Burgraves Les

The fundamental conception of the drama “The Burgraves” is a dramatic struggle between two antithetical forces: fatality attempting to impose punishment on a degraded race and providence striving to pardon and to rehabilitate. The poet has embodied the force of fatality in an old slave named Guanhumara, a sorceress endowed with a knowledge of medicinal herbs. She has effected several cures, including that of Hatto the grandson of Job, who is the chief burgrave; and on this account, she is allowed much more freedom than is granted to the other slaves. Within the character of Guanhumara there is the contrast between the apparent weakness on account of her age, sex, and condition and the tremendous power that her mysterious and magical talents bestow together with her irresistible will to wreak vengeance.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1843.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is best known as the author of the novel Les Miserables, but he also wrote several plays, of which Les Burgraves (1843) was the last; it was in fact the failure of this play at the box office that caused Hugo to abandon drama in favour of fiction. The play, a melodrama set in medieval Germany, is now widely regarded as marking the beginning of the end of Romantic theatre on mainland Europe. This edition, which reproduces the French text along with an introduction and notes in English, was first published in 1904. Cambridge University Press is delighted to bring this classic edition back into print.

In the nineteenth century, the French lyric poets imposed their diction on the theatrical genre and thus illuminated the essence of both poetry and theatre. Ten plays by Victor Hugo, the standard-bearer of the French romantic theatre, and Alfred de Musset, the romantic playwright most frequently performed in France today, are analyzed by Charles Affron to answer the question, "Can the dialetic form of the theatre accommodate the solitary élan of the lyric poet?" As a functional point of departure, he considers those characteristics of lyric poetry—time, voice, and metaphor—which bring us closest to the singular attitudes of Hugo and Musset. Then, examining the texts of Hernani, Les Burgraves, Torquemada, Fantasio, and Lorenzaccio as well as several lesser known plays, Mr. Affron discusses such topics as poetic time, the scope of analogy, theatrical and poetic rhetoric, the guises of the poet-hero, and the manner of sounding the poet's voice upon the stage. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"Graham Robb tells the complicated story of this colossal life with authority and sympathy. . . . Unquestionably, a magnificent biography".--"Washington Square Press". of photos.