“British, but Also French: Paul Mascarene’s Translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope in Colonial Nova Scotia.”

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • True, Micah

• This is the accepted version of the following article: True, Micah. “British, but Also French: Paul Mascarene’s Translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope in Colonial Nova Scotia.” Quebec Studies, vol. 71, no. 1, 1 June 2021, pp. 133–150., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.3828/qs.2021.10. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Liverpool University Press Self-Archiving Policy [http://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/openaccess].

  This article examines a little-studied manuscript translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope, made in eighteenth-century British Nova Scotia by a military officer named Paul Mascarene, for what it can tell us about the complicated assimilation of Huguenots in the global refuge. It argues that the undated manuscript shows the surprising extent to which Mascarene, a Huguenot who fled France in childhood, remained culturally French even as he was a perfectly assimilated Briton, and that he can be seen as a cultural ambassador between his homelands new and old. The manuscript here is closely scrutinized in relation both to Molière’s original 1666 play and a published English translation that is approximately contemporaneous to Mascarene’s own effort. Comparison of the three versions of the play show that Mascarene was a skilled and thoughtful translator, committed to accurately rendering Molière’s words while also making changes that reflected his personal, religious values. This article also considers the assertion that Mascarene’s translation served as the basis of a performance in Annapolis Royal in 1743 or 1744, and shows that close scrutiny of the manuscript does not support this conclusion. Instead, Mascarene’s translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope may best be understood as a sign of how Huguenots like him may have maintained and even sought to share with others aspects of their former identities even as they sought to conform to the cultural norms of their new homelands.

• Date created

  2021-01-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Molière
  • Misanthrope
  • Nova Scotia
  • Translation
  • Paul Mascarene
  • 18th century
  • Nova Scotia

• Type of Item

  Article (Draft / Submitted)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-40wh-t070

• License

  This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Liverpool University Press Self-Archiving Policy [http://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/openaccess]