Molière: the complete Richard Wilbur translations. Volume 2.
(Book)

"One of the most accomplished American poets of his generation, Richard Wilbur was also an accomplished translator of French and Russian literature. His acclaimed verse renderings of Molière's plays -- the critic John Simon wrote that 'Wilbur makes Molière into as great an English verse playwright as he was a French one' -- are still enchanting audiences around the world. Library of America's deluxe two-volume edition brings together for the first time all ten of Wilbur's Molière translations, a project Wilbur always envisioned. It features Wilbur's original introductions to the plays, a new foreword by Adam Gopnik on the miraculous convergence of Wilbur's 20th-century American and Molière's 17th-century French sensibilities, and a fascinating interview with Wilbur about translating Molière conducted in 2009 by Dana Gioia. This second volume gathers Molière's The Misanthrope, the elusive masterpiece that is to comedy what Shakespeare's Hamlet is to tragedy; the fantastic farce Amphitryon, in which Jupiter and Mercury commandeer the identities of two mortals; Tartuffe, Molière's brilliant satire of religious hypocrisy and willful blindness; and The Learned Ladies, the drama of a bourgeois household turned upside down that was one of his most popular comedies and the last of his great plays in verse."--,Provided by publisher.