December 13, 2006

Barbara T. Cooper, professor of French, has recently published “Cora, ou l’Esclavage” (Cora, or Slavery), a 19th Century French drama set against the backdrop of the American Civil War. The play, written by Jules Barbier, best known today as a composer of opera libretti, was first performed in Paris in August 1861.

Cooper began research on this project a few years ago thanks to a senior faculty fellowship awarded by the UNH Center for the Humanities. That fellowship allowed her to publish several essays related to the play. More recently, she discovered manuscript material related to “Cora” that revealed some of Barbier’s sources and several revisions of his drama.

Those previously unpublished materials, along with reviews of the play published in Parisian newspapers in 1861, helped her to write the introduction that accompanies Barbier’s text and are partially reproduced in the book’s appendix.

“This has been a fascinating project,” Cooper said. “The French, who had officially abolished slavery in 1848, were well aware of the problems slavery posed in the United States. They had read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ (1852) and other works by abolitionist writers. Historians and others have studied Franco-American relations during this period, but no one had closely examined this long-forgotten play, in part because the text was not widely available.”

Cooper’s edition of “Cora” makes sure that the play will be readily accessible to a new generation of students and scholars interested in the way the French responded to the Civil War. The play joins other works that have appeared in the “Autrement mêmes” series published under the general editorship of professor Roger Little for the “Editions L’Harmattan” in Paris and may be ordered from their website http://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index.asp or other online book sellers.