Gabriel de Foigny - Les Avantures de Jacques Sadeur dans la découverte et le voiage de la terre australe - 1705

The Adventures of Jacques Sadeur in the Discovery and Voyage to the Southern Land, Paris, Michel David, 1705. The author is Gabriel de Foigny

[16], 341 , [3]. 8*

Book in excellent condition, leather cover with gold tooling on the spine and the title on the panel, inner pages fresh and crisp without stains or signs of moisture, the only thing to report is a small hole at the frontispiece; see photo.

The protagonist Sadeur, after shipwrecks and extraordinary adventures, reaches a mysterious Southern Land and lives for about thirty-five years among its inhabitants. Through the narrative, the customs, religion, education, wars, and animals of this imagined world are described. The Southern Land offers the author a space to discuss societies alternative to European ones.

The most original aspect is that Sadeur and the inhabitants of the country are described as hermaphrodites, according to the language of the time. This feature has a philosophical significance: it represents a complete humanity, prior to the division of the sexes, linked to the theme of the primal Adam. The novel thus deals with questions of human perfection, reason, and the relationship with the divine.

The Australe society, however, also exhibits rigidity and violence. For this reason, scholars discuss whether to read it as an ideal model, a critique of utopias, or a narrative experiment that reveals its contradictions.

Gabriel de Foigny was born around 1630 and died in 1692; the birth date remains uncertain even in the Bibliothèque nationale de France catalog.

He was a Catholic clergyman and preacher, later turning to Calvinism in Geneva and ending his life in a convent in Savoy. The publication of the novel provoked accusations of impiety and his imprisonment together with the printer. These episodes help to understand the caution with which the work was initially published, using initials and a false place of printing.

His historical interest lies chiefly in the intertwining of fantastical adventure, religious critique, and the imagination of a different human organization. He is also included in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction among the authors of the earliest works connected to the science fiction tradition.