Madame La Mort and Other Plays (PAJ Books) - Softcover

Rachilde

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801857627 ISBN 13: 9780801857621

Publisher: John Hopkins University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Rachilde was the pseudonym of Marguerite Eymery Vallette (1860-1953), a woman of powerful personality who made her place at the very center of the Symbolist movement in fin-de-siecle France. Though relatively unknown in America, Rachilde had a significant influence on the course of French and Western literature and theater. She was a pioneer of antirealistic drama and the first to use the term absurd to characterize the new kind of theater that would be "a pretext for a dream."
Rachilde's sexual politics and sardonic humor make her plays more interesting - and more performable - today than many of those of her more famous contemporaries. Where male Symbolists were obsessed with death, Rachilde explores the fearful thrill of sexuality. Topical, challenging, and all but lost to contemporary audiences, her extraordinary work offers the shock of relevance and freshness of discovery.

About this title

Review

""In the realm of Modernism, if Gertrude Stein is the mother of us all, then Rachilde is our Auntie Mame. She entices us to venture ever farther in our literary experiments, particularly when it comes to sex. Her plays are startlingly original, extending the boundary markers for drama. It is good to have them available in English in such faithful versions." -- Laurence Senelick, Ph.D., Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory, Tufts University

Synopsis

The plays and novels of Marguerite Eymery Vallette, pseudonym Rachilde, deal boldly with issues that remain at the heart of modernist performance - gender and androgyny, incest and pornography, as well as language, art and psychology. This volume presents a selection of Rachilde's plays.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801857627
• ISBN 13: 9780801857621
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176