Les Justes is the third and last of his original plays which Camus considered to be attempts at modern tragedy (that is to say, together with Le Malentendu and L'Etat de siège, but excluding Caligula), and is frequently regarded as one of his most successful pieces of writing for the theater. Many accounts of the play appear to be based on an implicit acceptance of its claim to be a modern tragedy. The heroic, exalted atmosphere and the astringent dialogue and structure are admired, and epithets such as "truly Cornelian aura" provide the final accolade. But just as in Corneille's theater the border line between tragedy and tragicomedy is frequently in dispute, so in Les Justes the author's moral ardor can be sensed to be in such an uneasy relationship with his artistic judgment that an objective critic is roused to examine the play's claim to being tragedy. Is it indeed this so much as a play in an inferior genre: melodrama? (p. 78)
An examination of Les Justes as a modern tragedy according to the classic formula will … depend to a large extent on the degree to which the tragic antagonists are equally "just."
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