Poetry
Les Essais d'un bobre africain
Not translated into English
François Chrestien · 1822
Synopsis
A collection of fables, songs and poems published in Mauritius at the height of the slavery period. The fables freely adapt La Fontaine and the songs take up old French airs, Béranger's above all, transposing them into situations specific to the island. The author, a white man, makes a Black narrator speak in them, and invents his own spelling to write a Creole that had none. To these Creole pieces are added poems in French.
Context
Published in 1822, expanded by about ten poems in 1831 and then reissued in 1838, the work in its second edition comprises forty-six poems, twenty-seven of them in Creole: twelve fables, thirteen songs and a burlesque obituary. Charles Nodier owned a copy, which he regarded as a jewel of his library. Arnaud Carpooran notes in it the figure of a white author behind a black narrator. The Creole Speaking Union published a translation into Kreol Morisien in 2018, with the original text facing.
Who it is for
The Creole of 1822, in an old spelling, demands attention; the 2018 translation accompanies it.
Prizes and reception
The successive reissues attest to the book's success with the readers of its time.
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