The result is nonetheless both readable and informative, with a notable contribution on the musical front, Saint-George's greatest claim to our attention. A name emerges from the variants proposed a date of birth (correct in Smidak, but given as 1739 by Guédé) is confirmed a clear genealogy is provided (though the nonstandard tree is less clear than it might be) many an archive, in France and Guadeloupe, has been profitably scoured and most significant references to his colorful life as swordsman, violinist, composer, horseman, soldier, and dandy are quoted, but often with maddening imprecision, matched by a novelistic style that works of scholarship generally eschew. On many counts, however, his thrusts strike home. That is fighting talk: like the expert fencer that Joseph de Bologne de Saint-George (1745-99) was, Ribbe will have to take careful guard and watch his back. Ribbe dismisses them as "soi-disants biographes" 'so-called biographers' (125) and "auteurs peu soucieux de faire la moindre vérification aux sources manuscrites" 'authors little concerned with making the slightest check against manuscript sources' (39, n1). Indeed the latter, like the earliest (by Roger de Beauvoir, Paris: Dumont, 1840), does not even figure in his bibliography. In this third biography of the Chevalier de Saint-George in eight years, Claude Ribbe disdains to mention in his text either Emil Smidak's (Lucerne: Avenira, 1996, privately produced and very expensive) or Alain Guédé's (Arles: Actes Sud, 1999). Hugely talented, he was taken to Paris from his birthplace, Guadeloupe, along with his mother, and acquired the accomplishments of a gentleman to become a celebrated man about town, dashingly represented in an eponymous 1840 play by Mélesville and Beauvoir (reedited by Sylvie Chalaye, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001). Just occasionally, the child was recognized by the father and given double benefit. By and large, such natural offspring of virile adventurers, colonists, or armies of occupation coupling with local women, suffered from double jeopardy. "Mixed-race" and "biracial" may appear more acceptable, but imply acceptance of more than one human race. "Half-breed" and "half-caste" were no better. OL24347482W Page_number_confidence 90.91 Pages 134 Partner Innodata Pdf_module_version 0.0.15 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20210713132700 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 742 Scandate 20210709101904 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 9782237000800 Sent_to_scribe Tts_version 4.Saint-George was a mulâtre, or "mulatto": sterile as a mule in the contemptible contemptuous language of the latter half of the eighteenth century, the age of classification, when quadroons and octoroons were pigeon-holed and grouped as "Blacks" by "Whites" ("Caucasians" in Blumenbach's highly questionable terminology still used on US immigration forms) with all the legal consequences. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 07:00:41 Boxid IA40171305 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier
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