Exeter French Texts – serie

Critical edition, edited by Robert T. Corum, of the early seventeenth-century religions poem by César de Nostredame (1553-1629).

A critical editon of Jean de Vignay's 14th-century Les Merveilles de la Terre d'Outremer, a translation of the travelogue of Odoric, a Franciscan monk from northeastern Italy who spent much of the early 14th century traveling throughout Asia. His adventures provided one of the most important Western accounts of life and culture in what is present-day Iran, India, Indonesia, China, Nepal, and Russia.Setting off only 20 years after Marco Polo's historic trip to the East, Odoric was the only religious traveler to the East whose voyage was recorded, making his account one of unparalleled importance for scholars and historians. Interestingly, Odoric noted the religious and cultural customs of the places he visited, treating their practices with tolerance, respect, and curiosity. He frequently took pains to tell of spectacular things - mountains of salt, impenetrable deserts, mice as big as dogs, trees that produced bread, magic fish, sensational pearls, gigantic tortoises, men with faces of dogs, hens covered in wool, and women equipped with fangs.The description of Odoric's journey to the East comes from the account he dictated upon his return to Italy, which was translated from Latin and widely circulated throughout Europe. This is one such translation.

An eighteenth-century "bourgeois tragedy", written in an English style. This is an important text, which provides an appreciation of the spirit of the era, and demonstrates the bridging of comic and tragic theatre styles.

A selection of extracts documenting the friendship between Louis Bouilhet and Gustave Flaubert.

This is the first critical edition of a neglected version of the Life of Saint Alexis found in a late twelfth century manuscript written in England containing several other saints’ lives, and now, after many adventures, in the Bibliothèque nationale. Whereas other versions often stress the saint’s role as a posthumous miracle worker Alexis is here presented as a model and an intercessor. The text will be of interest both to students of Old French and to students of medieval hagiography.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is for most people the author of one book: Paul et Virginie. This new edition of his play Empsaël et Zoraïde, presented in a modernised spelling, makes available a considerably more muscular text which illustrates his abolitionist stance through its central irony: the masters are black and their slaves white, joining forces in the antislavery debate which reached its height with the French Revolution. Bernardin thus introduces into it a rare element of humour which, had his play ever been performed, would have made his audiences sit up and think.This will be of interest to scholars and senior students interested in Black Studies, the French Enlightenment and the literature of revolution.

Pierre de Lavirey was born in the east of France in 1541 and died in 1619 in Troyes. Little is known about him or his life, but, in addition to his translations of various Italian books, he has left behind him adaptations into French of nine Italian plays which make him one of the most prolific writers of comedy in the sixteenth century. These adaptations are a valuable source for the study of the language of the theatre and of the techniques of creative translation in the period.Les Tromperies formed part of the second collection of adaptations written by Lavirey. It was first published in Troyes in 1611 by Pierre Chevillot. Its source is Nicolò Secco’s Gl’Inganni, first performed in Milan in 1548.This title is Volume 100 in the series Exeter French Texts/Textes littéraires. It includes an introduction, select bibliography and essential notes, all in French.

Ourika is the story of an African girl growing up in France: based on a true story, it was a runaway bestseller following its first publication in Paris in 1823. It is now seen as a novel of exceptional psychological penetration and intercultural interest, anticipating Fanon in several ways. Race, class and the role of women in society are key issues it raises. Ourika is acknowledged by John Fowles to have inspired his novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman.This is a corrected and updated reprint of the 1998 second edition of this text, first published by University of Exeter Press in 1993 in the series Exeter French Texts/Textes littéraires. It is one of the most consistently successful volumes in the series, frequently used as a teaching text on university and other courses.

This glossary, published in 1888, is the only work of its kind produced by Decadent and Symbolist writers themselves, and is full of ‘definitions’ as mystifying as the words they claim to define. It offers both a scholarly and a humorous examination of linguistic innovation and succeeds in showing how literary language remains subtler and more alive than any of the instruments designed to explain it.A parody of a glossary as much as a glossary proper, and produced as a response to critical accusations of obscurity and preciosity, it assembles an extraordinary array of evocative, hermetic, and often bizarre examples of Symbolist and Decadent writing, including luminaries such as Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Laforgue and Verlaine as well as such writers as Fénéon, Moréas and René Ghil.This is a volume in the series Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.

This is a new critical edition of an unjustly forgotten drama by Alphonse de Lamartine, written in the early 1840s but only given its first, and last, performance in Paris in 1850. It draws a compelling image of Toussaint Louverture, the father of Haitian Independence. Lamartine proved something of a visionary by stressing his hero’s search for a coherent racial and national ideology, a theme which has become fundamental in Négritude and post-colonial literatures. This edition is the first to provide a critical apparatus covering the history of the text, the political and social background against which it should be read, the reception of the work from the time of its original performance to today, and to offer notes on the historical figures included in the cast of characters, as well as a selection of variants, explanatory footnotes and an extensive bibliography.This volume is in the series Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.

