The Comic Romance

Translated by Jacques Houis

Author:

Paul Scarron

New Paperback | 384 pp.
ISBN: 9781847492203
Published: 2012

£9.99 £7.99
Save: 20% off

Paul Scarron’s masterpiece, The Comic Romance, recounts the adventures of a troupe of provincial itinerant actors, skilfully weaving comic anecdotes of their amorous exploits and the central love story between Léandre and his beloved Angélique into a rich and realistic tapestry depicting rural France.

A milestone of picaresque literature, The Comic Romance spawned countless imitations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was championed in the nineteenth century by eminent literary figures such as Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval.

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'Paul Scarron is the Homer of the school of buffoonery.' Théophile Gautier

'Jacques Houis's lively new translation conveys the energy and vitality of Scarron's original… a welcome revival of a comic classic.' TLS

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Read an excerpt from The Comic Romance

Paul Scarron (1610–60) was born in Paris, but spent much of his youth in Le Mans, where he became an abbot. His libertine lifestyle prompted a return to Paris, where he devoted himself to literature. Afflicted by a mysterious paralysis of his legs from his twenties, he died without being able to finish the third and final part of his masterpiece, The Comic Romance.