Exeter French Texts – serie

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The book is a critical edition of La Hollande Malade, a comedy in one act by Raymond Poisson. La Hollande Malade, written in 1673, is a satirical and allegorical comedy.The historical context of this story relates to Louis XIV, who wanted to benefit from the prosperity of the Netherlands. This prosperity derived from trade, fishing and publishing and threatened other European countries. Louis XIV was allied to England to help fight the war against the maritime “Hollande”. The symbolic way in which this story is told takes the form of a countess suffering from illness, with other people symbolising countries who wish to give her medicine in order to cure her.

This play by a young Toulouse lawyer-poet, was published posthumously in 1611 and has since been largely neglected. It is reprinted here for the first time, accompanied by an introductory study, explanatory notes and a glossary. Phalante offers the reader an early example of the French “dilemma play” exploiting the theme of inner conflict. At the same time, because it dramatises a story which appeared in Sidney’s Arcadia (published in 1590, but not translated into French until 1624), it poses questions about contemporary Anglo-French literary relations.

Having more literary than religious vocation, the young Capuchin monk Venance Dougados was sent on a fund-raising tour in 1786 among the peasants and gentry of the Monts de Lacaune in southern France. He came back with a remarkable work, La Quête du Blé, in verse and prose. The work was original, humorous, with pre-romantic undertones; it brought him much success, but at the same time it aroused the anger of his superiors. Rémy Cazals provides a critical edition of this little-known text accompanied by a biography of its author, who became inflamed by the passions of the Revolution, and who was guillotined in 1794.This title is Volume 101 in the series Exeter French Texts/Textes littéraires. It incldues an introduction and essential notes, all in French.

In 1810, Stendhal read the sentimental novella "Histoire d'Eleonore de Parme", whose anonymous author was certainly a woman. This text poses the question: can it be asserted that Stendhal took inspiration from this novella when he wrote "La Chartreuse de Parme", and not from real life?

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.

These three tales, hailed by Diderot among others, but unpublished for over a century (and in one case for nearly two centuries), are a fictional exploration of Otherness and the intercultural set in the New World, either among native Americans (Abenakis, Iroquois) or runaway slaves in Jamaica befriended by Quakers. They argue powerfully for a reassessment of the philosophe Saint-Lambert, since they represent a significant contribution to the anti-slavery debate of the time and to a consideration of cultural relativity, revitalised by recent postcolonial discourses.This title is Volume 99 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 play dramatises a French sailor’s protest in 1948-49 against the brutality of the French military conduct of the Indochina war. Henri Martin was imprisoned in 1950 for five years for distributing pamphlets. The struggle to get him released became the ‘Henri Martin Affair’. This play was a vital part of that struggle, and was performed all over France, usually clandestinely, often out of doors, despite Government opposition and police harassment. Audiences were large and mainly working class. Sartre referred to it as the only example of true théâtre populaire in existence. In August 1953, Henri Martin was released after serving forty months of his sentence.Fifty years after his experiences in Indochina, Henri Martin is still alive and has been consulted by the editor of this volume, as have others connected with this unique saga in French theatre.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.

Known principally for Bruges-la-Morte, a key work of Belgian Symbolism, Georges Rodenbach (1855-1898) is also the author of other works worthy of present-day study. His collections of poetry, his plays, and his other novels subtly rework themes which evoke his native Flanders. This volume contains the texts of two of his plays: Le Voile enacts a whole network of themes with a connection to Bruges – a veritable summary of the “intimism” which was the glory of literary and artistic Belgium in the 1890s – while Le Mirage adapts Bruges-la-Morte for the stage, in an attempt to exteriorise thoughts which in the novel were essentially self-enclosed.This is a volume in the series Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.

Poet, novelist, sometime member of Mademoiselle de Montpensier’s circle and correspondent of the Mercure Galant, Cantenac (Bordeaux 1630-1714) was notorious in his own time but has only recently become the subject of serious study. This is the first critical edition of Les Marguerites, poèmes héroïque, a volume originally published in Bordeaux in 1676. Written in alexandrines, divided into five cantos (chants), Les Marguerities offers a fascinating example of playful contemporary poetic taste where epic heroism is transformed into gallantry.This is a volume in the Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.

The principal aim of this edition is to provide a reliable version of the text of Le Mariage forcé which can be used by students and scholars of 17th-century theatre. Le Mariage forcé, a little-known work, is a particularly interesting example of the comédie-ballet genre as it was written and performed by Molière and his troupe in three different versions over a period of eight years. First performed in front of Louis XIV and his court, complete with music, ballet and singing, the play also marks Molière’s first work in which Louis XIV took an active role.The book includes all the texts which existed in Molière’s lifetime, and examines the development of the genre in the years from 1664 when it was first performed, to 1672 when new songs and balletic interludes were added.This is a volume in the Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.

If Elizabeth I of England thought to rid herself forever of Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, by sending him to the scaffold she was very much mistaken, since his name, intertwined with hers, has traversed four centuries. Amongst those who realized the dramatic possibilities of the death of the Queen’s favourite was Thomas Corneille, a Frenchman. His interpretation of the motives and actions of the principal protagonists reflected the taste of his contemporaries in 1678 and helped prolong the popularity of the story into the eighteenth century.This is a volume 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.