y separately published work icon La Terre Australe Connue: C'est a Dire, la Description de ce Pays Inconnu Jusqu'ici, de ses Moeurs & de ses Coutumes (International) assertion single work   novel   adventure  
Issue Details: First known date: 1676... 1676 La Terre Australe Connue: C'est a Dire, la Description de ce Pays Inconnu Jusqu'ici, de ses Moeurs & de ses Coutumes
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Foigny's La Terre Australe Connue, published in 1676, is a fantastically engaging and playful example of the 'imaginary voyage' genre. It is also a seventeenth-century work with some curiously modern resonances. Written in the tradition of More's Utopia, and serving itself as a forerunner to Swift's Gulliver's Travels, The Southern Land, Known offered its readers a radical criticism of then prevailing ideologies in the guise of a lively and provocative novel. Knowledge of the vast continent of Australia was, in Foigny's day, still mingled with legends, hearsay, and travelers' tales. It is in this context that the 'unknown Southern Land' becomes known to the hero of this short, action-packed, and highly structured story. The narrator braves a long sea journey, raging storms, shipwrecks, giant whales, and high-flying creatures that try to eat him - all to reach the mysterious Austral utopia. Peopled by hermaphrodites, Foigny's Australia is a society in which distinctions of both class and gender have been abolished. It includes, among other things, an indictment of 'the great empire that the male usurped over the female' as 'rather a form of tyranny than a just cause' (Libraries Australia).

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Language: French
Notes:
Other imprint/s: Chez Charles Osmont, Paris, 1705
    • Geneva,
      c
      Switzerland,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Jaques Vernevil ,       1676 .
      Extent: [18], 267p.p.
      Note/s:
      • On title page: Par Mr Sadeur.
      • On title page: Avec les avantures qui le conduisirent en ce continent, & les particularitez du sejour qu'il y fit durant trente-cinq ans & plus, & de son retour. Reduites & mises en lumiere par les soins & la conduite de G. de F
    • Paris,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       C. Barbin ,       1693 .
      Alternative title: Les Aventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la Decouverte et le Voyage de la Terre Australe : Contenant les Coutumes & les Moeurs des Australiens
      Extent: 177p.p.
      Edition info: Revised and altered by Francois Raguenet.
    • Amsterdam,
      c
      Netherlands,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Chez David Mortier ,       1732 .
      Extent: [16], 341, [3] p.p.
      Note/s:
      • From the edition edited by Raguenet (1693)
Alternative title: A New Discovery of Terra Incognita Australis, or the Southern World
Language: English
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       John Dunton ,       1693 .
      Extent: [8], 186 [i.e. 178], [6] p.p.
      Note/s:
      • On title page: by James Sadeur, a French-man, who being cast there by a shipwrack, lived 35 years in that country, and gives a particular description of the manners, customs, religion, laws, studies, and wars, of those southern people; and of some animals peculiar to that place: with several other rarities : these memoirs were thought so curious, that they were kept secret in the closet of a late great minister of state, and never published till now since his death / translated from the French copy, printed at Paris, by publick authority, April 8, 1693.
      • Printed for John Dunton.
