Racine: From Ancient Myth to Tragic Modernity
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Books › Literary Criticism › Drama
ISBN: 0816660840 / Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, January 2010
Greenberg (Romance studies, Cornell U.) offers explanations for why the tragedies by French dramatist Jean Racine (1639-99) so affected their original audiences and continue to move audiences today, when the passing of the classical world they lamented is no longer an open wound. He considers politics and monstrous origins in La Thèbaïde, myth and melancholy in Andromaque, sacrifice and sovereignty in Iphigénie, and religion and revolution in Racine's heavenly city. Quotations are in French with English translation following. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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A study of all of the major tragedies of Jean Racine, France's preeminent dramatist-and, according to many, its greatest and most representative author-Mitchell Greenberg's work offers an exploration of Racinian tragedy to explain the enigma of the plays' continued fascination.Greenberg shows how Racine uses myth, in particular the legend of Oedipus, to achieve his emotional power. In the seventeenth-century tragedies of Racine, almost all references to physical activity were banned from the stage. Yet contemporary accounts of the performances describe vivid emotional reactions of the audiences, who were often reduced to tears. Greenberg demonstrates how Racinian tragedy is ideologically linked to Absolutist France's attempt to impose the "order of the One" on its subjects. Racine's tragedies are spaces where the family and the state are one and the same, with the result that sexual desire becomes trapped in a closed, incestuous, and highly formalized universe.Greenberg ultimately suggests that the politics and sexuality associated with the legend of Oedipus account for our attraction to charismatic leaders and that this confusion of the state with desire explains our continued fascination with these timeless tragedies.
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