87 - DESMARETS DE SAINT-SORLIN (Jean). The Visionaries.

DESMARETS DE SAINT-SORLIN (Jean). The Visionaries. Rare edition of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin's masterpiece. Paris, sn., 1648. In-12 (120x70mm), full red morocco, 5-rib spine, small-iron decorated boxes, covers framed with triple gilt fillet, gilt edges (Chambolle-Duru). 91pp. Mention of "last edition", printed on laid paper. Notes on the play (source TNP): "Alcidon, a foolish and influential bourgeois, wants to marry off his three daughters. How can when the three daughters don't really want to? Hespérie, the first, believes that men compete for her beauty; Mélisse, the second, dreams of Alexander the Great; Sestiane is in love with Comédie. The suitors aren't much better! A cowardly matamore, a starving man hoping for an improbable inheritance, a narcissistic poet and an idealist who swoons at the first description of a beautiful woman: the suitors are anti-heroes who compete in ridiculousness. Four wimps, four zany types, who have visions, hence the magnificent title given to this comedy in 1637." Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1595-1676) is one of the great forgotten figures of literary history, unjustly overshadowed by the three great authors Molière-Corneille-Racine. A few decades their senior, he defended the classical codification of the Grand Siècle. A founding member of the Académie-Française, he sought to apply the three-unit rule to comedy. A defender of a nascent style, he nevertheless remained a Baroque.