Jean Racine Summary

The French dramatist Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699), admired as a portrayer of man's subtle psychology and overwhelming passions, was the author of 11 tragedies and a comedy. His work is the greates... Read more

In the following essay, Todd analyzes the various components of Athalie from a typological point of view, that is, by looking at the use of figurative elements, in order to reveal Racine's uniq... Read more

In the following essay, Delehanty maintains that in his biblical drama Athalie, Racine presents two opposing models of historiography: salvation history and teleological history. Generally, when we... Read more

In the following essay, Biet explores the aesthetic, anthropological, and ideological aspects of the motif of tears in Britannicus and Bérénice, focusing on the tears of the characters J... Read more

In the following essay, Conroy explores the quest for identity and notions of “self” and “Other” in Racine's plays, looking at collective ethnic groups and individua... Read more

In the following essay, Critchley discusses the title character of Phèdre, considers the nature of her melancholy, and characterizes the play as an antipolitical Christian tragedy. Faced wit... Read more

In the following essay, Campbell considers to what extent Mithridate can be called a tragedy. Even admirers of Racine's tragedies have hesitated with Mithridate. For François Mauriac ... Read more

In the following essay, Gearhart discusses the politics of Britannicus and uses the play to show that psychoanalytic theory has a significant role to play in the critique of the subject. For some t... Read more

In the following essay, Stone examines the use and treatment of memory in Athalie. Athalie marks the limit of Racine's theatrical career. The play commemorates the historic end point of his ... Read more

In the following essay, Reilly explores the language of power in Racine's tragedies, focusing on the two key words for power that he uses: pouvoir and puissance. What is the nature of power ... Read more

Inchbald was an English dramatist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the excerpt below, she remarks upon the dramatic effect of The Distressed Mother, Ambrose Philips's t... Read more

A French dramatist and novelist, Giraudoux is recognized primarily for his highly stylized works centering around the elemental themes of love, death, and war. In the following excerpt from an essay o... Read more

A prominent French poet and critic, Valéry is one of the leading practitioners of nineteenth-century Symbolist aestheticism. His work reflects his desire for total control of his creation; his ... Read more

In the following excerpt from an English-language edition of a volume originally published in French in 1951, Vinaver examines Racine's tragic poetry, particularly its employment in Andromaque,... Read more

In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1956, Goldmann narrowly defines dramatic tragedy and then discusses how Racine structured his dramas as tragedies. The Concept of Tragedy... Read more

Sainte-Beuve is considered the foremost French literary critic of the nineteenth century. Of his extensive body of critical writings, the best known are his "lundis"—weekly newspa... Read more

Turnell has written widely on French literature and has made significant translations of the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Guy de Maupassant, Blaise Pascal, and Paul Valèry. In the following excer... Read more

In the following excerpt, Pocock seeks to demonstrate that "the basis of Racine's art was his concern to express those irrational and even infantile passions that are fed from the uncons... Read more

A nineteenth-century French poet, Verlaine captured the musicality of the French language perhaps more than did any other poet. By using rhyme structures and meters that had previously been rare in Fr... Read more

Strachey was an early twentieth-century English biographer, critic, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his biographies Eminent Victorians (1918), Queen Victoria (1921), and Elizabe... Read more

Saintsbury was a late-nineteenth and early-twentiethcentury English literary historian and critic. Hugely prolific, he composed histories of English and European literature as well as numerous critica... Read more

During the early twentieth century, Baring—along with G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc—was considered one of the most important Catholic apologists in England. He was proficient in a ... Read more