Modern Languages and Literatures, Department of
Date of this Version
January 2005
Abstract
This effort marks the second volume of poetry in a five-set edition of complete works consisting of Tristan’s prose, poetry and tragedies, as well as other plays and the Plaidoyers historiques. The present volume represents the culmination of an extensive undertaking by Champion and by noted Tristan scholars to render the Baroque author’s known works more accessible to researchers, students and the literate public. By any measure, the results are eminently satisfying both in terms of the volume in question and the entire project. This volume centres on texts composed and published mainly in the period afterwards. The principal works constituting this volume include Les Vers Héroïques (1648), L’Office de la Sainte Vierge (1646), Les Hymnes de toutes les Fêtes solennelles (1665) published ten years after Tristan’s death, a number of situational poems appearing between 1624 and 1654 entitled Vers épars, as well as an ‘annexe’ to the Vers épars consisting of thirteen poems in the Glasgow University Library attributed to Tristan and presented as Les Manuscrits de Glasgow. Each of these texts was edited individually and represents, respectively, the efforts of Véronique Adam, Jean-Pierre Chauveau, Marcel Israël, Amédée Carriat and Laurence Grove. In every instance, the introductions, notes, and bibliographies provide useful, original information about the political and artistic climate in which Tristan wrote.
Comments
Published in French Studies 59:1 (Jan 2005), pp. 89-90. Copyright © 2005 Oxford University Press. Used by permission. http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/