Bernard Shaw and the French (Florida Bernard Shaw) Hardcover - 2001

From the publisher

"A thoroughly researched and fascinating survey of Shaw's relations with French culture, containing a wealth of new information. Indispensable for every library and for any scholar henceforth investigating Shaw and the French."-- John A. Bertolini, Middlebury College

Michel Pharand analyzes the curiously ambiguous relationship between George Bernard Shaw and all things French. While Shaw often proclaimed his abiding distaste and disdain for the French culture, Pharand unveils convincing evidence of the playwright's debts to and affinities with many aspects of it. He paints the clearest picture yet seen of the reception Shaw and his plays received from French writers, critics, theater people, and the public--a remarkable history of misunderstandings (willful and otherwise), of nationalistic prejudices, of clashes of temperament and incompatible sensibilities.

No other full-length work explores Shaw's wide-ranging French connections so thoroughly. Pharand uses many heretofore unexamined documents--correspondence, articles, reviews--to reveal how Shaw's translators often distorted his plays; how, as a result, French critics misunderstood them; and how Shaw himself contributed significantly to the formation and promotion of his controversial reputation in France. Pharand also examines much recently published material by Shaw--early diaries, book reviews, art and music criticism, correspondence, biographies--to shed new light on his knowledge of and views on the culture
and literature of France.

Encompassing a wide range of sociohistorical and cross-cultural perspectives, this highly original work will be a delight to scholars of French, English, comparative literature, and theater history and to cultural historians and Shavians of all stripes.

Michel W. Pharand teaches in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. He has published many articles on Shaw and related topics and is editor of the Carcanet edition of The Greek Myths, by Robert Graves.