ABSTRACT
Slavery was still very much in vogue in France's overseas plantations. In 1829, Prosper Merimee published Tamango, which takes place aboard a slave ship. Bug-Jargal resembles another eighteenth-century African protagonist, the hero of Gabriel Mailhol's Le Philosophe egre, who, despite having been a victim of the violence of the Middle Passage himself, refuses to support or encourage the practice of marronnage among his fellowmen. The refusal of violence against white colonists is not accompanied by the formulation of what may be a more legitimate form of rebellion. In fact, Bug-Jargal begins to exhibit characteristics that have the hallmarks of the impotence of other Romantic heroes at precisely the moment when he is anointed a rebel leader. The only grand gestures that Bug-Jargal is reported to have performed are not those of revolt or vengeance, but of coming to the rescue of, and liberating, white colonists.
