Marie-Louise Gagneur, La Croisade noire [The Black Crusade]

Cecilia Beach (Alfred University)

Ed. by Nigel Harkness, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.05: French Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth-Century , 1800-1900.
Vol. editors: David Elwyn Evans (University of St Andrews), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Elisabeth Gerwin (University of Lethbridge), Nigel Harkness (University of Newcastle upon Tyne), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield), Jennifer Yee (University of Oxford)

Dates

First circulation or publication Jul 1864 - Sep 1964

Places

France (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

La Creoisade noire

[The Black Crusade], first published as a serial novel in

Le Siècle

in 1864,

is one of Marie-Louise Gagneur’s overtly anticlerical thesis novels, written to inform her readers about the nefarious intrigues of monastic orders. In the preface to the 1872 edition of the novel (5th ed. published by Armand le Chevalier), the author defends both the veracity of the crimes she attributes to the religious communities and the necessity of exposing the truth in order to combat the influence of monasteries and convents in France, as well as to regenerate society through progressive, cooperative practices. She claims that the object of her criticism is not the Church as a whole nor the “secular clergy” (6) who often serve their communities selflessly with dedication, but…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1931 words

Citation: Beach, Cecilia. "La Croisade noire". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 July 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35748, accessed 25 April 2024.]

Save this article