Le Cid

Corneille's Le Cid, the powerful, classic, seventeenth-century tragicomedy, has been designed in this edition to help English-speaking students approach the original French, with an introductory essay, language and culture notes, and study questions, all in one convenient volume.

SKU
27335g

Pierre Corneille
Edited by Myrna Rochester and Eileen Angelini

2007 - 258 pp.
Imprint: Focus, Series: Focus Student Editions

Grouped product items
Format ISBN Price Qty
Paper 978-1-58510-296-9
$15.95
Instructor Examination (Review) Copy 978-1-58510-296-9
$2.00

eBook available for $12.75. Click HERE for more information.

Corneille's Le Cid, the powerful, classic, seventeenth-century tragicomedy, has been designed in this edition to help English-speaking students approach the original French, with an introductory essay, language and culture notes, and study questions, all in one convenient volume.

 

Reviews:

"[This edition] offers simple, yet well organized and very clear information. The introduction elaborates upon the author's life and his work, gives a summary of each scene of Le Cid, and mentions the sources that inspired the play. The introduction also discusses the famous "Querelle du Cid" and consequently touches upon the rules of unités and bienséances of seventeenth-century theater. Finally it provides clues to identify the Cornelian hero and heroine, and seventeenth-century morality.
    "Following the introduction, the Notes stylistiques present: (1) the alexandrine verse; (2) a few seventeenth-century usages including examples of classic theater vocabulary, tutoiement and vouvoiement, and the placement of object pronouns and negation; (3) a clarification on what figure de style is, including a list of such stylistic tools necessary to analyze Le Cid and an activity to practice what students have just learned; and (4) the indispensable lesson on the imperfect and pluperfect of the subjunctive. All of these sections incorporate specific examples from the actual play studied. . . .     
    "Le Cid is then presented in its integrality, and is accompanied by excellent French-to-French linguistic and cultural notes. They enable the readers to understand a vocabulary that can be outdated, without having to refer to a French-English dictionary and consequently having to leave the French immersion that this text offers. The cultural notesallow not only for the understanding of the text, but also of the time and culture in which it was written. . . .     
     "A selected bibliography and filmography is also supplied. . . . This volume is very clear, written in simple yet accurate French, well laid out and would work well for students who are novices in classic theater or as a part of a basic introduction to French theater class." 
     —Dorothée Mertz-Weigel, Armstrong State University, in The French Review

 

About the Authors:

Eileen M. Angelini received her B.A. in French from Middlebury College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in French Studies from Brown University. She is Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at Canisus College. Dr. Angelini has won research grants from the U.S., French, and Canadian governments. She is a frequent presenter at national and regional conferences.

Myrna Bell Rochester (A.B. Romance Languages, University of Chicago; M.A., Ph.D. French, U.C.L.A.) also studied at the Université de Genève. Her book on Surrealist poet and novelist René Crevel was published in Stanford French and Italian Studies (René Crevel: Le Pays des miroirs absolus). Dr. Rochester taught at U.C.L.A., Menlo College, and Stanford. She is a free-lance book editor and the author of college texts: Rendez-vous, Entrée en scène, Bonjour, ça va? and Vis-à-vis, as well as a trade text, Easy French Step-by-Step).

Dr. Rochester is the co-editor of the French literary classics series for Focus Publishing: Camara Laye's L'Enfant noir, Molière's L'École des femmes, Maupassant's Pierre et Jean, Voltaire's Candide, and Corneille's Le Cid. Her criticism includes studies of Simone de Beauvoir, Béatrix Beck, Dominique Desanti, and other women writers of the World War II era. She contributed English translations to Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (ed. Penelope Rosemont) and to the award-winning Black, Brown and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora (eds. Franklin Rosemont and Robin D. G. Kelley). Dr. Rochester contributes to the UK-based online Literary Encyclopedia.