"The Jew of Seville, a five-act verse drama first performed in 1844, is the story of Jacob Eliacin, a Jew during the Spanish Inquisition. Eliacin had been humiliated and beaten by the uncle of his Christian lover, Bianca. The couple had fled to Greece, where Bianca had died in childbirth. Eliacin, who amassed great wealth, had assumed the name Diegarias and had raised daughter Ines a Christian. Twenty years later, as the play opens, Diegarias is now...

Creole poets have always eluded easy definition, infusing European poetic forms with Louisiana themes and Native American and African influences to produce a variety of highly accomplished verses. Creole Echoes contains more than a hundred of these poems by more than thirty different poets, presented in their original French alongside English translations by Norman R. Shapiro. The poems gathered here were all composed by Louisiana residents of European,...