Stello


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Cinq-Mars


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Shylock, the Merchant of Venice


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As with many of his French contemporaries, Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) enjoyed the challenge of reworking William Shakespeare's classic plays for a modern audience. "Shylock" (1830) eliminates many of the comic elements of the master's original and focuses on the darker themes of racial prejudice and the relationship between Jew and gentile. The result is another stunning resurrection and reinterpretation of a dramatic masterwork. Translated for the very first time into English! Since retiring from the legal profession, FRANK J. MORLOCK has translated over a hundred plays from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French originals, and has also penned a number of original dramas of his own. In 2006 he was honored with an award from the North American Jules Verne Society. He lives and works in Maryland.




The Young Romantics


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Every generation experiences its own excitement on discovering the great era of European Romanticism. Few have enjoyed as fine an account of one of its defining moments as Linda Kelly’s The Young Romantics. First published in 1976, it was instantly acclaimed as a small classic. In the best tradition of belle-lettres, it managed to evoke a sweep of literary history without the tax on time or eye-sight required by the door-stopper biographies of following decades. As Graham Greene wrote to the author: ‘I have been reading with delight The Young Romantics – I admire it for its brevity and the narrative skill which keeps so many characters moving on their parallel or intersecting lines year by year.’ To have written about one of the great figures of the French Romantic revolution with such novella-like compactness would have been a feat. To have embraced all of them in this way was prodigious. Richard Holmes, doyen of Romantic biographers, noted in a review: ‘To recapitulate the celebrated affairs between Vigny and Marie Dorval, Marie Dorval and George Sand, George Sand and Alfred de Musset, Hugo and Juliette Drouet, Madame Hugo and Sainte-Beuve, Sainte-Beuve and Hugo, requires more dexterity than I possess. Suffice it to say that Linda Kelly manages skilfully and not unkindly and that though the “romantic triangle” is much in evidence, geometry has yet to invent the polygon to which these emotional intricacies of domestic Parisian life under Louis-Philippe’s reign conform.’




The Poetic Enigma of Alfred de Vigny


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This book is devoted to the veiled message transmitted in the works of famous authors over a period of centuries. Esoteric literature is the massive body of Western and other writings containing a philosophical "contraband"-ever the same under a deceptive variety of surfaces or veils. In the words of Marcel Proust, "the great writers have never done but one work." Alfred de Vigny- a nineteenth century poet, novelist and playwright- belongs to the literary brotherhood involved in the transmission of the concealed message. Rabelais, Voltiare, Anatole France, Ibsen and Proust are only a few of his fellow-smugglers. English and American literatures have their share of such writers. So does the literary heritage of other European nations and of Latin America. This book contains a glossary of major key-words of the verbal "algebra" used by esoteric writers. Sensitive readers are encouraged to read the biography and the glossary first and the poetry of Vigny next. This will enable some of them to discover by and for themselves the full beauty and depth of the texts. Extraordinary findings await the esoteric readers of the literary production of Vigny. There are hints of the greatness of Atlantis. There is a vast panorama of Time and Space. There are suggestions of a startling view of the inner structure of planet Earth, a view that is also reflected in the various utopias of classical authors. Last but not least, there is the generally unsuspected, radiant reality of the works and the life of Vigny. Please visit: www.degn.org/Bonhomme




Servitude Et Grandeur Militaires (Classic Reprint)


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Excerpt from Servitude Et Grandeur Militaires The important question is, What kind of literature is to be chosen for reading and translation 7 To this question I have already given my answer undoubtedly it is desirable to set a high standard from the beginning, and to challenge the powers of the pupil by putting before him well-chosen selections from the best authors, rather than to entice his sympathy with easy and amusing literature. If the teacher tries to amuse his pupils and make the time pass quickly, he will fail to awaken their interest in the subject; but, if he appeals to their intelligence from the first, appreciation will quickly grow. It is with this object that the present series is being undertaken - a series in which certain modern standard French works, of various kinds, have been chosen, and edited with the smallest possible number of notes, mostly on points of literary and historical interest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.




Le Cor


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The Last Rendezvous


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“Women are not supposed to write; yet I write.” –Marceline Desbordes-Valmore In 1817, at the late age of thirty-three,Marceline Desbordes, the actress and Romantic poet–the only woman counted by Paul Verlaine among his poètes maudits, or “accursed poets,” a group that included Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and Alfred de Vigny–marries Prosper Valmore, a fellow actor who brings love and stability to her tumultuous life. Such stability is short-lived, however:When she meets Henri de Latouche, an influential man of letters, they soon begin a passionate affair. Although their tryst does not last more than a year, their relationship survives through letters and memory. It sparks inspiration in Marceline’s work and leads her to create some of the most beautiful poetry in French literature. A talented poet, a romantic woman, a passionate lover, a nurturing mother, and a child at heart, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore is rescued from obscurity through Plantagenet’s dazzling writing in this fictionalized biography. The book will include a selection of Desbordes-Valmore’s poems in the original French and in an English translation by the Pulitzer Prize—winning poet Louis Simpson.




The French Generation of 1820


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Alan Spitzer approaches the history of the French Restoration by examining the experience of a particular age group born between 1792 and 1803: the generation of 1820. A predominantly male, middle-class, educated minority of this group was perceived as representing all that was most promising and specifically youthful in the period. Their response to the pressures of transition was expressed in the fractious behavior of the youth of the schools,'' and in voluntary associations, masonic lodges, conspiratorial cells, and influential journals, which depended on a dense network of personal relationships. Professor Spitzer portrays these connections in a set of sociograms using new techniques for the visual representation of social networks. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.