University of Exeter Press

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



    Roger Little is Professor of French at the University of Dublin.