Racine's Phaedra

Front Cover
Gallery Books, 1996 - Drama - 66 pages
Phèdre by Jean Racine (1639-99) has long been considered one of the greatest glories of the French theatre. When the heroine, hounded by supernatural forces, falls tragically in love with her unresponsive stepson, her fate is sealed; but her struggle, conducted in a fearful atmosphere of vengeance and intrigue, is articulated in dramatic verse of the highest intensity.

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Contents

Section 1
12
Section 2
13
Section 3
16
Copyright

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About the author (1996)

Jean Racine is considered the greatest of French tragic dramatists. If Shakespeare's (see Vol. 1) theater is characterized by exploration and invention, Racine's is defined by restraint and formal perfection. His themes are derived from Greco-Roman, biblical, and oriental sources and are developed in the neoclassic manner: keeping to few characters, observing the "three unities" defined by Aristotle (see Vols. 3, 4, and 5) as essential to tragedy (i. e., unity of time, place, and action), and writing in regular 12-syllable verses called "alexandrines." In contrast to Corneille, whose theater is eminently political and concerned with moral choices, Racine locates tragic intrigue in the conflict of inner emotions. He is a master at exploring the power of erotic passion to transform and pervert the human psyche. As a Jansenist who believed that a person deprived of grace was subject to the tyranny of instincts, Racine was interested in portraying human passions---particularly the passion of love---in a state of crisis. Racine is also one of the greatest of all French poets, and his plays are a challenge to any translator. His major tragedies include Andromaque (1667), Britannicus (1669), e Berenice (1670), Iphigenie (1674), and Phedre (1677). Derek Mahon was an Irish poet, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on November 23, 1941. He was considered one of the great lyric poets of the 20th century. He published over twenty poetry collection. His work included Twelve Poems (1965), Night Crossing (1968), Lives (1972), The Snow Party (1975), Courtyards in Delft (1981), and Antarctica (1985). His four award-winning collections are Harbor Lights (2005), Somewhere the wave (2007), Life on Earth (2008), and An Autumn Wind (2009). He received two honorary doctorates (Trinity College Dublin and NUI Galway) and numerous awards for his work. In 2007, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature, in recognition of his lifetime's achievement. Derek Mahon died on October 1, 2020 in Cork. He was 78.

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