Marguerite Yourcenar Summary

French novelist, poet, essayist, dramatist, world traveller, and translator Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) was the first woman elected to the French Academy.Marguerite Yourcenar was born on June 8, ... Read more

In the following excerpt from a series of interviews conducted over many years and first published in France as Les yeux ouverts: Entretiens avec Matthieu Galey in 1980, Yourcenar discusses a number o... Read more

In the following review of Dear Departed, Begley provides an introduction to Yourcenar's major themes and worldview. Marguerite Yourcenar's genius was such that she had at her command... Read more

Guppy is an Iranian-born writer and critic who has served as the London editor of The Paris Review. In the following interview, which was conducted in April 1987, Yourcenar discusses her life, career,... Read more

Schmidt is an American critic and educator. In the following review of With Open Eyes, A Coin in Nine Hands, and Two Lives and a Dream, she lauds Yourcenar's work. The date March 6, 1980, wa... Read more

Marks is an American educator and critic who has written extensively on French literature, focusing mainly on the works of Colette and Simone de Beauvoir. In the following essay, she analyzes the rela... Read more

Critical Essay by Alexander Coleman [Sous bénéfice d'inventaire, a collection of essays shows] Yourcenar's historical imagination as being quite unrelated to any kind of l... Read more

Critical Essay by Marc Slonim "L'Oeuvre au Noir" is at the same time a study of the Renaissance and a picture of that turbulent era as seen through the eyes of a poet. Unlike mos... Read more

Critical Essay by Arthur A. Cohen "The Abyss" [the title of the American edition of "L'Oeuvre au noir"] is an elaborate metaphor for the emptiness of history, the v... Read more