Moliere

Moliere is an important figure in European literature and drama, whose plays are still taught and performed throughout the world. This full-length biography, the first to be written about Moliere in English since 1930, will appeal to the general reader as well as the specialist. In this biography, first published in 2000, Virginia Scott locates Molière's life and work in the social, literary and theatrical contexts of the period. She offers a narrative account of his life and an overview of his plays in the wider setting of the development of seventeenth-century French drama. Her research extends from Molière's boyhood and his Jesuit education at the Collège de Clermont, through the beginning of his theatrical career in Paris and as a vagabond actor in the provinces, to his days as a court dramatist under Louis XIV. He was a controversial playwright, striking out against hypocrisy in religion and medicine, and finally a cynical survivor of the literary, cultural, and marital wars. This full-length biography will appeal to the general reader as well as specialists in French and Theatre Studies.