For contents, see Author Catalog.

The book contains, then, eleven plays from the great age of French drama in the seventeenth century, one play from the prolific pen of Alexandra Hardy, who proceeded the great age, and on from the eighteenth century, the aftermath of that age.

With rare exceptions, English and American views of Corneille derive from that documentary approach that is more interested in a writer's times than in the writer. Perhaps more than any other major French writer, Corneille must be resurrected from the mass of documentation that has accumulated about him in nearly three centuries of criticism. Dr. Nelson's study, in line with much recent French criticism, concentrates primarily on the canon. The first book in English on this major European dramatist in over fifty years, this fresh return to the plays them­ selves presents a Corneille more varied and more flexible than the sententious figure passed down through decades of inordinate critical emphasis on the famed tetralogy (Le Cid, Horace, Cinna, Polyeucte). Thus, there is not only the familiar genereux of these plays, but also the damoiseau of the early comedies, the ambitieux of the middle plays, and the amoureux of the last plays. Through rigorous attention to the values of both the hero and the world Corneille creates about him in each of the thirty-two plays, Robert J. Nelson demonstrates in detail what some perceptive critics have hinted at in recent Corneille criticism: that Corneille's vision is not tragic. The drama of "The Father of French Tragedy" is, to be sure, "tragic" in the externals of composition (five acts, alexandrines, the fate of noble figures, etc.), but its essence is something else. What this something else is, and that even in our age of extreme deference to the "tragic vision" it in no way diminishes Corneille's stature, are the final arguments of this original study. Corneille: His Heroes and Their Worlds will appeal to all those with an interest in French Drama, as well as those studying the application of modern critical techniques to classical authors. Students of theory of tragedy will also find this new look at Corneillian "tragedy" stimulating.

Subjects of Affection offers an alternative to the modern model of human rights in an unexpected archive: the monarchist tragedies that shaped Louis XIV’s absolutist France. Pairing political theory with performance studies, Anna Rosensweig argues that the right of resistance, largely thought to have disappeared from French political thought in the aftermath of the religious wars of the sixteenth century, actually endured throughout the seventeenth century as a conceptual framework embedded and embodied in tragic drama. Contemporary scholars have critiqued the modern rights paradigm for its failure to acknowledge the ways in which individual rights depend upon state protection and national belonging. Through a reappraisal of early modern French tragedy, Rosensweig provides a corrective to accounts of human rights that begin with the French Revolution, exploring previously unrecognized models for collective action that had emerged during the religious wars. Subjects of Affection reveals how French tragedy sustained these models of collective action by binding together individuals and groups through affect. Rosensweig places sixteenth-century political treatises in dialogue with dramas by Robert Garnier, Jean Rotrou, Pierre Corneille, and Jean Racine that were performed and published between 1550 and 1700. In so doing, she demonstrates how these tragedies, through their poetics and performance potential, stage a subject of rights whose collective constitution differs from the individualism of our modern rights framework. Through fresh insights and incisive readings, Subjects of Affection explores a form of political subjectivity that locates political power in connection to others—from staged characters and choruses to unseen collectives.

This book, written by a team of experts from many countries, provides a comprehensive account of the ways in which translation has brought the major literature of the world into English-speaking culture. Part I discusses theoretical issues and gives an overview of the history of translation into English. Part II, the bulk of the work, arranged by language of origin, offers critical discussions, with bibliographies, of the translation history of specific texts (e.g. the Koran, the Kalevala), authors (e.g. Lucretius, Dostoevsky), genres (e.g. Chinese poetry, twentieth-century Italian prose) and national literatures (e.g. Hungarian, Afrikaans).

A dictionary of playwrights which contains 485 entries, each of which includes biographical information on the playwright, complete lists of published works (with dates of performance) and a bibliography of critical studies on the playwright.

Covers writers from the ancient Greeks to 20th-century authors. Includes biographical-bibliographical entries on nearly 500 writers and approximately 550 entries focusing on significant works of world literature. Each author entry provides a detailed overview of the writer's life and works. Work entries cover a particular piece of world literature in detail.

This unique volume contains studies not only of Corneille's and Racine's tragedies but also of the best work of the lesser French-classical tragic dramatists, too generally neglected, to whom more than half of the book is devoted. Its author brings to his tasks of presentation, criticism, and appraisal a wider acquaintance, perhaps, with the drama of many lands and times than anyone who has previously written at any considerable length on the subject of French-classical tragedy. To the desirable perspective thus obtained, he joins an appreciation of good plays of every type, without prejudice either for or against any type of drama. Numerous, often lengthy, quoted passages (with an English verse translation accompanying the French in every case) exemplify the achievement and exhibit the qualities of the dramas and dramatists discussed. That portion of the author's critical work in this field which has already appeared, as introductions in his volumes of translated plays, has been much appreciated, as witness the following brief excerpts from reviews of those books: "The plays...are discussed with insight and enthusiasm."--(London) Notes and Queries. "Refreshingly original and yet free from specious pleading or naïve enthusiasm."--Chattanooga Times. "Thoughtful, discerning appraisals."--Seventeenth Century News. "An excellent critical introduction."--The Library Journal. "A judicious introduction."--Arthur Knodel in The Personalist. "The very best interpretative treatment of Corneille that has appeared."--C. Maxwell Lancaster.