Monsieur Georges par Roland Monpierre (review)

Reviews 247 respecté, voire mis en exergue. Une bibliographie d’une demi-page et un index de sept, facilitent ce voyage à travers le temps et l’espace jalonné de références, comme points de repère. Il est recommandé de consulter le site où l’on trouvera une panoplie d’exercices interactifs supplémentaires. En somme, rien n’a été laissé au hasard dans ce précieux outil. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania S. Pascale Vergereau-Dewey Monpierre, Roland. Monsieur Georges. Tome 1. Achères: Dagan, 2013. ISBN 978-2919612 -41-3. Pp. 62. 15 a. Given the popularity of graphic novels among American youth, a wonderful means of introducing students to French literature with an Afro-centric twist is via Monpierre’s bande dessinée inspired by Georges (1843), the only novel Dumas wrote that addressed a slave rebellion. Set on Isle de France (now Mauritius) from 1810 to 1825, race and racism are at the center of the story, a particularly sensitive and rarely broached topic for Dumas because of his part-African ancestry. Using rich color designs and deftly weaving the essence of Dumas’s original prose, Monpierre integrates all the ingredients, from an engrossing plot to multifaceted characters, which are characteristic of Dumas’s novels. For example, the main protagonist Georges is a lightskinned mulatto who is readily mistaken as white. His father Munier is a wealthy mulatto plantation owner with slaves. Georges’s older brother Jacques becomes a slavetrader and a pirate captain. As a child, Georges witnesses the British attempt to gain control of the island. Since Munier is a mulatto, the white plantation owners will not fight alongside him. Consequently, he leads a group of blacks against the impeding British attack. Greatly embarrassed by the fact that a mulatto, or worse yet in their eyes, a man of color, saved them, the white plantation owners ignore Munier’s success against the British. In preparation for reading Monpierre’s Monsieur Georges, teachers will want to include a study of Dumas, the author, and his father, General Davy de la Pailleterie, who had been born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), himself the mixed-race son of the marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman and commissaire général in the colony’s artillery, and MarieCessette Dumas, a slave of Afro-Caribbean ancestry. This pre-reading preparation will allow students to gain insight into why Dumas rarely if ever addressed the issue of slavery in France or in its colonies—but for one story, Georges. In addition, teachers may want to ask students, depending on their grade level and maturity, to research the history of France’s slave trade as well as the economic, social, and cultural impact it had on native cultures in Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, and other sugar islands. Finally, teachers will want to explore with students the role that the French Revolution plays in the story. Beyond an investigation of the fascinating characters and its reallife connections to the little-known history of the Caribbean and African Diaspora cultures, there is tremendous cross-cultural learning that can be generated from reading Monsieur Georges as one cannot help but draw comparisons to the American slave trade. Even the most reticent of young readers will be engrossed by this entertaining bande dessinée and will benefit from the crucial lessons on race and tolerance that it instills. Canisius College (NY) Eileen M. Angelini Film edited by Michèle Bissière Baecque, Antoine de, et Noël Herpe. Éric Rohmer: biographie. Paris: Stock, 2014. ISBN 978-2-2340-7561-0. Pp. 604. 29 a. This biography of the director of the Contes moraux, Comédies et proverbes, and Contes des quatre saisons cycles is based on unpublished archival documents and some eighty original interviews. Baecque and Herpe enjoyed unfettered access to Rohmer’s artistic collaborators as well as to the small family circle that Maurice Schérer (1920– 2010) kept separate from his directorial activities, all signed under pseudonym. Unlike the unruly, peripatetic Truffaut, Rohmer was a faithful family man who led an austere life, free from brushes with the law, amorous escapades, or calculated public appearances . Though...