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'I have no secrets; my unhappiness is the story of my entire life.' A key figure in the literary world of post-Revolutionary Paris, Claire de Duras was a writer of exceptional talent, admired by Sainte-Beuve and Goethe, imitated by Stendhal, and influencing later writers such as Fromentin,
Ourika describes the discrimination suffered by a young Black woman brought up in an aristocratic French family, her unconscious adoption of this racial disdain, and her redemption by faith.
Édouard charts the impossibility of the bourgeois hero's love for the daughter of the aristocratic family into which he has been adopted on his parents' death. In the epistolary
Olivier, the two central protagonists, clearly in love, are nevertheless prevented from marriage by Olivier's secret.
Now accepted as integral to French Romanticism and the history of women's writing, the narratives showcase Duras's empathy with the exceptional, the outcast, and the victims of social injustice, providing pioneering studies in race, class, and sexuality. Chris Miller's new translations into English are accompanied by an introduction and notes by Pratima Prasad, highlighting major themes in the texts.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Chris Miller is a critic and translator. A noted specialist in art history, he has translated some sixty books, including the correspondence of Odilon Redon and Andries Bonger. He is cofounder of the Oxford Amnesty Lectures, a correspondent of European Photography, and contributing editor to the Warwick Review. His translations of the poetry of Érico Nogueira have appeared in PN Review and from Clutag Press. Pratima Prasad is Professor of
French at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UMass Boston, Member of the Advisory Board of the Nineteenth-Century French Studies journal, and Vice-President of the George Sand
Studies Association. She has published book-length works and articles on French Romantic authors such as George Sand, Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand, and Claire de Duras, as well as the relationship between literature, slavery, and colonialism in the nineteenth century.
