a philosophical challenge. When a utopian community is built on the principle of a definite improvement, how is it possible to envision a positive future when incest is introduced at the foundation of a society that pretends to be better than the existing one? Furthermore, how is it possible to establish laws and rules in a society when the initial members of this society have not been able to respect a law supposedly inviolable? Lastly, how can a utopian community, which thrives to be an ideological model, adopt incest as a legitimate possibility or even a norm? This article explores how several prerevolutionary utopias try to answer all those questions. Among the texts it considers are Guillaume Grivel’s L’Isle inconnue, Giacomo Casanova’s L’Icosameron, and Jacques Henri-Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie.

A Transcription of Dumont D'Urville's Manuscript les Zélandais Histoire Australienne and the Accompanying Notes, Followed by a Study of Some Literary and Historical Aspects of the Text

<p>A brief encounter with the Maori people during April 1824, inspired Dumont d'Urville to write a novel set in New Zealand. This work is the first novel set in New Zealand and the first fictional treatment of the Maori people, written by someone who had had first hand experience of their country. Les Zélandais Histoire Australienne is a unique combination of fact and fiction and as such has a considerable contribution to make to the history and literature of the Pacific region and of New Zealand in particular. The work was never published and the reasons for this are discussed in the final chapter of the thesis. After an interval of more than one hundred and sixty years spent in obscurity, Les Zélandais Histoire Australienne emerges from this study as a valuable historical and literary document. We have described it as an ethnographic novel with ethno-historical notes. The work is comprised of two sections of equal size and importance. There is the novel and the accompanying notes which cover a wide range of subjects, reflecting Dumont d'Urville's wide ranging interests, including Pacific history, geography, languages and cultures. The Notes are a primary source of information, containing Dumont d'Urville's observations which reappeared in later publications. In addition, the vivid experiences of Burns the stowaway and ex-convict, are invaluable as early eye-witness accounts. This is the first complete transcription of the manuscripts. It was a major undertaking because of the length, age and condition of the manuscripts and the almost illegible handwriting. The exercise is discussed in Chapter I In the literary study, several writers admired by Dumont d'Urville, or by whom he was influenced, are discussed. In the first paragraph of the Story, Dumont d'Urville mentions in particular Fénelon, Florian and Rousseau. We have examined some aspects of their work which are relevant to Les Zélandais Histoire Australienne. There is, for example, a discussion on the opposing view points held by Rousseau and some of the French explorers with regard to the legend of the Noble Savage. In addition, we have chosen two works, Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint Pierre and Atala by Chateaubriand, in order to consider Les Zélandais Histoire Australienne from the point of view of exoticism and poetic prose in French literature. This section concludes with an appreciation of the literary style of the novel, which contrasts with the style of Dumont d'Urville's later popular work, Voyage pittoresque autour du monde. The navigator had an abiding interest in the peoples of the South Pacific. Through les Zélandais Histoire Australienne, Dumont d'Urville communicates the enthusiasm with which he made his contribution to the study of mankind. Others before him had recorded ethnographic information but Dumont d'Urville's concern for the cultural predicament of the Maori people sets this explorer apart. The author of this work is a pioneer in modern anthropology.</p>

A Transcription of Dumont D'Urville's Manuscript les Zélandais Histoire Australienne and the Accompanying Notes, Followed by a Study of Some Literary and Historical Aspects of the Text

