Black Robe
Encyclopedia
Black Robe is a historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...

 by Brian Moore
Brian Moore (novelist)
Brian Moore was a Northern Irish novelist and screenwriter who emigrated to Canada and later lived in the United States. He was acclaimed for the descriptions in his novels of life in Northern Ireland after the Second World War, in particular his explorations of the inter-communal divisions of The...

 based on the Jesuit missionaries in New France
New France
New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763...

. It was published in 1985.

The novel takes place in the 17th century in New France
New France
New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763...

. It follows Father Laforgue, a French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 Jesuit priest traveling up river to repopulate the mission to the Huron Indians. (The First Nations peoples called the priests "Black Robes".) The novel chronicles his interactions with the "heathen" tribes of Algonkian
Algonquian peoples
The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds. Today hundreds of thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples...

 (friendly) and Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...

 (unfriendly), as well as his inner struggles of faith, as he travels upriver to bring salvation to the Hurons.

Moore juxtaposes the "superstitious" religious beliefs of the Native people with the Christian religious beliefs of Father Laforgue, which the reader can see very nearly mirror each other.

The book was adapted into the 1991 film
Black Robe (film)
Black Robe is a 1991 film directed by Bruce Beresford. The screenplay was written by Northern Irish-Canadian author Brian Moore, who adapted it from his novel of the same name....

 of the same title directed by Bruce Beresford
Bruce Beresford
Bruce Beresford is an Australian film director who has made more than 30 feature films over a 40-year career.-Early life:...

, for which Moore wrote the screenplay.

Translations

  • Italian: Manto nero, trans. M. Murzi, Narrativa Piemme, 1992, ISBN 8838416532
  • German: Schwarzrock. Roman, trans. Otto von Bayer, Diogenes Zürich 19871, ISBN 3257217552
  • Polish: Czarna suknia, trans. Andrzej Pawelec, Graffiti Kraków 19921, ISBN 9788385695202
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