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 individual strangers in various works before focusing on the depiction of the “Oriental” in Bajazet.

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.

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 excerpt, he quotes several critics contra Racine, using them as a springboard to his thesis that "when properly performed, Racine is still the greatest French tragic dramatist" and that the negative pronouncements of Racine's critics speak more to the issue of access than to that of dramatic ac...

In the following essay, Conroy examines the dynamic between gender, power, and sovereign authority in Alexandre le Grand and Athalie.

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 Junie and Bérénice.

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 unconscious, but that he masked them as far as possible behind a perfect neo-classical façade. "

In the following essay, Goodkin argues that, in his plays based on mythological sources in particular, Racine inverts sexual dynamics and portrays female characters as heroic and powerful and male characters as hesitant and passive.

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.

In the following essay, Wygant offers a Freudian interpretation of Phèdre, suggesting that the title character is the figure of tragedy whose suicide represents Racine's professional suicide and his contrition to his Jansenist fathers.

In the following excerpt from the text of a lecture delivered in 1959, Muir focuses upon the final two dramas of Racine, Esther and Athaliah, finding the latter in particular a reflection of Racine's effort to, in effect, repudiate the libertinism of his middle years and return to the Christian practice of his youth.

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, Brittanicus, Bajazet, Bérénice, and Mithridate.

In the following essay, Racevskis contends that Iphigénie is a tragedy about the universal human predicament of being caught on the threshold between self and others, present and future, duty and desire, knowledge and ignorance, immanence and transcendence.

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 number of different genres, but is remembered mainly as a novelist. He also wrote several acclaimed books on Russian and French literature and introduced English readers to the works of Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, and other prominent Russian authors. In the following excerpt, Baring discursively...

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.

In the following essay, Forestier discusses Racine's conception of characterization for the stage, focusing on his innovative contribution to the portrayal of tragic heroes.

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.

In the following essay, Desnain contends that Racine's plays clearly portray the importance of gender roles and promote certain rules of behavior for women, arguing too that the playwright's misogynistic depiction of women often uses the “virgin/whore” stereotype.

In the following essay, McClure asserts that Bérénice reflects the influence of Epicureanism, Cartesianism, and contemporary controversies concerning the material nature of the universe, particularly in the portrayal of the character Antiochus.

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

In the following essay, Campbell considers to what extent Mithridate can be called a tragedy.

In the following essay, Longino considers the theme of communication in Bajazet.

Brereton is an English scholar who has written extensively on French literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. In the following excerpt, he examines specifically the poetry of Racine's dramas.

Maskell is the author of Racine: A Theatrical Reading (1991). In the following excerpt from a later work, he compares the theatricality—specifically, the "visual language"—of Shakespeare and Racine.

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 newspaper articles which appeared over a period of several decades, in which he displayed his knowledge of literature and history. While Sainte-Beuve began his career as a champion of Romanticism, he eventually formulated a psychological method of criticism. Asserting that the critic cannot separate a work of litera...

In the following essay, Stone examines the use and treatment of memory in Athalie.

In the following essay, Forman examines the concept of esprit and the related issues of individuality, autonomy, and will in Racine's later plays, commenting on their ethical implications.

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 unique use of dramatic irony.

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 absorption with the creative process also forms the method of his criticism. In his prose, Valéry displays what is perhaps his most fundamental talent: the ability to apply a well-disciplined mind to a diversity of subjects including art, politics, science, dance, and aesthetics. His critical writings a...

An American critic, editor, poet, translator, and historian, Cowley made valuable contributions to contemporary letters with his editions of the works of such American authors as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and Ernest Hemingway, his writings as a literary critic, and his chronicles and criticism of modern American literature. In the following excerpt, Cowley places Racine's technical, stylistic, and thematic accomplishment within the context of his era.

Gassner, a Hungarian-born American scholar, was a great promoter of American theater, particularly the work of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. He edited numerous collections of modern drama and wrote two important dramatic surveys, Masters of Modern Drama (1940) and Theater in Our Times (1954; 3rd ed. 1954). In the following excerpt from the former, Gassner surveys Racine's career as a dramatist and assesses his significance in the development of Western drama.

Below, Joubert offers a general essay on the accomplishment and significance of Racine, noting his artistic statements against governmental tyranny.

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 Rimbaud, Paul Claudel, Saint-John Perse) and critical studies of the major figures and movements of modern French letters (Stephane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, Andre Gidé, the Surrealists, among many others). Broad intellectual and artistic sympathies, along with an acute sensitivity for French writi...

An Italian educator, philosopher, and author, Croce developed a highly influential theory of literary creation and a concomitant critical method. In defining the impetus and execution of poetry, Croce conceives of the mind as capable of two distinct modes of thought, which he terms cognition and volition. Cognition mental activity is theoretical and speculative, while volition is the mind's practical application of ideas originating in the cognitive realm. For Croce, a poem, as an intuitive creation...

With Paul Elmer More, Babbitt was one of the founder of the New Humanism (or neo-humanism) movement which arose during the twentieth century's second decade. The New Humanists were moralists who adhered to traditional conservative values in reaction to an age of scientific and artistic self-expression. In regard to literature, they believed that the aesthetic qualities of a work of art should be subordinate to its moral and ethical purpose. They were particularly opposed to Naturalism, which they be...

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 French poetry, he is said to have liberated French poetics from the strictures of classicism and the rhetoric of Romanticism, and helped define the Symbolist theory of poetics. In the following excerpt, Verlaine compares the accomplishment of Racine with that of Shakespeare, finding the former in some ways super...

An American critic, playwright, and novelist, Matthews wrote extensively on world drama and served for a quarter century at Columbia University as professor of dramatic literature; he was the first to hold that title at an American University. Matthews was also a founding member and president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Because his criticism is deemed both witty and informative, he has been called "perhaps the last of the gentlemanly school of critics and essayists" in Amer...

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 critical works on individual authors, styles, and periods. In the following excerpt from an article which originally appeared in the 1911 Encyclopœdia Britannica, Saintsbury offers a summary appraisal of Racine's significance, noting his accomplishment as both a dramatist and poet.

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 originally published in a longer form in La Nouvelle Revue Française, he discusses Racine's method, emphasizing the dramatist's exemplary accomplishment while working within an established context: his own, distinctly literary age.

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 translation of Andromaque.

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 Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History (1928). According to P. Mansell Jones, translator of Eugène Vinaver 's Racine and Poetic Tragedy (1955), "Curiosity about Racine was considerably stimulated in Anglo-Saxon countries by the publication of Lytton Strachey's essay [in Books and Characters...

Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, Lowell is generally considered the premier American poet of his generation. One of the original proponents of the confessional school of poetry, he frequently gave voice to his personal as well as his social concerns, leading many to consider him the prototypical liberal intellectual writer of his time. Lowell was also a widely acclaimed translator and playwright as well as critic and editor. In the following excerpt from the introduction to his 1961...