Perry Gethner 14 One of the College of Arts and Sciences’ new Regents professors, recruited a decade ago by the University of Oxford’s Voltaire Foundation to participate in its reissuing of all the French master’s works in new critical editions, recently published his edition of Voltaire’s last completed tragedy. “Obviously, that’s an exciting element to my career,” says noted French scholar Perry Gethner, whose edition of Irene was published in 2010. Gethner, a French language and literature instructor, received his Regents professorship, OSU’s highest promotion for a faculty member, in November 2011. “I’ve been increasingly recruited by people all over the world doing the complete works of so-and-so, and they need me to be part of the team.” Gethner, an OSU professor since 1984, is an expert in French drama and opera from the so-called early modern period, generally considered to be the 16th through 18th centuries. In addition to Voltaire, he has published critical editions and translations of other French authors, some more obscure than others, such as Jean Rotrou, Pierre du Ryer and Jean Mairet. Gethner, OSU’s foreign language department head, remembers being enchanted by languages ever since he was a kid growing up on the northwest side of Chicago, where his father ran a local drugstore. “I always enjoyed languages, and my teachers encouraged me,” says Gethner, who would go on to attend Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate in French literature in 1977. He nurtured a love of the art form as well as an appreciation for placing the works in their proper historic contexts, such as the French Wars of Religion during the 16th century. This contributed to the choice of biblical plays for the Gethner has turned his enchantment into expertise that’s in global demand Une affaire française “I always enjoyed languages, and my teachers encouraged me.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAxMjk=