For the 400th anniversary of Moliere's birth, Richard Wilbur's unsurpassed translations of Molière's plays--themselves towering achievements in English verse--are brought together by Library of America in a two-volume edition One of the most accomplished American poets of his generation, Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) was also a prolific translator of French and Russian literature. His verse translations of Molière's plays are especially admired by readers and are still performed today in theaters around the world. "Wilbur," the critic John Simon once wrote, "makes Molière into as great an English verse playwright as he was a French one." Now, for the first time, all ten of Wilbur's unsurpassed translations of Molière's plays are brought together in two-volume Library of America edition, fulfilling the poet's vision for the translations. The second volume includes the elusive masterpiece, The Misanthrope, often said to occupy the same space in comedy as Shakespeare's Hamlet does in tragedy; the fantastic farce Amphitryon, about how Jupiter and Mercury commandeer the identities of two mortals ; Tartuffe, Molière's biting satire of religious hypocrisy; and The Learned Ladies, like Tarfuffe, a drama of a household turned suddenly upside down. This volume includes the original introductions by Richard Wilbur and a foreword by Adam Gopnik on the exquisite art of Wilbur's translations.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

France’s answer to Shakespeare, the seventeenth century playwright Molière wrote comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets and poetry. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed at the Comédie-Française more often than those of any other playwright today. He invented a new style that employed a double vision of normal and abnormal seen in relation to each other—the comedy of the true opposed to the specious, the intelligent set against the pedantic. Though the sacred and secular authorities often combined against him, Molière’s genius finally emerged to win him the status of a world author. For the first time in publishing history, this eBook presents Molière’s complete works, with numerous illustrations, rare plays and poetry, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Molière’s life and works * Concise introductions to the major works * All 33 dramatic works, with individual contents tables * Translations by Charles Heron Wall, Henri van Laun, Curtis Hidden Page and A. R. Waller * Features rare dramas appearing for the first time in digital publishing * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Rare poetry translations available in no other collection * Easily locate the poems or plays you want to read * Special criticism section, with four essays evaluating Molière’s contribution to literature, including Voltaire’s seminal work * Features two biographies — discover Molière’s literary life * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Dramatic Works The Flying Doctor The Jealousy of le Barbouillé The Blunderer; or, The Counterplots The Love-Tiff The Pretentious Young Ladies Sganarelle; or, The Imaginary Cuckold Don Garcia of Navarre or the Jealous Prince The School for Husbands The Mad; or, The Bores The School for Wives Critique of the School for Wives The Versailles Impromptu The Forced Marriage The Princess of Elid Tartuffe; or, The Impostor Don Juan; or, The Stone Banquet Love is the Best Doctor The Misanthrope; or, The Cantankerous Lover The Physician in Spite of Himself Mélicerte Comic Pastoral The Sicilian; or, Love the Painter Amphitryon George Dandin; or, The Abashed Husband The Miser; or, The School for Lies Monsieur de Pourceaugnac The Magnificent Lovers The Middle-Class Gentleman Psyche The Impostures of Scapin The Countess of Escarbagnas The Learned Ladies The Imaginary Invalid The Poetry The Poems of Molière The Criticism On Comedy by Voltaire On the English Comedy by Voltaire Molière by William Cleaver Wilkinson To Monsieur de Molière by Andrew Lang The Biographies Molière by Andrew Lang The Wife of Molière by H. Noel Williams Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks

