Jean Racine (1639-99) remains to this day the greatest of French poetic dramatists. Britannicus (1669), the first play in this volume, takes its themes from Roman history: the setting is bloody and treacherous court of the Emperor Nero. Phaedra (1677) dramatizes the Greek myth of Phaedra's doomed love for her stepson Hippolytus. Athaliah (1691), Racine's last and perhaps finest play, draws on the Old Testament story of Athaliah, Queen of Judah and worshipper of Baal, who is threatened and finally forced to concede victory to Joash, a son of the house of David and survivor of Athaliah's...
Jean Racine (1639-99) remains to this day the greatest of French poetic dramatists. Britannicus (1669), the first play in this volume, takes its theme...
Jean Racine Geoffrey Alan Argent Geoffrey Alan Argent
This is the fifth volume of a projected translation into English of all twelve of Jean Racine's plays. Geoffrey Alan Argent's translations faithfully convey all the urgency and keen psychological insight of Racine's dramas, and the coiled strength of his verse, while breathing new vigor into the time-honored form of the "heroic" couplet.
Complementing this translation are the Discussion and the Notes and Commentary--particularly detailed and extensive for this volume, Britannicus being by far Racine's most historically informed play. Also noteworthy is Argent's...
This is the fifth volume of a projected translation into English of all twelve of Jean Racine's plays. Geoffrey Alan Argent's translations faithful...
