Théorie et pratique des droits de l'homme, par Th. Paine, secrétaire du Congrès au département des affaires étrangères, pendant la guerre d'Amérique, auteur du Sens commun, et des Réponses à BURKE. Traduit en François, par F. Lanthenas, D.M. Et par le traducteur du Sens commun

L'an quatrième de la liberté (1792-03) Paratext Forms: Preface Paratext Functions: Community-building, Meta-communicative French

Contributions

uncertainty François-Xavier Lanthenas

author

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Théorie et pratique des droits de l'homme, par Th. Paine, secrétaire du Congrès au département des affaires étrangères, pendant la guerre d'Amérique, auteur du Sens commun, et des Réponses à BURKE. Traduit en François, par F. Lanthenas, D.M. Et par le traducteur du Sens commun translation has paratext has other edition

Summary (extracted citations)

"The French no longer tolerate such dedications; one should write privately to those whom one admires: for it is to the public alone that one offers one’s thoughts, when one publishes a book. Likewise, Paine, this pure friend of liberty, believed in Lafayette’s sincerity, but it is so easy to deceive men whose only concern is for the common good! Raised far from royal courts, this plain-speaking American appears no more wary, than like-minded Frenchmen, against the contrived manners and language of courtiers”.

Notes

The short preface (most likely by Lanthenas) explains why Paine's polemical introduction against Burke, and his dedication to Lafayette, were omitted, lest they give offence to the free French people.

Paine had already gained a considerable reputation in the American Revolution through the publication of 'Common Sense' (1776), so the translator – or possibly the Cercle Social editorial group attached to their publisher – make this reputation the central issue in their preface, in order to save Paine, the “pure friend of liberty”, from his own impolitic connections. The advertised suppression of certain parts of his text is motivated by contemporary events in France. For example, by 1792, Paine’s dedication to the marquis de Lafayette was ill-advised in a revolutionary context which now regarded Lafayette as a traitor. The framing preface thus seeks to recover Paine’s totemic ‘purity’, together with his articulation of radical values, for a political situation that threatened to imperil both.