This award-winning book deals with the ethical aspect of emotions in human decision making in literature. The broadest description of the process of 'emotional obsession' can be found in Euripides' tragedy of Phaedra, but the topos can be found in the tragedies of Roman philosopher Seneca and modern French poet Jean Racine, as well.

This introductory study presents Phèdre as an example of the culmination of French classical tragedy--taking into consideration the play's historical, literary and theatrical context, its relationship to other tragedies of Racine, and its influence on later European literature.

Racine’s play Phèdre—which draws on Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus—is the supreme achievement of French neoclassic theater. In her amusing foreword, Margaret Rawlings explains how this particular translation—made specifically from the actor’s point-of-view—evolved from the 1957 Campbell Allen production. Containing both the French and English texts on facing pages, as well as Racine’s own preface and notes on his contemporary and classical references, this edition of Phèdre is a favorite among modern readers and is of special value to students, amateur companies, and repertory theaters alike. Translated and with a foreword by Margaret Rawlings.

This is the best translation into English of Andromache, Iphigenia, Phaedra and Athaliah.

Are we free agents? This perennial question is addressed by tragedy when it dramatizes the struggle of individuals with supernatural forces, or maps the inner conflict of a mind divided against itself. The first part of this book follows the adaptations of four myths as they migrate from classical Greek tragedy to Seneca and on to seventeenth-century France: the stories of Agamemnon, Oedipus, Medea, and Phaedra. Detailed linguistic analysis charts the playwrights’ contrasting assumptions about agency and autonomy. In the second part, six plays by Corneille and Racine are discussed to show how the problem of agency and free will is explored in scenarios which show protagonists who are in thrall to their past, to their rulers, or to their own ideals.