Perry Gethner

editor of "Madame de Maintenon, Proverbes dramatiques" and "Challenges to Traditional Authority: Plays by French Women Authors, 1650-1700"

November 4, 2015

Perry Gethner's research area is in early modern French drama, including hybrid plays and opera libretti. He has published critical editions and English translations of a wide variety of authors, including Rotrou, Mairet, Thomas Corneille, Voltaire and numerous women playwrights.

"Madame de Maintenon" is the first critical edition of the 40 brief pedagogical plays composed by Mme de Maintenon, who is the second wife of King Louis XIV of France, for use by the students in the girls school that she ran at Saint-Cyr starting in the late 1680s. These texts, designed to be read aloud, but not acted, contain startlingly realistic depictions of the dangers that the girls could face after leaving school. They feature practical recommendations designed to encourage management of household finances and staff, self-reliance and a sense of self-worth, resignation to one's lot, over which they will rarely have much control, and preserving one's moral and religious principles. Maintenon never intended her texts for publication, and this edition is based on the single surviving manuscript at the Bibliothèque de Versailles, with references to the two 19th-century editions that frequently diverge from the manuscript.

"Challenges to Tradional Authority" comprises the first-ever English translation of works by Four French women playwrights from the second half of the 17th century (Françoise Pascal, Marie-Catherine Desjardins [Mme de Villedieu], Catherine Bernard, Catherine Durand), in a variety of genres (machine play, tragedy, short comedy). An introduction covers the early history of play composition by women in France, including shifts in dramaturgy and audience taste.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2016-honorees/perry-gethner

Last Updated: 12 January 2022