Bücher der Reihe Exeter French Texts

This is a new critical edition of an unjustly forgotten drama by Alphonse de Lamartine, written in the early 1840s but only given its first, and last, performance in Paris in 1850. It draws a compelling image of Toussaint Louverture, the father of Haitian Independence. Lamartine proved something of a visionary by stressing his hero's search for a coherent racial and national ideology, a theme which has become fundamental in Negritude and post-colonial literatures.This edition is the first to provide a critical apparatus covering the history of the text, the political and social background against which it should be read, the reception of the work from the time of its original performance to today, and to offer notes on the historical figures included in the cast of characters, as well as a selection of variants, explanatory footnotes and an extensive bibliography.This volume is in the series Textes littraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, intorudcution and essential notes are all in French.

Ourika is the story of an African girl growing up in France: based on a true story, it was a runaway bestseller following its first publication in Paris in 1823. It is now seen as a novel of exceptional psychological penetration and intercultural interest, anticipating Fanon in several ways. Race, class and the role of women in society are key issues it raises. Ourika is acknowledged by John Fowles to have inspired his novel The French Lieutenant's Woman.This is a corrected and updated reprint of the 1998 second edition of this text, first published by University of Exeter Press in 1993 in the series Exeter French Texts/Textes littraires. It is one of the most consistently successful volumes in the series, frequently used as a teaching text on university and other courses.

This new edition of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's play Empsael et Zoraide, presented in a modernised spelling, makes available a text which illustrates his abolitionist stance through its central irony: the masters are black and their slaves white, joining forces in the antislavery debate which reached its height with the French Revolution.

This is the first critical edition of a neglected version of the Life of Saint Alexis found in a late twelfth century manuscript written in England containing several other saints' lives, and now, after many adventures, in the Bibliotheque nationale.

This edition of Francoise Pascal's collection epistolary highlights a rare, innovative and entertaining work by a woman writer unknown today, but in her time a distinguished playwright, poet and painter. Now in its first modern edition, this text provides new insights into seventeenth-century life and the discourses of galanterie and preciosite.

This glossary is the only work of its kind produced by Decadent and Symbolist writers themselves, and is full of 'definitions' as mystifying as the words they claim to define. It offers a scholarly and a humorous examination of linguistic innovation.