Paul and Virginia (Diderot) - Softcover

De Saint-Pierre, Bernardin

3.75

6,898 ratings by Goodreads

9781481120616: Paul and Virginia (Diderot)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1481120611 ISBN 13: 9781481120616

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012

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'Paul and Virginia' is a novel by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. The novel's title characters are very good friends since birth who fall in love. The story is set in the island of Mauritius under French rule, then named �le de France, which the author had visited. Written on the eve of the French Revolution, the novel is hailed as Bernardin's finest work. It records the fate of a child of nature corrupted by the false, artificial sentimentality that prevailed at the time among the upper classes of France.

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About the Author:

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (19 January 1737 Le Havre – 21 January 1814 �ragny, Val-d'Oise) was a French writer. He is best known for his novel 'Paul and Virginia'.

From Publishers Weekly:

Naturalist Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), a disciple of Rousseau, led a hardscrabble life until he published his one novel, Paul et Virginie, in 1788. The book catapulted him into wealth and fame, speeding through dozens of editions on its way to touchstone status for 19th-century lovers of sentimental tales—Flaubert used it as the exemplum of the pulp fiction that cheapened Madame Bovary's young mind. The plot (which also inspired Blue Lagoon) is this: Paul's mother and Virginie's mother, unmarried pregnant strangers when they meet on the tropical French outpost of Mauritius, become bosom friends in adversity. When their children are born, they and their two slaves (who conveniently marry each other), start up a farm on the island. The children are handsome, illiterate, casual about nudity, innocent of the slave labor that sustains them, and close as brother and sister until, inevitably, sexual and romantic feelings begin to muddy the crystal blue waters of their affection. Then Virginie's imperious, aristocratic aunt back in France demands her services, and she must part from Paul for the very first time. The second half of the story (told here in Donovan's elegant 1982 translation) has traditionally been read through a mist of tears. (Nov.)
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