Collection: Molière & Co. French Classics

The Molière & Co. French editions are designed to make reading the classics a much easier job than before, more of a pleasure than before.

Their introductions give information about the life and times of the author, important facts about the work, and things to watch out for in the text. Sometimes grammatical information is also given (passé simple, past subjunctive). For editions of plays in verse, explanations of rhyme and meter are given.

We use accurate texts in these editions, either from the public domain, prepared by the editor, or with permission of the publisher.

Words or short expressions in the text that college students of French are unlikely to know (râler, flâner) or perhaps should know but may not (joue, pont) are glossed in the margins; if expressions won’t fit, they are translated in footnotes. English is used because it makes comprehension instantaneous and exact.

Scholar editions prepared in France for French students assume cultural baggage that American students do not have, so lots of references to cultural, historical, mythological, biblical and regional items that you do not see in French editions are footnoted in ours. Since interpretation of the text is for students and their teachers to discuss and figure out, footnotes are only explicative and not interpretative. To make reference in class easy, lines are numbered.

Finally, the French-English glossary includes many more words than those glossed in the margins, and definitions are limited to the meanings from the text.

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