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Pierre Corneille.
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The French dramatist Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) wrote more than 30 plays and is often called the father of French tragedy. His tragedies characteristically explore the conflict between heroic love a...
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The most successful playwright of the reign of Louis XIII, Pierre Corneille was the author of thirty-three plays and of the most important study of dramatic aesthetics in his century, known as "Trois ...
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In the following excerpt from an essay originally written in approximately 1672, Saint-Evremond decries Corneille's descent from the effective illumination of character to lachrymose sentimenta...
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A longtime correspondent for the Observer, the Economist, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Cairncross has translated several plays by Racine, Molière, and Corneille into English. In t...
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In the essay below, Harwood-Gordon examines Corneille's poetic style.
Perhaps no other writer of the classical age of French literature has undergone such dramatic swings in public acceptance a...
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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...
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In the following excerpt from the major nineteenth-century treatment of Corneille in English, Lodge determines and assesses Corneille's contribution to French drama.
If it be asked what was the...
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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 essay...
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Fowlie is among the most respected and comprehensive scholars of French literature. His work includes translations of major poets and dramatists of France (Molière, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur R...
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Called "one of the masters of dramatic research," Nicoli is best known as a theater historian whose works have proven invaluable to students and educators. Nicoli's World Drama: F...
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In the following excerpt, Yarrow provides a close study of Corneille's characterization.
Epithets derived from names of writers sometimes suffer a strange fate. Some are merely used with the se...
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In the excerpt below from his book-length study of Corneille and his plays, Abraham surveys the dramatist's early comedies, from Mélite to L'Illusion comique.
"Such disorde...
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In the following essay, Pocock examines Corneille 's Suréna, a drama "loved by those who value formal perfection."
1
Steiner has been tempted to call Suréna Corneill...
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In the following essay, Mallinson examines Corneille's attitude toward his early comedies.
The first edition of Corneille's complete works, whatever its merits as financial speculation o...
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In the following essay, Gaines contends that the usurpation of social rank plays a prominent role in The Maidservant.
It is not astonishing that usurpation of social rank, the manipulation of appearan...
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In the following essay, Hopkins elucidates the elements of classical tragedy which are parodied in The Liar.
Histories of the theatre show that tragedy came first, and that comedy developed later as a...
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In the following essay, Reed considers Corneille's emphasis on visual imagery and Christian theology in Rodogune.
Nearly 350 years after its first run in Paris, Pierre Corneille's Rodogu...
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In the following essay, Barnwell provides an interpretation of Sophonisba in light of Saint-Evremond's critical comments on Corneille and his play.
Of Corneille's tragedies, Sophonisbe i...
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In the following essay, Stone scrutinizes the stylistic and thematic similarities of The Cid, Horace, Cinna, and Polyeucte.
Tragedy is the experience of loss—loss of or separation from an env...
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In the following essay, Gunter investigates the character of Vinius in Otho, maintaining that he can be viewed “as a mock hero whose main function is to serve as a dramatic and psychological fo...
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In the following essay, Knutsen views Corneille's early plays as “a series of variations in comic form.”
It is difficult to avoid seeing Corneille's early comedies in a tel...
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In the following essay, Barnwell considers “some of the ways in which Corneille orders and constructs the successive episodes of his plays and some of the connexions between that arrangement an...
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In the following essay, Carlin discusses the innovative role of women in Corneille's comedies.
In the archetypal comic schema proposed by Northrop Frye,1 a blocking character, usually a “...
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In the following essay, Hubert discusses the defining characteristics of Titus and Bernice and Pulcheria.
Tite Et Bérénice
Admiration and sublimity, as Marie-Odile Sweetser has shown, re...
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In the following essay, Goulbourne explores the visual aspects of Corneille's early plays.
“Il faut voir représenter Corneille pour en sentir tout l'effet.” With the...
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In the following essay, Hawcroft asserts that it is possible to view Clitandre as “an attempt to engage metaphorically with the theoretical debates around 1630, dominated as they were by the tw...
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In the following essay, McFarlane explores stylistic aspects of The Widow, particularly Corneille's use of language, action, and characterization.
In the Letter-preface to La Suivante, Corneill...
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Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille
Critical Essay by Charles de Saint-Evremond