This critical edition of Françoise Pascal’s epistolary collection Le Commerce du Parnasse (Paris, 1669) highlights a rare, innovative and entertaining work by a woman writer virtually unknown today, but in her time a distinguished playwright, poet and painter.Composed of thirty-seven letters in prose and verse, Le Commerce du Parnasse is part gallant correspondence, part poetry collection, part epistolary novel. Now in its first modern edition, this fascinating text provides new insights into seventeenth-century salon life and the discourses of galanterie and préciosité.This is a volume in the series Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.

Étienne Jodelle, seigneur de Limodin, was a French dramatist and poet, was born in Paris in 1532 to a noble family and died in poverty in 1573.  He attached himself to the group of 16th-century French Renaissance poets known as thePléiade and applied their principles to his work. Eugène, a comedy satirizing the clergy, is one of his three plays.This is a volume in the Exeter French Texts series. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.

Critical edition of the comedy dating from 1664.

The play La Mort des Enfans d’Herode  was first performed in Paris in 1639.  This book is a critical edition, with introduction, notes and bibliography, and the original text of the play, all in French.

Sir Vincent Hunter Barrington Kennett-Barrington (1844-1903), was a humanitarian worker and businessman. He was associated with the British League of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, which in turn led to his involvement with the Society for Aiding and Ameliorating the Condition of the Sick and Wounded in the Time of War (known as the National Aid Society and later, as the Red Cross).He was involved in providing humanitarian assistance to both sides in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Following the armistice he became further involved in humanitarian work in eastern France, and went on to provide help during the Carlist War in Spain (1873-5), the Serbo-Turkish War (1876-7), and the Turko-Russian War (1877-8).This is a collection of some of his letters home and to the National Aid Society from the war front in Spain in the 1870s.

Critical edition, edited by Malcolm Cook, of 5-act tragedy by Marie-Joseph Chénier (1764-1811), first performed in 1791.

A critical edition of this early twentieth-century travel book by the French travel writer Pierre Loti (1850-1923).

A critical edition of Alexandre Hardy's Mariamne, a tragedy drawing on the story of the wife of Herod the Great. First published in 1989 by University of Exeter Press, it is part of the Textes Litteraires series.

Depicts a group of characters in a mysterious land, but is more concerned with philosophical dialogue than exotic adventure. The characters debate the customs and thoughts of the Avaïtes, the people of the imaginary land of Calejava.   An eighteenth-century work considered historically significant as it depicts ‘for the first time, a religious system which is unequivocally deistic.’ (Early Deism in France, C.J.Betts).This is a volume in the Exeter French Texts series. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.

A critical edition by Michael Hawcroft and Valerie Worth of Racine's 1665 tragedy.

An edition, in French, of this 1892 text by Mallarmé. Edited, annotated and introduced by Alan Raitt.

A tragi-comedy first performed in Paris in 1648.

The French-language adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello by Jean-François Ducis was first performed in Paris in 1792.  This book is a critical edition, with introduction, notes and bibliography, and the original text of the play, all in French.

A collection of the poetry of Jean de La Péruse, a mid-sixteenth century French poet.

Rohou interprets Dynamis as an orthodox tragi-comedy that reflects both the political concerns of the late 1640s and the developments in dramaturgy which had taken place over the previous decade or so. Rohou is most helpful in pointing out, in footnotes and a brief glossary, differences between Du Ryer's language and modern usage.

An historical tragedy by an eighteenth century playwright.Each volume in the series is available individually, and a special subscription rate is available in advance of publication for each group of four forthcoming titles. Details are available on request from the University of Exeter Press.

L’Art de Régner is a tragi-comedy by Gillet de La Tessonerie, first published in 1645. It is unusual in that structurally each of its five acts is a separate playlet. The sub-title, Le Sage Gouverneur, refers to the role of a royal tutor, probably meant to be the duc de Bassompierre, to whom the play is dedicated. Each playlet is prefaced by a lesson from the tutor, and the complete play is concluded by the young prince’s words of gratitude for his dramatic education.

La Soeur (1645) is one of the liveliest and most successful comedies by Jean Rotrou. It is an ingenious adaptation, long unidentified, of an Italian comedy, La Sorella (c.1584), by the polygraph Giambattista Della Porta; sometimes it remains close to the original text, at other times it is bold in eliminating superfluous material and in imparting a convincingly French flavour to the dialogue. The introduction to this new edition assesses the originality of Rotrou’s adaptation. The notes are devoted above all to linguistic questions and to the many exotic allusions found in the text.

Dialogues Révolutionnaires is an edition of twelve fictional dialogues of the Revolutionary period in which the various interlocuters try to come to terms with an evolving political reality and a language which is constantly developing. The dialogues will interest cultural historians wishing to have access to rare texts in which political satire and contemporary debate are always apparent. It will further interest specialists of the French language who wish to see how fictional texts attempt to incorporate the evolution of the language during the crisis. The texts themselves are lively and comic, offering a fantastic insight into the lives of ordinary people during the Revolution.