Empsaël Et Zoraïde
- 188 Pages
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is for most people the author of one book: Paul et Virginie. This new edition of his play Empsaël et Zoraïde, presented in a modernised spelling, makes available a considerably more muscular text which illustrates his abolitionist stance through its central irony: the masters are black and their slaves white, joining forces in the antislavery debate which reached its height with the French Revolution. Bernardin thus introduces into it a rare element of humour which, had his play ever been performed, would have made his audiences sit up and think.
This will be of interest to scholars and senior students interested in Black Studies, the French Enlightenment and the literature of revolution.
This new edition of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s play Empsaël et Zoraïde, presented in a modernised spelling, makes available a text which illustrates his abolitionist stance through its central irony: the masters are black and their slaves white, joining forces in the antislavery debate which reached its height with the French Revolution.
Frontispice: Afrique de l'ouest, 1719
Introduction
Historique du texte
Qualites litteraires
Une religion de la nature
L'antiesclavagisme
Questions d'histoire et de geographie
Ambassade des peres de la Merci
Note technique
Bibliographie selective
Portrait de Moulay Ismael, 1682
Empsael et Zoraide: Fac-simile d'une page manuscrite (MS 46)
Avant-propos de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
Personnages
Acte I
Acte II
Acte III
Acte IV
Acte V