Paul et Virginie
Contributions
- Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
- author
- De l'Imprimerie de Monsieur (Pierre-François Didot)
- publisher
Related resources
- has translation
- Paul & Mary, an Indian story translation
- has translation
- Paolo e Virginia translation
- has translation
- Paul and Virginia. Translated from the French of Bernardin Saint-Pierre by Helen Maria Williams translation has paratext
- has translation
- Paul and Virginia translation
- has translation
- English nights entertainments. The shipwreck, or, History of Paul and Virginia translation
- has translation
- The shipwreck, or, The adventures, love, and constancy, of Paul and Virginia, the two children of the cottages, who were reared in a sequestered valley of Port Louis, in the Isle of France, the history of their rural life and friendship, from their infancy, Virginia's compulsive visit to her wealthy aunt beyond sea, her return, and miraculous preservation from a watery grave through the extraordinary exertions of a faithful Negro, for whom she had formerly solicited a pardon of his cruel master, and at length her happy union with Paul after the sufferings they both underwent for the love of each other translation
- has translation
- The shipwreck, or Paul and Virginia. From the French of M. De Saint Pierre translation
Notes
Supposedly the most published novel in French literature, this story of two 'children of nature' raised in virtue in Mauritius (Ile-de-France) brought together entertainment and a Rousseauist critique of the corrupting influence of society. Originally appended to the fourth volume of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's 'Études de la nature' in 1788, it was also published as an separate volume, and reissued continuously by Didot and others (including Lepetit, Delalain and Deterville) every year until the 1820s.
The novel employs a narrative framework typical of the French Enlightenment conte philosophique: it leverages a distant or apparently more primitive space to critique the decadence or corruption of European civilisation (see Voltaire's Candide, 1759, and Diderot's Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, 1772-80). Part of the title characters' virtue consists in their sympathetic response to a slave. The novel thus brought together concerns of abolitionists with social and moral critique.
The novel's translation across the revolutionary period also signals an interesting historicity to its reception and transmission (it is a 'triple case' of transmission in France, Britain, and Italy). There was clearly commercial value in translating and retranslating the text. But it also had some political value as a way of staging the translator's own interventions -- see Helen Maria Williams's preface, for example, attacking her Jacobin gaolers.