Marie-Angélique, Aminata et Richard Pierpoint ou figures singulières de l’esclavage canadien oublié
Marie-Angélique, Aminata and Richard Pierpoint or Singular Figures of Forgotten Canadian Slavery

Summary/Abstract: In Canada, the question of slavery is deliberately hidden by historians (with the exception of researchers like Marcel Trudel) or very rarely approached by works of fiction. This is the case with slaves who belonged to their owners until the end, as well as Black Loyalists who, like Richard Pierpoint, won their freedom after the War of 1812. But if specialists of History prefer ignore the facts, the authors of Literature refuse to forget the crimes of slavery. This is the challenge of the novelists Micheline Bail, in L’Esclave, and Lawrence Hill, in The Book of Negroes, a book translated into french and adapted for television under the title Aminata. We’ll analyze this type of literary and television productions which, on the one hand, break the silence on the transatlantic slave trade in (and seen from) Canada by rewriting history, on the other hand, echo the rare documentation on Canadian slavery. This contribution demonstrates therefore how fictional representations make it possible to rehabilitate historical figures of slaves forgotten by historiography.

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