SOURCE: "The Classical French Theater," in Literature and the Image of Man: Communication in Society, Vol. 2, Transaction Books, 1986, pp. 99–129.

In the following excerpt, Lowenthal discusses the writings of three French dramatists within the context of the emergence of the middle class during the seventeenth century.

…In Cervantes and Shakespeare, organized society is present only as a conditioning background; the human being who emerges sees himself as the responsible creator, willingly or unwillingly, of important segments of his own reality. He seeks to overcome the vacuum left by the disappearance of the feudal order not so much by relating himself to the new society as by searching his own nature. Society as an experience is an almost accidental meeting with other individuals, and the literature records the successes and failures of these meetings. Man is limited, of course, by his experiences and contacts with others, but these do not...