Thalassophobia and Geolatry: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and the Geography of Virtue
Ziad Elmarsafy, New York University
Volume 15, no. 1, October 2002
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
Opinions are divided on the generic character of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie. From the author himself, who calls it a “pastorale” without explaining why and then compares it to Homeric epics, to Jean Fabre, who sees it as an approximation of pastoral, to Jean-Michel Racault, who finds its utopian pretensions lacking, to Lieve Spaas, who sees in Bernardin’s fictional Mauritius a paradise at odds with its native sexuality, critical views abound and readings multiply but provide few definite answers. What sort of pastoral is it, after all, where slaves are bought and sold and chaste heroines drown? I should like to draw on past interpretations to read Bernardin de Saint-Pierre as a moralist and Paul et Virginie as an exemplary tale, offering a quasi-religious orientation and something like a moral prescription for a better world. I am following the example of Malcolm Cook, who has made a persuasive case for a religious reading of Paul et Virginie, but here I will argue that the religion in question is more pagan, almost pre-Socratic, than Christian, and idolizes the land rather than Christ.
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Bernardin de Saint-Pierre” include:
Pensée morale et transformations génériques dans Paul et Virginie
by YOUMNA CHARARA (ECF 21.2, Winter 2008-9)
Le Sort de Galilée: Paul et Virginie et la théorie des marées de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
by JOEL CASTONGUAY-BELANGER (ECF 20.2, Winter 2007-8)
Writing for Charity: Mme de Genlis and Thérésina
by MALCOLM COOK (ECF 17.3, April 2005)
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