Tragedy has been reborn many times since antiquity. Seventeenth-century French playwrights composed tragedies marked by neoclassical aesthetics and the divine-right absolutism of the Grand Siècle. But their works also speak to the modern imagination, inspiring reactions from Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault; adaptations and reworkings by Césaire and Kushner; and new productions by francophone and anglophone directors. This volume addresses both the history of French neoclassical tragedy--its audiences, performance practice, and development as a genre--and the ideas these works raise, such as necessity, free will, desire, power, and moral behavior in the face of limited choices. Essays demonstrate ways to teach the plays through a variety of lenses, such as performance, spectatorship, aesthetics, rhetoric, and affect. The book also explores postcolonial engagement, by writers and directors both in and outside France, with these works.

This study traces the origins of French feminism to Neoclassical theatre and the court of Louis XIV. The author focuses on figures such as the classical tragic heroine Iphigenie, among a wide range of themes and motifs that found reincarnation in the theatre, literature, politics, and art of Revolutionary through Naoleonic times. Worley reveals how the denial of voice and citizenship to women writers reflected a wider supresesion of female human rights and the denial of a proper hearing to real-life tragic victims.

ISSN 2769-4100

In two of his most celebrated plays, Britannicus and Bérénice, Racine depicts the tragedies of characters trapped by the ideals, desires, and cruelties of ancient Rome. This international collection of essays deploys cutting-edge research to illuminate the plays and their contexts.

Derived from The Cambridge guide to theatre_

In pedagogical manuals strongly reminiscent of gardening guides, the scholar was seen as both a pliant vine and a force of nature.

These plays offer an introduction to the theatre of the late- 17th century in both England and France. It brings together key texts exploring the themes of sex, marriage and society. The English play texts are based on first editions, while those of the French texts are based on the earliest published translations. Textual notes explain unfamiliar terms, allusions and points of detail in the translations. An introduction locates the plays in their cultural and political context and gives a comparative account of playhouses in London and Paris.