An internationally renowned scholar examines an episode in the chaos & retributive strife that engulfed France during the liberation at the end of World War II.

The performance of violence on the stage has played an integral role in French tragedy since its inception. Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy is the first book to tell this story. It traces and examines the ethical and poetic stakes of violence, as playwrights were experimenting with the newly discovered genre during decades of religious and civil war (c. 1550-1598). The study begins with an overview of the origins of French vernacular tragedy and the complex relationships between violence, performance, ethics, and poetics. The volume focuses on specific plays and analyzes biblical, mythological, historical, and politically topical tragedies—including the stories of Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Medea, the Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, the Roman general Regulus, and the assassination of the Duke of Guise in 1588—to show how the multifarious uses of violence on stage shed light on a range of pressing issues during that turbulent time, such as religion, gender, politics, and militantism.

This book builds a picture of how Greek literature was reworked by the authors of seventeenth-century French tragedy. The text explores the complex interactions surrounding these adaptations, involving the input of scribes, editors, translators and earlier authors, and asks the important question of what these dramatists conceived of themselves as doing.

NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING MICHELLE PFEIFFER AND LUCAS HEDGES A tragedy of manners from the Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers 'My favourite book of his yet' Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette 'Pure joy' Mail on Sunday 'Buoyantly insane' New Yorker Frances Price is in dire straits. Scandals swirl around the recently widowed New York socialite, and her adult-aged, toddler-brained son Malcolm is no help. Cutting their losses, they grab their cat, Small Frank, and head for the exit. Paris becomes the backdrop for a giddy drive to self-destruction, helped along by a cast of singularly curious characters. Brimming with pathos, warmth and wit, French Exit is a riotous send-up of high society and a moving story of mothers and sons.

Examining the development of neoclassical tragedy during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603), this work investigates the varied manifestations of tragedy modelled upon the classical heritage of ancient Greek drama as adapted by Seneca.