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This anonymous fifteenth-century French verse-prose translation of Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae is found in a single manuscript: Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, 5038D. The text consists of a revised version of the meters from the anonymous verse translation Böece de Confort (edited by Marcel Noest and published in Carmina Philosophiae. Journal of the International Boethius Society, 8-9 (1999-2000), v-xviii, 1-331), 11 (2002), 9-15), and a new translation of the prose sections. It belongs to a network of related translations: Boeces: De Consolacion (c. 1320), Le Roman de Fortune et de Felicité de Renaut de Louhans (1336/1337), Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion (c. 1350-1360), and the Böece de Confort (c. 1380), which have now all been edited, and is the second-to-last of the twelve distinct medieval French translations of the Consolatio Philosophiae. It is an individual attempt through réécriture to master Boethius' thought. Critical material in French (Introduction, Notes, Glossary, Index of Proper Names) accompanies the edition of the text.

Amants séparés, vertu persécutée, moines lubriques et meurtriers, confrontation de l'Ancien Régime et du nouvel ordre, avec la Révolution en guise de deux ex machina ; mais aussi passions déchaînées, proclamations enflammées et tableaux frappants : l'intrigue des Victimes cloîtrées, drame de Jacques-Marie Boutet dit Monvel, avait tout pour plaire au public de 1791, et connut, tout au long de la période révolutionnaire, un grand succès scénique ainsi que de nombreuses rééditions. La présente édition retrace l'histoire du texte et de ses représentations, de sa création à ses dernières reprises lors des célébrations du Bicentenaire de la Révolution française en 1789. Elle s'efforce d'éclairer les implications historiques de cette pièce intimement liée aux circonstances et à la question monacale, en présentant les modifications imposées au texte par le contexte idéologique et les interprétations variées qui en ont été faites. Mais elle met également en lumière l'importance proprement dramatique de cette œuvre, écrite par un acteur soucieux de spectaculaire et d'effets scéniques. Avec Les Victimes cloîtrées, chaînon manquant entre le drame bourgeois de Diderot, le roman gothique anglais et le mélodrame du début du XIXe siècle, s'invente un nouveau type de dramaturgie et un nouveau rapport du public au spectacle : un véritable théâtre de la fascination. À tous ces titres, le drame de Monvel mérite d'être redécouvert. Separated lovers, persecuted virtue, lecherous and murderous monks; the confrontation between the Ancien Régime and the new order, the Revolution appearing as a kind of deux ex machine; unrestrained passions, enflamed speeches and striking tableaux: the plot of Les Victimes cloîtrées, a drame by Jacques-Marie Boutet, known as Monvel, had everything necessary to please the audiences of 1791. Throughout the revolutionary period this work enjoyed an immense success on the stage, and was also reprinted numerous times. This new edition retraces the history of the text and its performances, from its debut to its last production during the bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution in 1989. This edition explores the historical implications of a work intimately linked to the times in which it was produced, as well as to the debate about monasteries and religious vows. This volume presents not only the changes imposed upon the text by the ideological context, but also the various interpretations that the play has provoked. It sheds light on the theatrical importance of the work, written as it was by an actor attentive to spectacle and stage effects. The missing link between Diderot's drame bourgeois, the English gothic novel and early nineteenth-century melodrama, Les Victimes cloîtrées invents a new kind of dramaturgy and a new relationship between the audience and the performance: a true theatre of fascination. For all these reasons, Monvel's drame deserves to be discovered afresh.

Aza ou le Nègre is a slave novel that was published anonymously in 1792, during the French Revolution. It differs from other contemporaneous works like Jean-François de Saint-Lambert's Ziméo and de Germaine de Staël's Mirza because, despite their advocacy for abolition, Ziméo and Mirza remain largely Eurocentric. By contrast, because it is largely narrated in the first person, Aza ou le Nègre makes for an Afrocentric fiction whence 'the White man' is markedly absent. In having its hero Aza return to his native Africa, this novel purports to envision an after-slavery locus. Aza ou le Nègre thus can be read in a post-modern perspective where an African hero takes his destiny into his own hands and turns his back on the West to offer his own Afrocentric solution to the issue of slavery. The book concludes with a seminal treatise that summarizes the Société des Amis des Noirs' ideology championed in Aza: Étienne Clavière's Adresse de la Société des amis des noirs à l'assemblée nationale, dating from 1791 Loïc Thommeret is lecturer in French at Oberlin College.

This satirical poem, known popularly as the Miliade because of its thousand-verse length (in octosyllabic verse), was printed anonymously around 1636. The poem's endurance and plentiful and specific political references make it a lively commentary encompassing discontent with the increasingly centralized government before the outbreak of the civil wars, the Frondes (1648-53).

The volume is offered as a Festschrift for Roger Stephenson, who recently retired from the William Jacks Chair of Modern Languages (German) at the University of Glasgow.

This volume presents a full transcription of the three extant manuscripts of Angelo Beolco's Prima oratione, delivered to Cardinal Marco Cornaro in 1521 at his villa in Asolo subsequent to his entrance as bishop of Padua. Praising the new bishop on his accomplishment, the peasant orator expounds boisterously on the agricultural riches of the Paduan countryside and concludes with a request that the bishop enact a series of laws that will improve the lives of his fellow peasants, including allowing both men and women to take four spouses. Masked by the humour, however, are serious considerations on contemporary issues. Accompanying the transcription is an extensive historical-literary introduction and notes.