Bug-JargalVictor Hugo’s Bug-Jargal (1826) is one of the most important works of nineteenth-century colonial fiction, and quite possibly the most sustained novelistic treatment of the Haitian Revolution by a major European author. This Broadview edition makes Hugo’s novel available in a completely new English translation, the first in over one hundred years. Set in 1791, during the first months of a slave revolt that would eventually lead to the creation of the black republic of Haiti in 1804, Bug-Jargal is a stirring tale of interracial friendship and rivalry, a provocative account of the ties that bind a young Frenchman to one of the rebel leaders and the tragic misunderstandings that threaten to sever those ties completely. This Broadview edition contains a critical introduction and a broad selection of appendices, including Hugo’s never-before-translated 1820 short story “Bug-Jargal,” contemporary reviews of the novel, documents pertaining to the young Hugo’s poetics and politics, and selections from his source materials about the Haitian Revolution. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | 8 |
Introduction | 9 |
A Brief Chronology | 49 |
A Note on the Text | 52 |
BugJargal | 55 |
BugJargal 1820 | 213 |
The Saint Domingue Revolt 1845 | 249 |
Politics and Poetics | 255 |
Contemporary Reviews | 275 |
Historical and Cultural Sources | 291 |
Literary Sources | 325 |
Map of Saint Domingue | 339 |
Works Cited | 340 |