Indigenous Epicureans and Golden-Age Colonialism

Fri. Sep. 26 04:00 PM - Fri. Sep. 26 05:00 PM

Prof. Peter O'Brien, Dalhousie University

September 26, 2025 | 4:00-5:00pm | 2L17

The Franciad of the Jesuit Laurent LeBrun (1608-1663) is a poetic exploration, in Latin, of Indigenous cultures encountered by French missionaries and colonizers in the territories they called “New France” in the 17th century. LeBrun’s poems use the language, imagery, and perspectives of ancient Greek and Roman literature to present a highly distorted portrait of Indigenous peoples. This presentation introduces this strange literary specimen, focusing particularly on LeBrun’s use of classical tropes of Epicurean philosophy to familiarize the Indigenous Other for his readers, and on classical images of the Golden Age to forecast an idealized hybrid society of colonizer and colonized.