Mormons in Paris

Polygamy on the French Stage, 1874-1892

Corry Cropper and Christopher M. Flood (Eds.)

2020
428 pages
$45.95
ISBN 9781684482368
Scènes francophones

In the late nineteenth century, numerous French plays, novels, cartoons, and works of art focused on Mormons. Unlike American authors who portrayed Mormons as malevolent "others," however, French dramatists used Mormonism to point out hypocrisy in their own culture. Aren't Mormon women, because of their numbers in a household, more liberated than French women who can't divorce? What is polygamy but another name for multiple mistresses? This new critical edition presents translations of four musical comedies staged or published in France in the late 1800s: Mormons in Paris (1874), Berthelier Meets the Mormons (1875), Japheth's Twelve Wives (1890), and Stephana's Jewel (1892). Each is accompanied by a short contextualizing introduction with details about the music, playwrights, and staging. Humorous and largely unknown, these plays use Mormonism to explore and mock changing French mentalities during the Third Republic, lampooning shifting attitudes and evolving laws about marriage, divorce, and gender roles.

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Review

"Mormons in Paris is as erudite as it is enchanting. In their introduction, Cropper and Flood show exceptional depth and breadth of knowledge about French theater, opera, and light opera and their place in late nineteenth-century French culture. The language of the translations is natural and readable, and the little songs in verse are especially delightful."
- Susan McCready, author of Staging France between the World Wars

"This well-introduced collection of little-known musical comedies featuring French characterizations of Mormonism is a welcome contribution to nineteenth-century French cultural studies. The translations themselves are excellent . . . the authors' choices of idiomatic expressions capture just the right tone, neither anachronistically modern nor too archaic to retain their impact."
-Andrea Goulet, co-editor of Orphan Black: Performance, Gender, Biopolitics

About the editors:

Corry Cropper is a professor of French at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. His publications include Marianne Meets the Mormons, Mormons in Paris (Bucknell University Press), and Playing at Monarchy.

Christopher M. Flood is an assistant professor of French at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. His research focuses on the unique insights offered by comedies and satires into the contexts that produced them. He has previously published on medieval and early modern political and religious satires.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press

Cloth: $150.00, 9781684482375; PDF: $45.95, 9781684482405; EPUB: $45.95, 9781684482382