Jean Racine revisited

About this book

Jean Racine (1639-1699) is the greatest tragic dramatist of the French Classical Age, a privileged epoch that consciously sought to equal previous high moments of civilization, such as the periods of Alexander, Augustus, and the Medici. The miracle of Racine is the brilliance of his artistic career at the point in the history of western culture when the theater was under its heaviest attack. Thanks to the powerful impact of his plays, he triumphed both professionally and socially. Ronald W. Tobin's analysis presents Racine as an icon in French literature. His cosmic and disturbing vision broods over unsettling questions of good and evil, freedom and constraint, self and society, immanence and transcendence, origins and perspectives. Tobin provides a detailed explication of Racine's masterpiece Phedre (1677). His study also contains fresh insights into Racine's other plays and illuminates French classical drama as a whole.