SOURCE: "Rebellion for a Cause: Antigone, L'Alouette, and Becket," in Jean Anouilh: Stages in Rebellion, Humanities Press, 1975, pp. 35-46.

In the excerpt below, Lenski analyzes the philosophical dimension of three Anouilh plays, focusing especially on the "metaphyical rebellion" of the heroes.

In Antigone and L'Alouette a new philosophical dimension makes itself felt in Anouilh's theatre. Parallel with the deepening of philosophical content, we find a change in the plays' settings to suggest an expansion from the local to the universal. The scene shifts from the stifling bourgeois interiors, maids' rooms, cheap hotel rooms, castle drawing rooms, refreshment counters in provincial stations and parks at health resorts. Anouilh's characters have exchanged mese shut-in private family worlds for the broader and more neutral settings of Antigone and L'Alouette and the historical backgrounds of the royal palaces of Becket and La Foire d'Empoigne. At the same time, Anouilh adds characters to...