Originally published in 1963. Molière's plays rank among the great comic achievements in the history of the stage. Yet few attempts have been made to understand them as expressing the historical context of the author's time. Most frequently they have been interpreted from the point of view of purely literary history, while the characters have been seen as universal comic types. Lionel Gossman reappraises Molière's comedy in the light of historical experience and interprets it in terms of the conditions from which it emerged. He brings it into the mainstream of seventeenth-century French literature and shows that Molière was concerned with the same things that concerned Descartes, Corneille, Racine, or Pascal. Five comedies (Amphitryon, Dom Juan, Le Misanthrope, Le Tartuffe, and George Dandin) are studied in the first part of the book. A number of basic structures are found to be common to all of them, and these give the author his point of departure for the second part of the book. In the second part, Gossman examines Molière's position with respect to other major seventeenth-century French writers. The comic vision of Molière, Gossman argues, no less than the tragic vision of Pascal or of Racine, expresses a particular relation to the social structure of the time. The subject matter of Molière's comedy is thus, in the author's view, not universal human nature but the men and women of the society in which Molière lived. Indeed, Gossman goes on to argue that the development of society after Molière made it difficult, and in the end impossible, for later writers to see the world in the comic light that illuminated Molière's writing. Even in certain of Molière's own works, in fact, the comic vision shades into something close to Romantic irony.

From 1680 until the French Revolution, when legislation abolished restrictions on theatrical enterprise, a single theatre held sole proprietorship of Molière’s works. After 1791, his plays were performed in new theatres all over Paris by new actors, before audiences new to his works. Both his plays and his image took on new dimensions. In Molière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife, Mechele Leon convincingly demonstrates how revolutionaries challenged the ties that bound this preeminent seventeenth-century comic playwright to the Old Regime and provided him with a place of honor in the nation’s new cultural memory. Leon begins by analyzing the performance of Molière’s plays during the Revolution, showing how his privileged position as royal servant was disrupted by the practical conditions of the revolutionary theatre. Next she explores Molière’s relationship to Louis XIV, Tartuffe, and the social function of his comedy, using Rousseau’s famous critique of Molière as well as appropriations of George Dandin in revolutionary iconography to discuss how Moliérean laughter was retooled to serve republican interests. After examining the profusion of plays dealing with his life in the latter years of the Revolution, she looks at the exhumation of his remains and their reentombment as the tangible manifestation of his passage from Ancien Régime favorite to new national icon. The great Molière is appreciated by theatre artists and audiences worldwide, but for the French people it is no exaggeration to say that the Father of French Comedy is part of their national soul. By showing how he was represented, reborn, and reburied in the new France—how the revolutionaries asserted his relevance for their tumultuous time in ways that were audacious, irreverent, imaginative, and extreme—Leon clarifies the important role of theatrical figures in preserving and portraying a nation’s history.

This book critically analyzes the body of English language translations Moliere’s work for the stage, demonstrating the importance of rhyme and verse forms, the creative work of the translator, and the changing relationship with source texts in these translations and their reception. The volume questions prevailing notions about Moliere’s legacy on the stage and the prevalence of comedy in his works, pointing to the high volume of English language translations for the stage of his work that have emerged since the 1950s. Adopting a computer-aided method of analysis, Ploix illustrates the role prosody plays in verse translation for the stage more broadly, highlighting the implementation of self-consciously comic rhyme and conspicuous verse forms in translations of Moliere’s work by way of example. The book also addresses the question of the interplay between translation and source text in these works and the influence of the stage in overcoming formal infelicities in verse systems that may arise from the process of translation. In so doing, Ploix considers translations as texts in and of themselves in these works and the translator as a more visible, creative agent in shaping the voice of these texts independent of the source material, paving the way for similar methods of analysis to be applied to other canonical playwrights’ work. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in translation studies, adaptation studies, and theatre studies

These are the best of Moliere's masterful one-acts, blending broad farce and pointed wit to express his never-ending delight in human foibles. But Moliere is more than just the "master of the laugh," for behind the comic gestures of these matchless rogues, tight-fisted masters, possessive lovers and elegant ladies lurk fears, insecurities and their consequences. Includes: The Jealous Husband, The Flying Doctor, Two Precious Maidens Ridiculed, The Imaginary Cuckold, The Rehearsal at Versailles, The Forced Marriage, The Seductive Mistress.

This book has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies and hence the text is clear and readable.