Corydon

By André Gide

Book Overview

In 1907 Andre Gide began work on a series of Socratic dialogues on the subject of homosexuality and its place in society. These were published piecemeal, without the author's name, in private editions of twelve copies (1911) and twenty-one copies (1920) before a signed, commercial edition finally appeared in France in 1924. In his preface to the first American edition -- published in 1950, the year before his death -- Gide says: Corydon remains in my opinion the most important of my books.In the preface to this new translation, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Howard concludes: Corydon demands -- and deserves, in its effort to discern not the nature of human sexuality but the history of its repression -- our closest attention as it peers, gracefully, at times grotesquely, beneath 'the veil of lies, convention, and hypocrisy which still stifles an important and not contemptible part of humanity.'

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374517770
• ISBN13: 9780374517779
• Release Date: November 1983
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

A quick amusing read

A quick, amusing read, but not Gide's best work. The work doesn't have the same subjective character studies I've grown to love, but rather reads like a scientific paper written by a skeptical college student. Nonetheless, it is a landmark work in gay literature and so I gave it 4 stars instead of the 3 it actually earned.