The Penguin Book of French Poetry: 1820-1950--With Prose Translations

By Various

Book Overview

This collection illuminates the uniquely fascinating era between 1820 and 1950 in French poetry--a time in which diverse aesthetic ideas conflicted and converged as poetic forms evolved at an astonishing pace. It includes generous selections from all the established giants--among them Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Breton--as well as works from a wide variety of less well-known poets such as Claudel and Cendrars, whose innovations proved vital to the progress of poetry in France. The significant literary schools of the time are also represented in sections focusing on such movements as Romanticism, Symbolism, Cubism and Surrealism. Eloquent and inspirational, this rich and exhilarating anthology reveals an era of exceptional vitality.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140423850
• ISBN13: 9780140423853
• Release Date: August 1970
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 896 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.0" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Love it!!

I got this as a gift a few years ago & still read it regularly. It is great for language study & reading poetry is always relaxing. I also recommend DoverPublications.com for other dual language poetry & short story books. Very affordable with great variety of subjects & languages. Always a fun way of studying!

Simply exquisite

You'll have a hard time trying to find a better introduction to French poetry than William Rees' book. The poems are presented in its original French version and they are translated into prose. Reese doesn't bother with a cumbersome, most often inaccurate verse translation, which I find perfectly fine to respect the authenticity of the poets' intention. Here you will find the best poems of the best poets from the Romanticism onwards. A lovely book to carry on your strolls along Paris or to taste at home and daydream away

Essential, boundless and life-enhancing

One of the great books of the last century, one that never leaves my bedside. Covering the period 1820-1950, this is a canon of extraordinary, varied richness in all culture, never mind French poetry, from the Romantic movement (Lamartine, Huge) to 'Negritude' (Cesaire), and encompassing Surrealism, Symbolism, Lyricism, Cubism, Metropolitanism and Modernity, the Parnassian movement etc. All the giants are well-represented - Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Laforgue, Cendrars, Michaux etc - but the collection's real joy is its recuperating journey of poetry's byways, finding forgotten figures, curiosities, one-offs, such as Tristan Corbiere, Anna de Nouilles, or Charles Cros. Dip in at any page, and you will be treated to poetry of unmatched beauty, strangeness and invention.After a brief introduction explaining his selection process, and an invaluable technical note on the 'alexandrine', the dominant metre of French poetry, editor/translator William Rees divides his material into historically discrete sections, prefacing each movement and poet. These essays are an accessible mine of invaluable historical, biographical and cultural information. His prose translations, although 'poetic' in themselves, are much preferable in their more literal accuracy, to those translators who abandon faithfulness for some vague notion of 'spirit' which usually only leads ot silliness. A gem of an anthology that deserves a prominent, beloved, dog-eared place on the bedside of any lover of literature.