| Titre | La recherche du bonheur dans la Virginie coloniale | |
|---|---|---|
| Auteur | Élise Marienstras | |
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Revue | Revue française d'études américaines |
| Numéro | no 157, 4ème trimestre 2018 La recherche du bonheur | |
| Rubrique / Thématique | 2. La recherche du bonheur et le « Péché originel » de l'Amérique |
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| Page | 90-103 | |
| Résumé anglais |
The history of the British colony of Virginia began in the late sixteenth century with the dark unmitigated misfortune of Roanoke, and continued in the early seventeenth century with Jamestown, in a kind of Hobbesian state of nature. There the settlers suffered trials that denied the European immigrants' expectations to reach the state of happiness. Little by little, while the Virginian colony organized into a coherent structure, as if it had achieved the Lockean contract, it did not succeed in bringing happiness to all of its members. With the extensive growth of the colony, human groups differed from one another, never succeeding in sharing an equal degree of happiness. At this point, many questions arise : Is general happiness possible in a colonial society ? Is everyone apt to enjoy happiness in a civil society based on the idea of colonization ? In British America, the ideology of the pursuit of happiness became a true promise to some groups, while others such as slaves and Native peoples were kept apart and suffered an ordeal which made it possible to bring happiness to the most privileged. By the 1860s, the discrepancy between the happy ones and the oppressed others ended in the catastrophe which destroyed the American society. Source : Éditeur (via Cairn.info) |
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| Article en ligne | http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=RFEA_157_0090 |
