Encyclopédie noire : the making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's intellectual world / Sara E. Johnson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnson, Sara E. (Sara Elizabeth), author.

Language:

English

French

Haitian French Creole

Kongo

Subjects (All):

Moreau de Saint-Méry, M. L. E. (Médéric Louis Elie), 1750-1819.

Moreau de Saint-Méry, M. L. E.

Moreau de Saint-Méry, M. L. E. (Médéric Louis Elie), 1750-1819--Criticism and interpretation--History.

Black people--Haiti--History.

Black people.

Enslaved persons--Haiti--History.

Enslaved persons.

Language and culture--Caribbean Area.

Language and culture.

Enlightenment--Caribbean Area.

Enlightenment.

Caribbean Area.

Haiti.

Genre:

Biographies

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 376 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), facsimiles ; 25 cm

Other Title:

Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's intellectual world

Place of Publication:

Williamsburg, Virginia : Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture ; Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2023]

Language Note:

Text in English with extensive quotations in French, with translation into English. Also with quotations in Kreyòl, Kikongo, Spanish, Italian, and other languages, with translations into English.

Summary:

"If you peer closely into the bookstores, salons, and diplomatic circles of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, sooner or later Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry is bound to appear. As a lawyer, philosophe, and Enlightenment polymath, Moreau created and compiled an immense archive that remains a vital window into the fragile social, political, and intellectual fault lines of the Age of Revolutions. But the gilded spines and elegant designs that decorate his archive obscure the truth: Moreau's achievements were, at every turn, predicated upon the work of enslaved and free people of color. Their labor amassed the wealth that afforded him the leisure to research, think, and write. Their rich intellectual and linguistic cultures filled the pages of his most applauded works. They set the type, dried the paper, and folded the pages that created his legacy. Every beautiful book Moreau designed contains an embedded story of hidden violence. Sara Johnson's arresting investigation of race and knowledge in the revolutionary Atlantic surrounds Moreau with the African-descended people he worked so hard to erase, immersing him in a vibrant community of language innovators, forgers of kinship networks, and world travelers who strove to create their own social and political lives. Built from archival fragments, creative speculation, and audacious intellectual courage, Encyclopédie noire is a communal biography of the women and men who made Moreau's world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Notes toward a communal biography of Moreau de Saint-Méry

Encyclopédie noire : Part I

Unflattering portraits : a visual critique

Print culture and the empires of slavery

Encyclopédie noire : Part II

Unnatural history : translation, coercion, and the limits of colonialist knowledge

"You are a poisoner" : planter linguistics in Baudry des Lozière's "Dictionnaire ou vocabulaire Congo"

[Here the capital letters "B. DRY LOZ" are printed upside down, reading from right to left] : illustrative storytelling

Encyclopédie noire : Part III.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-364) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Johnson, Sara E. (Sara Elizabeth). Encyclopédie noire.

ISBN:

9781469676913

1469676915

OCLC:

1374821701

Publisher Number:

40032051559