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Works about this Work

Hommes, bêtes et 'Fondins' chez Gabriel de Foigny Isabelle Moreau , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Seventeenth-Century French Studies , vol. 33 no. 1 2011; (p. 49-58)
An Apocalyptic Map : New Worlds and the Colonization of Australia Roslyn Weaver , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film : A Critical Study 2011; (p. 23-53) 'This chapter examines the map that preceded, and eventually superseded, the territory of Australia, in order to demonstrate that early maps of the south land established an apocalyptic tradition that still resonates in contemporary fictions. If one reinterprets Jean Baudrillard's comments in the context of colonization and Australia, it is possible to see how European imagination delineated an apocalyptic map of the country before explorers and settlers even arrived, a map that located Australia as a tabula rasa, a blank slate where heaven and hell might equally be feasible. This chapter surveys the dialectic emerging from these confliction visions.' (24)
L'Alterita Nell'utopia: 'La Terre Australe Connue' (1676), de Gabriel de Foigny Sergio Cappello , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Alterite et Insularite : Relations Croisees dans les Cultures Francophones 2005; (p. 61-76)
Utopian Novel Explores 'Australia' Shirley J. Paolini , 1995 single work review
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 9 no. 2 1995; (p. 151-152)
— Review of La Terre Australe Connue: C'est a Dire, la Description de ce Pays Inconnu Jusqu'ici, de ses Moeurs & de ses Coutumes 1676 single work novel
Imaginary Voyages Derrick Moors , 1988 single work criticism
— Appears in: La Trobe Library Journal , Autumn vol. 11 no. 41 1988; (p. 8-14) "Seventeenth and eighteenth century exploration was responsible for three broad kinds of travel literature: genuine travel accounts; imaginary or extraordinary voyages; and a third group which might be termed travel liars, or pseudo travellers, whose intention it was to deceive. This second group, imaginary voyages, were to become almost as popular in their day as authentic travel accounts. The genre included works of a realistic, philosophical, utopian and fantastic nature and, while not generally written to deceive, they have, in a few notable cases, done just that." (p.1)
Utopian Novel Explores 'Australia' Shirley J. Paolini , 1995 single work review
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 9 no. 2 1995; (p. 151-152)
— Review of La Terre Australe Connue: C'est a Dire, la Description de ce Pays Inconnu Jusqu'ici, de ses Moeurs & de ses Coutumes 1676 single work novel
L'Alterita Nell'utopia: 'La Terre Australe Connue' (1676), de Gabriel de Foigny Sergio Cappello , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Alterite et Insularite : Relations Croisees dans les Cultures Francophones 2005; (p. 61-76)
Mundus Alter Et Idem: A Satirical Utopia in The La Trobe Library Ian Laurenson , 1977 single work prose
— Appears in: La Trobe Library Journal , April vol. 5 no. 19 1977; (p. 45-52) "Petherick has significantly linked More's Utopia with that early anticipation of science fiction, Bacon's New Atlantis, and with a decidedly upside-down utopia by Joseph Hall, Mundus Alter et Idem. (The Latin title implies an imaginary and exotic world that appears very different, yet remains in certain fundamental ways the same as European societies.) Since Hall's anti-utopia is firmly set in 'Terra Australis incognita', and since most copies of the work carry an elaborate apparatus of five engraved maps of a highly imaginary version of the Southern Continent, Mundus Alter et Idem continues to be ranked among the more desirable rariora within the larger field of Australiana. These Australian associations, together with the obvious anticipation of Gulliver's Travels, must be allowed as the principal reasons for the presence of so many copies of Mundus Alter et Idem in libraries and in private collections throughout Australia...In Gabriel de Foigny's La Terre Australe Connue the word "Australiens" is first used as describing the inhabitants of this southern continent. " (p.45, 47)
Imaginary Voyages Derrick Moors , 1988 single work criticism
— Appears in: La Trobe Library Journal , Autumn vol. 11 no. 41 1988; (p. 8-14) "Seventeenth and eighteenth century exploration was responsible for three broad kinds of travel literature: genuine travel accounts; imaginary or extraordinary voyages; and a third group which might be termed travel liars, or pseudo travellers, whose intention it was to deceive. This second group, imaginary voyages, were to become almost as popular in their day as authentic travel accounts. The genre included works of a realistic, philosophical, utopian and fantastic nature and, while not generally written to deceive, they have, in a few notable cases, done just that." (p.1)
An Apocalyptic Map : New Worlds and the Colonization of Australia Roslyn Weaver , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film : A Critical Study 2011; (p. 23-53) 'This chapter examines the map that preceded, and eventually superseded, the territory of Australia, in order to demonstrate that early maps of the south land established an apocalyptic tradition that still resonates in contemporary fictions. If one reinterprets Jean Baudrillard's comments in the context of colonization and Australia, it is possible to see how European imagination delineated an apocalyptic map of the country before explorers and settlers even arrived, a map that located Australia as a tabula rasa, a blank slate where heaven and hell might equally be feasible. This chapter surveys the dialectic emerging from these confliction visions.' (24)
Hommes, bêtes et 'Fondins' chez Gabriel de Foigny Isabelle Moreau , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Seventeenth-Century French Studies , vol. 33 no. 1 2011; (p. 49-58)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (6)
Last amended 26 Jun 2014 21:54:21
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