Paul and Virginia (Annotated)

Set on the luxuriant Île de France (Mauritius), Paul and Virginia (1788) narrates the innocent upbringing and tragic love of two children raised outside the corruptions of European society. Its prose blends pastoral idyll, sentimental fiction, and philosophical romance, translating Rousseauian ideals of natural virtue into an exotic colonial landscape. Yet beneath its limpid simplicity lies a medi...