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| Paul Et Virginie | 
 enlarge | Author: Jacques-henri Bernardin De Saint-pierre
Publisher: Pocket
Category: Book
Buy New: £5.99
New (3) from £5.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 2501105
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 332
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 2266085786
Dewey Decimal Number: 848'.5
EAN: 9782266085786
ASIN: 2266085786
Publication Date: January 1, 1998
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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| Customer Reviews:
A curate's egg September 4, 2006
The Enlightenment seems to have been an odd period for literature and the present item is a good case in point. It seems amazing to us with the advent of Realism nearly a century later that certain elements of the standard novel were not only not in place but do not seem to have been a requirement.
A good aspect of this seems to be that there is not a total reliance on plot, which tends to make a book rather shallow and unfulfilling. What is strange here though is that plot is important but flimsy and figurative in order to hold a philosophical discussion on the ways of the "civilised" world and the benefits of being a noble savage. Here is the diametric opposite of Sartre, who would tell us always to be involved and committed to decency, even to the point of Machiavellian deception on the way there.
The basic set-up is charming. We have a pair of mothers with a daughter and son between them (the title characters) living an idyllic agrarian lifestyle on the Ile de France, away from civilisation until Virginie gets called by her rich aunt (who abandoned her mother when she married beneath her) to inherit and make an education. Paul grows up instantaneously as he loses the girl he has always loved and thence the philosophising.
It's all well-reasoned but it does look a bit like "Robinson Crusoe" meets Voltaire's "Le Huron" and "Candide" squished together with less humour and more Socratic dialogue.
Garnier-Flammarion produce their usual wonderful volume with much excellent documentation to help to place this book in its context. Like "Jacques le fataliste et son maitre" and so many others of this period there is a natural bent to storytelling in an utterly engaging way. It is very interesting to note that it will be a while chronologically before writers are able to resolve the crises they set up in a truly satisfactory way, without contrivance nor bathos. The way it is done by the Enlightenment authors, however, by interspersing with philosophy, is most adroit as it bypasses that entirely.
All in all, a charming book, well worth a read, but which will grate with many readers in being utterly idealistic and simplistic at times and resorting to lengthy picturesque descriptions at others.
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