 | 👤 Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1740-1814), French playwright |
Louis Sébastien Mercier, Comment fonder la morale du peuple: Traité d’éducation pour l’avènement d’une société nouvelle
Edited and translated by Geneviève Boucher and Michael J. Mulryan
Critical Texts 69•21 August 2020
- ‘The editors are to be thanked for making this text available in this completely bilingual MHRA edition, with not only the main text in facing-page translation, but also the editors’ Introduction and notes.’ — Jessica Stacey, Modern Language Review 117.4, October 2022, 719-20 (full text online)
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Le Vieillard et ses trois filles and Timon d’Athènes: Two Shakespeare Adaptations
Edited by Joseph Harris
Critical Texts 82•13 March 2023
- ‘Mercier was a highly experienced playwright, and his adaptations offer readers a chance both to see Shakespeare through Mercier’s eyes and to appreciate Mercier’s own understanding of national culture, dramatic heroes, stagecraft, and the French Revolution. It is all the easier for readers to do this in Harris’s edition, which includes a wealth of helpful footnotes and a well-judged introduction that touches upon many important points without overwhelming the reader.’ — James Harriman-Smith, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 46.3, 2023, 311-97 (full text online)
- ‘In the Introduction, Harris locates the two plays within the author’s career, and associates them with the cultural, literary, and political issues of late eighteenth-century France. The Notes register in detail the numerous parallels as well as the differences between Shakespeare’s and Mercier’s plays, thus inviting and generously anticipating the comparative study of both... It is to be hoped that with this new edition of a moving and politically interesting play, Mercier’s Timon d’Athènes, hitherto largely ignored, will re-enter the collective memory of French and English readers.’ — Ina Schabert, Translation and Literature 32, 2023, 379-83 (full text online)