<p>A brief encounter with the Maori people during April 1824, inspired Dumont d'Urville to write a novel set in New Zealand. This work is the first novel set in New Zealand and the first fictional treatment of the Maori people, written by someone who had had first hand experience of their country. Les Zélandais Histoire Australienne is a unique combination of fact and fiction and as such has a considerable contribution to make to the history and literature of the Pacific region and of New Zealand in particular. The work was never published and the reasons for this are discussed in the final chapter of the thesis. After an interval of more than one hundred and sixty years spent in obscurity, Les Zélandais Histoire Australienne emerges from this study as a valuable historical and literary document. We have described it as an ethnographic novel with ethno-historical notes. The work is comprised of two sections of equal size and importance. There is the novel and the accompanying notes which cover a wide range of subjects, reflecting Dumont d'Urville's wide ranging interests, including Pacific history, geography, languages and cultures. The Notes are a primary source of information, containing Dumont d'Urville's observations which reappeared in later publications. In addition, the vivid experiences of Burns the stowaway and ex-convict, are invaluable as early eye-witness accounts. This is the first complete transcription of the manuscripts. It was a major undertaking because of the length, age and condition of the manuscripts and the almost illegible handwriting. The exercise is discussed in Chapter I In the literary study, several writers admired by Dumont d'Urville, or by whom he was influenced, are discussed. In the first paragraph of the Story, Dumont d'Urville mentions in particular Fénelon, Florian and Rousseau. We have examined some aspects of their work which are relevant to Les Zélandais Histoire Australienne. There is, for example, a discussion on the opposing view points held by Rousseau and some of the French explorers with regard to the legend of the Noble Savage. In addition, we have chosen two works, Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint Pierre and Atala by Chateaubriand, in order to consider Les Zélandais Histoire Australienne from the point of view of exoticism and poetic prose in French literature. This section concludes with an appreciation of the literary style of the novel, which contrasts with the style of Dumont d'Urville's later popular work, Voyage pittoresque autour du monde. The navigator had an abiding interest in the peoples of the South Pacific. Through les Zélandais Histoire Australienne, Dumont d'Urville communicates the enthusiasm with which he made his contribution to the study of mankind. Others before him had recorded ethnographic information but Dumont d'Urville's concern for the cultural predicament of the Maori people sets this explorer apart. The author of this work is a pioneer in modern anthropology.</p>

The Harmony of Nature in Paul et Virginie

Rousseau’s protégé, Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, conceived of his Études de la nature as a complement to Buffon’s Histoire naturelle. Chapter 3 traces the generation of his novel Paul et Virginie from his travelogue to its publication as the fourth book of his natural history. Bernard de Lacépède’s Poétique de la musique provides a missing link between Bernardin’s novel and its operatic adaptation by Jean-François Le Sueur. Reading Bernardin’s natural history, full of advice for artists, alongside Le Sueur’s essays on church music, full of tips for composers, reveals that author and composer both sustained and sought to foster mixed emotions in response to the spectacle of nature that led to the “sentiment of divinity.” The chapter concludes with a consideration of French cathedrals, redesigned along lines reminiscent of the opera and the natural history museum in the course of the century.

Reading Distance: Port Louis, Cairo, Beijing

This essay uses a case study of Lin Shu (1852-1924) and (1876-1924) to argue for an approach to world literature called “reading distance.” Through a close reading of Lin Shu's and translations of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie (Paul and Virginia) into Chinese and Arabic and a consideration of their work as translators and intellectuals, the essay reads between peripheries—places like Cairo and Beijing—to understand how intellectuals in those places grappled with difficult questions concerning translation, language reform, and changes in reading publics. By thinking with models of distant reading but also engaging with materials that are usually excluded from those models, the essay examines an important point of overlap in the intellectual and cultural histories of the Arab and Chinese enlightenments of the early twentieth century.

Le mythe de Paul et Virginie à travers trois romans francophones de l’océan Indien

Ex oriente lux? From the Southern Tropics in any case, since certain myths from former times, forgotten and buried under indifference, come back to us rejuvenated and transformed. In this article, we treat one myth — ‘myth’ given the extent of its cultural hypertext — which arose, strangely but almost necessarily, in an ancient French colony: the Île-de-France (Mauritius). It may seem fairly obvious that Paul and Virginie (hero and heroine of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s eponymous novel) should have returned to haunt the literature of the Île-de-France and her “sister island”, La Réunion. We examine three novels: the first transcribes the idyllic couple in terms of a realism based on a form of local colour (Georges Azéma, Noëlla, 1874). The second ends up destroying the pastoral eclogue of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (Loys Masson, Les Noces de la vanille, 1962, English title: The Overseer). The third novel, Le Chercheur d’or by J.M.G. Le Clézio (1985, English title: The Collector), abandons the island setting in order to preserve the myth. Whether colonial or postcolonial, the old myth, dressed in new clothes, invites us to a dialogue between different centuries and different cultures.