Oscar Mandel
Professor of Literature, Emeritus
Profile
Oscar Mandel was born in Flemish Antwerp into a German-speaking Jewish-Polish family and educated in French schools until the Nazis invaded Belgium in May 1940. The family wound up in New York, where the 14-year-old Mandel learned English and made it his dominant language.
For half a century he taught English and comparative literature at Caltech. He is now retired and living mostly in Los Angeles and partly in Paris.
Mandel's publications list shows him to be a poet, a story-teller, a playwright, and an essayist – all this on the creative side. What might be called semi-creative activities are his translations – mostly from French, but also from German, Italian (the Don Giovanni of Lorenzo da Ponte), and Spanish. Then there are the more professional publications like his works on tragedy, poetry, and mythical figures like Philoctetes and Don Juan. Finally, two excursions into art history may be noted, one of them a study of the Genovese master Alessandro Magnasco, published by Leo S. Olschki in Firenze.
Selected Publications
In chronological order:
- 1961: A Definition of Tragedy
- 1963: The Theatre of Don Juan: a Collection of Plays and Views 1630-1963
- 1964: Chi Po and the Sorcerer: a Chinese Tale for Children and Philosophers
- 1967: The Fatal French Dentist [comedy]
- 1967: The Gobble-Up Stories [fables]
- 1968: Seven Comedies by Marivaux
- 1970: Five Comedies of Medieval France
- 1970-1972: The Collected Plays (2 volumes)
- 1971: Three Classic Don Juan Plays
- 1974: Simplicities [poems]
- 1976: The Patriots of Nantucket: a Romantic Comedy of the American Revolution
- 1976: Amphitryon [comedy]
- 1978: The Land of Upside Down by Ludwig Tieck [comedy]
- 1981: Annotations to ‘Vanity Fair'
- 1981: Collected Lyrics and Epigrams
- 1981: Philoctetes and the Fall of Troy: Plays, Documents, Iconography, Interpretations
- 1982: Ariadne by Thomas Corneille, with: Ariadne and Neo-Classical French Tragedy
- 1985: The Book of Elaborations [essays]
- 1987: The Kukkurrik Fables: 43 Mini-Plays for All Media
- 1988: Annotations to ‘Vanity Fair', second edition, in collaboration with John Sutherland
- 1990: August von Kotzebue: the Comedy, The Man
- 1993: The Virgin and the Unicorn: Four Plays
- 1994: The Art of Alessandro Magnasco: an Essay in the Recovery of Meaning
- 1996. The Cheerfulness of Dutch Art: a Rescue Operation
- 1996: Two Romantic Comedies: The Spaniards in Denmark (Prosper Mérimée) and The Rebels of Nantucket
- 1997: Fundamentals of the Art of Poetry
- 2002: Reinventions: Four Plays After Homer, Cervantes, Calderón and Marivaux
- 2002: L'Arc de Philoctète [drama]
- 2003: Prosper Mérimée: Plays on Hispanic Themes
- 2003: Amphitryon, ou le Cocu béni [comedy]
- 2003: Le Triomphe d'Agamemnon [drama]
- 2004: Chi Po et le Sorcier [fiction]
- 2006: Where Is the Light? Poems 1955-2005
- 2007: La Reine de Patagonie et son caniche [fables]
- 2010: Cette guêpe me regarde de travers [poems in French and English]
- 2013: Théâtre dans un fauteuil: huit comédies et drames
- 2013: Etre ou ne pas être juif [essay]
- 2014: Otherwise Fables: Gobble-Up Stories (revised and augmented edition), Chi Po and the Sorcerer (revised edition), and The History of Sigismund, Prince of Poland
- 2015: Otherwise Poems
- 2019: Last Pages
- 2022: A Visit to The Merchant of Venice [article in the Fortnightly Review, London]
- (Forthcoming) 2023: Complete Theatre [Los Angeles: Insert Press]
- (Forthcoming) 2023: A Propos de Molière, Thomas Corneille, Mérimée, Brecht et autres dramaturges [Paris, L'Harmattan]