CULTURAL READINGS: Colonization & Print in the Americas

Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania Library

Paul Le Jeune, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France en l'année 1636. Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1637.

The Jesuit Relations, annually published accounts of Jesuit missionary exploits in Canada, proved immensely popular in France. Part register of baptisms and deaths, part travel narrative, and part ethnographical catalogue, the Relations seem to have fascinated French readers and inspired other missionaries, like Marie de l'Incarnation, to seek appointments to New France. Their publication continued with few interruptions until 1673. Du Creux printed a digest of the Relations in Latin in 1664.

[See also in this exhibition, an excerpt from the 1647 narrative of Jesuit Isaac Jogues's captivity]

Religion and Print

• [Return to] Missionary Accounts
• Missionaries and Indian Languages

Exhibition Contents | Introduction | Essays | Bibliography & Links