“My notion of translation is that you try to bring it back alive. . . . If you take on a text which is somehow appropriate to you and which you may already love, what you want to do is to be as perfectly the slave of it as you can be.”—Richard Wilbur Originally inspired by a revelatory Comédie-Française production of The Misanthrope in 1948 Paris, Richard Wilbur has made translating Molière part of his lifework. These two comedies of marriage and misunderstanding are gathered here in a single volume that is part of TCG’s new series (with design by Chip Kidd) to complete trade publication of these vital theatrical works.
Translated by Richard Wilbur. Synopsis-Of all of Moliere's plays, The School for Husbands was the second most frequently performed during the playwright's lifetime. The most frequently performed was Sganarelle, or the Imaginary Cuckold. Wilbur's translation is presented for the first time in book form.
THE STORY: Gorgibus wants his daughter, Celie, to marry a rich man, Valere, instead of Lelie, whom she loves. Celie, lamenting this turn of events while her beloved is away, faints. Her maid catches her and calls out for help. Sganarelle, who happe
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Exploring each of Molière's 33 plays (including the divertissements) for its theatrical possibilities, Bermel deals with dramatic structures, settings, roles and their interactions, original productions, and outstanding recent stage performances in France, Britain, and the United States. His emphasis is theatrical rather than literary, philosophical, or biographical, although he necessarily brings these considerations to bear when discussing certain plays. Bermel introduces a new methodology, one featuring the type of scrutiny directors, actors, and designers apply to any play before and during rehearsal. Thus he studies the dramatic implications of each scene or part of a scene by noting which characters are present, which ones are absent, and why. He analyzes each role, explores interactions among characters, traces the significance of structure, considers how much information is provided and who provides it, and examines such notable background factors as setting, season, and scenic arrangement. Using this methodology, Bermel provides new interpretations of Molière's most celebrated plays and demonstrates that many of the less famous plays also deserve attention. Previous Molière critics have been conservative, especially in that they favor traditional stagings; Bermel, however, encourages new explorations of the plays. His main intention is to keep Molière alive and vital for present and future readers and audiences. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his attention to, and sympathy for, female characters and their points of view.
For the 400th anniversary of Moliere's birth, Richard Wilbur's unsurpassed translations of Molière's plays--themselves towering achievements in English verse--are brought together by Library of America in a two-volume edition 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 in theaters around the world. "Wilbur," the critic John Simon once 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 Library of America edition, fulfilling the poet's vision for the translations. This first volume comprises Molière's delightful early farces The Bungler, Lover's 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 Don Juan 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. This volume includes the original introductions by Richard Wilbur and a foreword by Adam Gopnik on the exquisite art of Wilbur's translations.
This book critically analyzes the body of English language translations Moliere’s work for the stage, demonstrating the importance of rhyme and verse forms, the creative work of the translator, and the changing relationship with source texts in these translations and their reception. The volume questions prevailing notions about Moliere’s legacy on the stage and the prevalence of comedy in his works, pointing to the high volume of English language translations for the stage of his work that have emerged since the 1950s. Adopting a computer-aided method of analysis, Ploix illustrates the role prosody plays in verse translation for the stage more broadly, highlighting the implementation of self-consciously comic rhyme and conspicuous verse forms in translations of Moliere’s work by way of example. The book also addresses the question of the interplay between translation and source text in these works and the influence of the stage in overcoming formal infelicities in verse systems that may arise from the process of translation. In so doing, Ploix considers translations as texts in and of themselves in these works and the translator as a more visible, creative agent in shaping the voice of these texts independent of the source material, paving the way for similar methods of analysis to be applied to other canonical playwrights’ work. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in translation studies, adaptation studies, and theatre studies
THE STORY: Two brothers, Sganarelle and Ariste, have been named guardians of a deceased friend's two daughters, to raise and even marry if they see fit. Ariste has raised Leonor with great freedom, allowing her to go to parties, indulging her whims
This is a book about how Molière, France's most celebrated author of comedies, made something strikingly new out of the traditional comedy plot of thwarted courtship. Though justly celebrated for his mastery of physical comedy and farce, one of Molière's key moves was to pay attention to the way women could use language. Seventeenth-century France was a time when speaking well became exceptionally important, and in this arena women were the trend-setters. Among the most important places to display taste and social skills were the salons, gatherings presided over by women. Yet women still enjoyed little in the way of rights, particularly regarding a central decision in their lives: the choice of a husband. French regulations of marriage contracts became increasingly restrictive, largely to the detriment of women. To draw attention to their plight, women novelists and essayists presented case studies in how men and women misunderstood one another, how women were coerced to wed, how marriages could become nightmares, and how courtships could fail. Against this fraught social background Molière showed women using one of the few assets they had, their mastery of words, and in particular the rhetoric of irony, to frustrate the plans of fathers, guardians, and other authority figures. The comedies discussed here include very well-known plays such as The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, The Learned Ladies, The School for Wives and Don Juan, and also less known but revealing and thought-provoking works such as The School for Husbands, George Dandin and Monsieur de Pourceaugnac.
