Corneille : University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection : 9780812273847 : 0812273842 : 29 Jan 1963 : With rare exceptions, English and American views of Corneille derive from that documentary approach that is more interested in a writer's times than in the writer. Perhaps more than any other major French writer, Corneille must be resurrected from the mass of documentation that has accumulated about him in nearly three centuries of criticism. Dr. Nelson's study, in line with much recent French criticism, concentrates primarily on the canon. The first book in English on this major European dramatist in over fifty years, this fresh return to the plays them­ selves presents a Corneille more varied and more flexible than the sententious figure passed down through decades of inordinate critical emphasis on the famed tetralogy (Le Cid, Horace, Cinna, Polyeucte). Thus, there is not only the familiar genereux of these plays, but also the damoiseau of the early comedies, the ambitie