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The general aim of this book is to present a study of a dramatic genre which was a significant facet of French drama in the period from 1784 to 1834 and has never before been singled out or analyzed. The striking feature of the plays of this genre is that the protagonists represent French literary figures. A casual examination of a collection of late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century plays, many of which concern literary figures, led to the initial idea for this study. Conscientious cross-checking was sub sequently done in a number of reference works and contemporary newspapers to obtain complete coverage and to draw up a list of all the plays in which French literary figures appeared as characters. From the total number of such plays, 153 have been used as the primary source of information. They were found scattered either in different collections or as separate copies in various libraries. This source has been supplemented by use of theatrical journals and almanacs giving reviews of some of the plays which were not published.
The most comprehensive history of literature written in French ever produced in English.
In the years since 1940, French theatre has been transformed both institutionally and artistically. This book compares all the major traditions and tendencies at work in French theatre since the outbreak of the Second World War, not only in Paris, but also in the Centres Dramatiques and Maisons de la Culture. Previous books have stopped short at the end of the fifties when the influence of Artaud was strong and the Absurd Theatre had become the new orthodoxy. David Bradby reassesses Beckett, lonesco, Adamov and Genet and challenges the notion that the sixties and seventies were a period of decline in French theatre. The book proceeds chronologically, offering a critical survey of the principal directors, actors and companies as well as of the playwrights, who are its major concern. Important productions are illustrated with black and white photographs. The political background is explained and all quotations are in English.
In 1664, Molière's Tartuffe was banned from public performance. This book provides a detailed, in-depth account of five-year struggle (1664-69) to have the ban lifted and, so doing, sheds important new light on 1660s France and the ancien régime more broadly.
Excerpt from The Contemporary Drama of France This volume offers a survey and an interpretation of the French drama for three decades, from the opening of the Theatre-Libre of Antoine to the conclusion of the World War. It attempts the classification, analysis, and criticism of a thousand plays by two hundred and thirty authors. Among these are included a few Belgians whose pieces, written in French, have been as familiar to Paris as to Brussels. Although the productions of the period be less striking than those of the Romantic era, and less likely than those of the Classic to endure, they are more numerous and more vitally interesting to the generation whose failures, foibles, and aspiratio...