Cyrano de Bergerac has been immortalised by Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play of the same name. Yet the character as portrayed by Rostand – with his excessively-enlarged nose, his almost super-human duelling skills and his ability to improvise eloquent poetic speeches – is far from an exact portrait of the real-life Cyrano of the seventeenth century. Cyrano’s brief literary career spans the genres of poetry, prose and theatre, in addition to a voluminous correspondence. Possessed of a keen intellect with an insatiable appetite for reading and for learning, he constantly experiments with, when he is not challenging outright, the established social, scientific, political and religious ideas of his day. This questioning, satirising and ridiculing of contemporary authorities, along with an…

2289 words

Citation: Horsley, Adam. "Cyrano de Bergerac". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 December 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13269, accessed 19 March 2024.]

13269 Cyrano de Bergerac 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.