Gillian Jondorf challenges the traditional critical approaches to French Renaissance theater, reevaluating its literary merit and originality. She shows how playwrights of the sixteenth century actually achieved an originality by introducing classical themes, breaking with the medieval tradition of religious and morality plays. Whereas many critics have considered writers of French Renaissance drama as mere forerunners of the more famous seventeenth-century writers such as Moliere or Racine, Jondorf argues that these plays should be seen as competent and skillfully-composed in their own...

This introductory study presents Racine's Phedre as the culmination of French classical tragedy. It situates the play in its historical, literary and theatrical context, shows its relationship with other tragedies of Racine, and sketches its influence on later European literature. It analyzes the structures and language of the play, considers the major characters in action, and explores the ancient classical background and the mythological content. A chronological table of Racine's life and times and a guide to further reading are included.

Robert Garnier (1545 1590) was an early writer of tragedies in French. He has suffered much from being compared with the great tragedians of the seventeenth century, being taken as a crude predecessor of their mature art. In this 1969 text Mrs Jondorf studies him as a sixteenth-century writer, attuned to the thought and art of his own time. In particular she is concerned with his extension of the Senecan tradition of tragedy, and his pre-occupations with political themes - especially civil war, the rebellious subject, the powers and obligations of the sovereign. These were forced upon him by...