TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE, C(harles) F(rancois)

(1729-1774)

   French author of some works of fantasy and a PROTO-SCIENCE-FICTION work, Giphantie (1760; trans anon in 2 vols as Giphantia, or A View of What Has Passed, What is Now Passing, and During the Present Century, What Will Pass in the World 1761 UK). A traveller in Africa witnesses a prelapsarian world, a possibly farcical vision of worldhistory as being governed by the effects of emblematical trees grown from the One Tree in Eden, and a HOLLOW EARTH via which the protagonist returns to Europe.

   JC