Recommendations

Books Like À quoi rêvent les jeunes filles

Best books to read after À quoi rêvent les jeunes filles by Musset

Musset's lyric verse comedy (1832) about twin sisters who dream of the ideal lover — the feminine counterpart to La Coupe et les Lèvres and the lightest work in the Un Spectacle dans un fauteuil volume. If this gentle, musical verse play charmed you with its romantic idealism, these books explore similar territory.

  1. 1

    La Coupe et les Lèvres

    by Alfred de Musset

    The companion work from the same 1832 volume — the dark masculine counterpart that presents the same Romantic ideal of love from the man's side, with tragedy instead of charm.

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  2. 2

    Namouna

    by Alfred de Musset

    The third work in Un Spectacle dans un fauteuil — a Byronic narrative poem about a libertine and his slave, which provides the ironic counterweight to the play's idealism.

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  3. 3

    Les Caprices de Marianne

    by Alfred de Musset

    A comedy from the Comédies et Proverbes that explores the gap between the dream of love and the real people who fail to live up to it — more bitter than À quoi rêvent but from the same emotional world.

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  4. 4

    On ne badine pas avec amour

    by Alfred de Musset

    The greatest of the Comédies et Proverbes — Perdican and Camille cannot reconcile the Romantic ideal with the real, and the result is tragedy; the stakes of what goes right in À quoi rêvent.

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  5. 5

    La Double Inconstance

    by Pierre de Marivaux

    The great eighteenth-century precursor to Musset's verse comedies — a play about love and self-deception written with the same refined psychological attention and light theatrical touch.

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  6. 6

    Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard

    by Pierre de Marivaux

    Marivaux's most famous comedy — the direct source of the theatrical tradition that Musset inherits and transforms in his verse comedies, including the plot of disguise, crossed lovers, and the discovery of genuine feeling.

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  7. 7

    A Midsummer Night's Dream

    by William Shakespeare

    The great English verse comedy of lovers and dreams — the tradition behind Musset's use of a fairy-tale lightness to explore the gap between the dreamed ideal and the real.

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  8. 8

    Les Romanesques

    by Edmond Rostand

    Rostand's charming verse comedy (1894) — the direct theatrical heir to Musset's playful verse comedies, best known today as the source for The Fantasticks; romantic idealism in the same light formal register.

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