Bug Jargal

by Victor Hugo

Overview

1791, île de Saint-Domingue. Les esclaves noirs, menés par le mystérieux Bug-Jargal, se révoltent contre la domination des colons français. Héroïque et généreux, Bug-Jargal s’engage dans une lutte sans merci, mais ne peut oublier son amitié pour Léopold d’Auverney, jeune officier blanc, et surtout son amour pour Marie, la fiancée de ce dernier. Victor Hugo a seize ans lorsqu’il écrit Bug- Jargal, en quinze jours, en 1818. La nouvelle est publiée deux ans plus tard, avant d’être étoffée et éditée sous forme de roman en 1826, puis dans les OEuvres de Hugo en
1832. C’est cette dernière version que nous vous présentons ici. Récit historique d’une insurrection qui conduira à l’indépendance de la République d’Haïti, Bug-Jargal pose les fondements de l’identité politique de Hugo et de ses engagements à venir.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9782253193906
Publisher:	Le Livre de Poche
Publication date:	08/23/2017
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB
Language:	French

About the Author

Chris Bongie is a Professor of English at Queen’s University, Kingston. He is the author of Exotic Memories: Literature, Colonialism, and the Fin de Siècle and Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature, both from Stanford University Press.

Date of Birth:

February 26, 1802

Date of Death:

May 22, 1885

Place of Birth:

Besançon, France

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

Pension Cordier, Paris, 1815-18

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Victor Hugo: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
Bug-Jargal
Appendix A: "Bug-Jargal" (1820)
Appendix B: "The Saint Domingue Revolt" (1845)
Appendix C: Politics and Poetics
1. Review of Walter Scott's Quentin Durward (1823)
2. Preface to Nouvelles Odes (1824)
Appendix D: Contemporary Reviews
1. From Le Globe (Journal littéraire) (1826)
2. From Le Drapeau blanc (1826)
3. From Le Mercure du dix-neuvième siècle (1826)
4. From C.A. Chauvet, "Des romans de M. Victor Hugo," Revue encyclopédique (1831)
5. From Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, "Les Romans de Victor Hugo," Journal des débats (1832)
Appendix E: Historical and Cultural Sources
1. From Bryan Edwards, An Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo (1797)
2. From Pamphile de Lacroix, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la Révolution de Saint-Domingue (1819)
3. From Henri Grégoire, De la littérature des nègres (1808)
Appendix F: Literary Sources
1. From Jean-Baptiste Picquenard, Adonis, ou Le bon nègre (1798)
2. From Jean-Baptiste Picquenard, Zoflora; or The Generous Negro Girl (1804)
Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"This superb edition of Bug-Jargal, which includes a wealth of contextualizing documentation, makes Hugo's early representations of race and revolution fully accessible to a contemporary English-language audience. Bongie's critical introduction, translations of both the 1826 novel and the original 1820 short story, and incorporation of contemporary reviews, literary sources, and historical materials reinvigorate Hugo's work and enable the reader to engage with it from a fresh, postcolonial perspective." - Kathryn M. Grossman, Pennsylvania State University
"Victor Hugo's early novel of the Haitian Revolution has taken on a new significance in our postcolonial age preoccupied with race, subaltern resistance, and hybridity. Chris Bongie provides a richly contextualized version that will appeal to historians, literary scholars, and general readers alike. It combines meticulous documentation and a provocative argument about the conservative young poet's ambivalent rendering of this ‘struggle of giants,’ which was written at a turning point in his political development." - David Geggus, University of Florida
"Chris Bongie gives a highly readable and accurate translation of the novel, its 1820 short-story version, and of the supporting documents. He also devotes much of the introduction and notes to demonstrating how Hugo had pieced together portions of the novel from historical sources. [The translation and choice of documents] indicate the Broadview edition's scholarly and pedagogical uses." - Nineteenth-Century French Studies

From the Publisher