Paul et Virginie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul et Virginie (or Paul and Virginia) is a novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, first published in 1787.
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.
The Nuttall Encyclopedia says of it, "[it is a novel in which] there rises melodiously, as it were, the wail of a moribund world: everywhere wholesome Nature in unequal conflict with diseased, perfidious art; cannot escape from it in the lowest hut, in the remotest island of the sea"
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.
- Notes from the Dictionary of Sensibility
[edit] External links
- Paul and Virginia, available at Project Gutenberg.
