Adam Gopnik on Molière

Back by popular demand! Adam Gopnik delivers a three-session online seminar coinciding with the 400th anniversary of Moliere’s birth and the publication of Richard Wilbur’s translations of his plays by the Library of America.

“Richard Wilbur’s Molière lives both as masterpieces of the translator’s art and as witness to a hopeful (and still not quite finished) American moment,” Gopnik writes. “Though Molière made his life in and around courts, his role was to become the first great comic poet of the emerging and ascendant middle classes. Wilbur came to Molière at a moment when that same bourgeoise in America was newly ascendant in another way—when a highly educated post-war culture had taken happy possession of a European cultural heritage then undermined on its own ground.”

Discounted copies of Wilbur’s translation of Molière, with introduction by Adam Gopnik, may be purchased with your registration, courtesy of Posman Books. We recommend purchasing the book bundle option by November 1 to ensure timely delivery. If you are purchasing a bundle, please include your current shipping address during checkout, or email it. The Library of America edition of Wilbur’s Molière plays includes The Bungler, Lovers’ Quarrels, Don Juan, The Misanthrope and Tartuffe, among others.

Class meets Wednesdays: December 1, 8 and 15.