Ourika
Title page from the second edition of Ourika (1824)
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| Author | Claire de Duras |
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| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre | Novel |
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Publication date
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1823, 1824 |
| Pages | 45 |
| ISBN | |
Ourika is an 1823 novel by Claire de Duras, originally published anonymously.
Ourika is a story based on the life of a woman who was purchased as a child (in or around 1786) by the Chevalier de Boufflers, the colonial administrator of Senegal, and given as a gift to the de Beauvau family. The most well-known of these is Claire de Duras's 1823 novel of the same name.
The novel marks a critical point in European literature. It is the first French text to depict a black woman character with a complex psychology. It is the first text to create "an articulate and educated black woman narrator," and "one of the most compelling works of short fiction in French and a startlingly modern commentary on race."
The novella covers the time before, during, and after the French Revolution and addresses key themes of race, nationality, exile, interracial love and kinship and the psychological adjustment to these. It signifies an important movement from traditional notions of race, nationality, and kinship towards the identity politics of today.
In his journal, the Chevalier de Boufflers wrote of the purchase of the slave girl whose life would later be documented in Duras' novella: 'I am buying at the moment a little Négresse of two or three years of age in order to send her to Madame de Duchess of Orléans… I feel myself brought to tears in thinking that this poor child has been sold to me like a little lamb." Ourika died at sixteen of a mysterious illness. The Duchess of Orléans's little Négresse provided lively conversation in the salons of nineteenth-century Paris where Boufflers's letters were read. And these 'lively' conversations provided fodder for Claire de Duras's fictional Ourika.
The life of the real-life Ourika was a subject of much conversation in many nineteenth century Paris, and spawned many poems, plays and novels in the popular press, including La Nouvelle Ourika (1824) and La Négresse (1826). The most famous of these is the novel Ourika by Claire de Duras. Duras's story is based on a few bare bones of historical facts, and was committed (reluctantly) to the page by Claire de Duras. She only did so to prevent any possible plagiarism, as she recounted the story—with much acclaim—to those attending her salon in post-Revolutionary Paris. She was the close friend of François-René de Chateaubriand, whom she had met in exile in London, and who helped her in publishing this story among others .
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