Le Misanthrope by Moliere

Le Misanthrope by Moliere

In this delightful comedy about the French aristocracy, told with MoliEre's signature wit, the atmosphere is frivolous, the morals are loose, the egos are larger than life and everyone is looking for love. Constance Congdon's verse version of this intelligent satire is both provocative and funny.

Love is all bad sonnets, big fluffy beds and silly preening in the first half of THE MISANTHROPE. Then the gloves come off.and the characters are fighting for their lives.
MoliEre's 1666 comedy about yearning for truth and love in a world of self-serving hypocrites never falls out of fashion. The play is recast here in a tonic new verse version by Constance Congdon.
This is a world.where words do all the damage.
Playwright Congdon (TALES OF THE LOST FORMICANS) has done an exemplary job of making that language count. Her rhymes are not as elegant as those in Richard Wilbur's standard verse translation, and that's the point. There's a lean angularity in her lines, a flashing sense of purpose.
Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle

Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in1622, began his career as an actor before becoming a playwright who specialized in satirizing the institutions and morals of his day. In 1658, his theater company settled in Paris in the Théâter du Petit-Bourbon. The object of fierce attack because of such masterpieces as Tartuffe and Don Juan, Molière nonetheless won the favor of the public. In 1665, his company became the King's Troupe, and the following year saw the staging of The Misanthrope, as well as The Doctor in Spite of Himself. In 1668, he produced his bitterly comic The Miser and, in the remaining years before his death, created such plays as The Would-Be Gentleman, The Mischievous Machinations of Scapin, and The Learned Women. In 1673, Molière collapsed onstage while performing his last play, The Imaginary Invalid, and died shortly thereafter.

Donald M. Frame was Moore Professor of French at Columbia University and an acclaimed scholar and translator of French literature. Among his notable works of translation are The Complete Essays of Montaigne, The Complete Works of Rabelais, and the Signet Classics Tartuffe & Other Plays and Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories.

Virginia Scott is Professor Emerita in the Department of Theater of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the author of Moliére: A Theatrical Life, The Commedia Dell'Arte in Paris, and Performance, Poetry and Politics on the Queen's Day: Catherine de Medici and Pierre de Ronsard at Fontainebleau (with Sara Sturm-Maddox).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9782038716689
ISBN 10	2038716684
Title	Le Misanthrope
Author	Moliere
Series	Petite Classiques
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Editions Larousse
Year published	1998-06-01
Number of pages	205
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable