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''The Sofa: A Moral Tale'' ((フランス語:Le Sopha, conte moral)) is a 1742 libertine novel by Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon. The story concerns a young courtier, Amanzéï, whose soul in a previous life was condemned by Brahma to inhabit a series of sofas, and not to be reincarnated in a human body until two virgin lovers had consummated their passion on him. The novel is structured as a frame story in an oriental setting, evocative of the ''Arabian Nights'', in which Amanzéï recounts the adventures of seven couples, which he witnessed in his sofa form, to the bored sultan Shah Baham (grandson of Shehryār and Scheherazade). The longest episode, that of Zulica, takes up nine chapters; the final episode concerns the teenage Zéïnis et Phéléas, whose innocent pleasure provides the means of freeing Amanzéï. Many of the characters in the novel are satirical portraits of influential and powerful Parisians of Crébillon’s time; the author takes the opportunity to ridicule hypocrisy in its different forms (worldly respectability, virtue, religious devotion). In particular, some recognize Louis XV in the figure of the ridiculous Shah Baham. Although the book was published anonymously and with a false imprint, Crébillon was discovered to be the author and was exiled to a distance of thirty leagues from Paris on April 7, 1742. He was able to return on July 22, after claiming that the work had been commissioned by Frederick II of Prussia and that it had been published against his will. ''Le Sopha'' was translated into English by Eliza Haywood and William Hatchett in 1742, by Bonamy Dobrée in 1927, and by Martin Kamin in 1930 (as ''The Divan: A Morality Story''). ''Le Sopha'' is visible as the title of a book in ''The Toilette'', one of William Hogarth's series of satirical paintings ''Marriage à-la-mode'', made 1743-1745〔Robert L. S. Cowley, ''Marriage a-la-mode: a re-view of Hogarth's narrative art'', Manchester University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-7190-0884-0, p. 105〕 ==References== * Liz Bellamy, ''Commerce, morality and the eighteenth-century novel'', Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-521-62224-7, p. 61 *On the Dating of Three Novels by Crébillon Fils by D. A. Day, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 56, No. 3. (Jul., 1961), pp. 391–392. * Carole Dornier, "(Orient romanesque et satire de la religion: Claude Crébillon, Tanzaï et Néadarné et Le Sopha, )" ''Eighteenth-Century Fiction'' Vol. 11: Iss. 4, Article 1 (1999) () 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Sofa: A Moral Tale」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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