Sir Michael Edwards, OBE (born 29 April 1938) is an Anglo-French poet and academic.
Life Born in Barnes, SW London, Edwards was educated at Kingston Grammar School and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he read French and Spanish. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Jean Racine, completing it in Paris. He was the longtime professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick until 2002, when he was elected to a professorial chair for the Study of Literary Creation in the English Language at the Collège de France.
Edwards was elected to one of the 40 seats in the Académie Française on 21 February 2013, becoming the first English person to be so honoured. He had been nominated previously in 2008, when he received the second highest number of votes in the fourth and final round of voting (eight votes, behind Michel Schneider who received 10) but since no candidate secured a majority the seat then remained vacant."Double "élection blanche" à l'Académie française" Le Monde, 7 February 2008"Académie française news", Académie française, Actualités 2008
Honours Knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for "services to British–French cultural relations","New Year honours 2014: the full list", www.theguardian.com, 10 December 2013. Sir Michael has received the following honours:
Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres OBE Knight Bachelor
Bibliography La tragédie racinienne, La pensée universelle, 1972 To Kindle the Starling, Aquila, 1972 Eliot/Language, Aquila, 1975 Where, Breakish, Aquila, 1975 The Ballad of Mobb Conroy, Portree, Aquila, 1977 Towards a Christian Poetics, London: Macmillan, 1984 The Magic, Unquiet Body, Portree, Aquila, 1985 Poetry and Possibility, London: Macmillan, 1988 Of Making Many Books, London, Macmillan, 1990 Raymond Mason, London and New York: Thames & Hudson; Paris: Cercle d'Art, 1994 Éloge de l'attente, Belin, 1996 De Poetica Christiana, Hermeuneutikai Kutatokozpont, Budapest, 1997 Beckett ou le don des langues, Espaces 34, 1998 Leçons de poésie, PUF, 2001 Avec Yves Bonnefoy, de la poésie (article), Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2001 Sur un vers d'Hamlet, Inaugural Speech at European Chair, Paris, Collège de France, 2001 Ombres de lune : réflexions sur la création littéraire, Espaces 34, 2001 Un monde même et autre, Desclée de Brouwer, January 2002 Rivage mobile, Arfuyen, 2003 Terre de poésie, Espaces 34, 2003 Shakespeare et la comédie de l'émerveillement, Desclée de Brouwer, 2003 Étude de la création littéraire en langue anglaise, "Inaugural Speeches at Collège de France", Paris: Collège de France/Fayard, 2004 Racine et Shakespeare, PUF, 2004 Shakespeare et l'œuvre de la tragédie, Belin, 2005 Le Génie de la poésie anglaise, Paris: Le Livre de poche, 2006 Co-editor, co-translator, Edgar Allan Poe, Histoires, Essais, Poèmes, Paris: Le Livre de Poche, "La Pochothèque", 2006 De l'émerveillement, Fayard, 2008 À la racine du feu/At the Root of Fire, selection of poems, bilingual edition, Caractères, coll. Planètes, 2009 Shakespeare : Le poète au théâtre, Fayard, 2009 L'Étrangèreté, audioCD, Paris: Gallimard, "à voix haute", 2010 Trilogie (piécette). Théâtre et poésie, Paris: TNP/Cheyne Éditeur, 2010 Le bonheur d'être ici, Fayard, February 2011 Le rire de Molière, De Fallois, October 2012 Paris aubaine, Éditions de Corlevour, November 2012 Reception Speech at Académie française, Paris: De Fallois, 2015 Bible et poésie, Paris, De Fallois, 2016; 2nd edition, Paris: PUF, 2023 L'Infiniment proche, Clichy: Éditions de Corlevour, 2016 Dialogues singuliers sur la langue française, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2016 Molière et Shakespeare, Paris: Anne Rideau Editions, 2016 At the Brasserie Lipp, Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2019 Pour un christianisme intempestif, Paris: De Fallois, 2020
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