Corneille and Racine
Problems of Tragic Form

This study highlights that both Corneille and Racine were living writers, struggling to create developing forms within the strait-jacket of neo-classical decorum.

Gordon Pocock (Author)

9780521098144, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 October 1973

336 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2 cm, 0.43 kg

Corneille and Racine may seem like marble monuments of an unchanging typical classicism. Mr Pocock is concerned to show that each of these great dramatists was a living writer, struggling to create developing forms and that the rules of neo-classical decorum were a strait-jacket to them. We can see in their writings a hesitation between poetic drama which creates its own forms from within and naturalistic drama which opts for truth to common life and a medium. In an interesting and comprehensive examination of the two authors, Mr Pocock shows the range of Coneille's achievement, and explains that a good seal which had been dismissed as decadence or incompetence was the result of his casting about for new forms. A section on Racine shows him opting for a deepening mode of drama which rejects naturalism and is implicitly subversive of neo-classical rules.

1. Introduction
2. Corneille and the critics
3. Le Cid
4. Cinna
5. Polyeucte
6. Corneille's verse
7. Rodogune
9. Suréna
10. Corneille - some conclusions
11. Racine - career and background
12. Racine - the beginnings
13. Approaches to tragedy
14. Bérénice
15. The dramatic art of Racine
16. Phèdre
17. Athalie
18. Conclusion
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG]