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Biographical Note:
Molière, born Jean-Bapiste Popquelin in 1622, is one of the greatest writers of French and European literature. His comedies are still performed today around the world. One of the most accomplished American poets of his generation,
Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) was also a prolific translator of French and Russian literature, including the plays of Molière and Racine, and the poetry of Valéry, Villon, Baudelaire, and Akhmatova. He was U.S. Poet Laureate in 1987-88 and was the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, the National Book Award for Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Frost Medal, and the Bollingen Prize.
Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at
The New Yorker since 1986. In 2013 he was awarded the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.
Brief Description:
"One of the most accomplished American poets of his generation, Richard Wilbur was also an accomplished translator of French and Russian literature. His acclaimed verse renderings of Moliáere's plays--'among the finest translations of anyone by anyone that we possess' in the words of New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik--are still enchanting audiences around the world. Library of America's deluxe two-volume edition brings together for the first time all ten of Wilbur's Moliáere translations, a project Wilbur always envisioned. It features Wilbur's original introductions to the plays, a new foreword by Adam Gopnik on the miraculous convergence of Wilbur's 20th-century American and Moliáere's 17th-century French sensibilities, and a fascinating interview with Wilbur about translating Moliáere conducted in 2009 by Dana Gioia. This first volume collects Moliáere's early farces The Bungler, Lover's Quarrels, and Sganarelle, or The Imaginary Cuckhold; the comedies The School for Husbands and The School for Wives, about the efforts of middle-aged men to control their young wives or fiancâes, which delighted theatergoers in Moliáere's seventeenth-century France and continue to do so today; and Don Juan, Moliáere's retelling of the story of the legendary seducer, performed only briefly in the playwright's lifetime before pious censure forced it to close"--
Publisher Marketing:
For the 400th anniversary of Moliere's birth, all of Richard Wilbur's unsurpassed translations of Molière's plays--themselves towering achievements in English verse--are brought together for the first time in this two-volume gift set.
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 around the world. "Wilbur," the critic John Simon 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 boxed set, fulfilling the poet's vision for the translations.
The first volume comprises Molière's delightful early farces
The Bungler,
Lovers' Quarrels, and
The Imaginary Cuckhold, or Sganarelle; the comedies
The School for Husbands and
The School for Wives, about the efforts of middle-aged men to control their young wives or fiancés, which so delighted female theater goers in Moliere's seventeenth-century France; and
Don Juan, Molière's retelling of the timeless story, performed only briefly in the playwright's lifetime before pious censure forced it to close and not part of the repertoire of the Comédie-Française until 1847.
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. These volumes include the original introductions by Richard Wilbur and a foreword by Adam Gopnik on the exquisite art of Wilbur's translations.
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