Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah

Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah PDF Author: Jean Racine
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 014190934X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Strongly influenced by Classical drama, Jean Racine (1639-99) broke away from the grandiose theatricality of baroque drama to create works of intense psychological realism, with characters manipulated by cruel and vengeful gods. Iphigenia depicts a princess's absolute submission to her father's will, despite his determination to sacrifice her to gain divine favour before going to war. Described by Voltaire as 'the masterpiece of the human mind', Phaedra shows a woman's struggle to overcome her overwhelming passion for her stepson - an obsession that brings destruction to a noble family. And Athaliah portrays a ruthless pagan queen, who defies Jehovah in her desperate attempt to keep the throne of Jerusalem from its legitimate heir.

Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah

Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah PDF Author: Jean Racine
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 014190934X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Strongly influenced by Classical drama, Jean Racine (1639-99) broke away from the grandiose theatricality of baroque drama to create works of intense psychological realism, with characters manipulated by cruel and vengeful gods. Iphigenia depicts a princess's absolute submission to her father's will, despite his determination to sacrifice her to gain divine favour before going to war. Described by Voltaire as 'the masterpiece of the human mind', Phaedra shows a woman's struggle to overcome her overwhelming passion for her stepson - an obsession that brings destruction to a noble family. And Athaliah portrays a ruthless pagan queen, who defies Jehovah in her desperate attempt to keep the throne of Jerusalem from its legitimate heir.

Jean Racine: Four Greek Plays

Jean Racine: Four Greek Plays PDF Author: Jean Racine
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521286763
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This is the best translation into English of Andromache, Iphigenia, Phaedra and Athaliah.

Britannicus

Britannicus PDF Author: Jean Racine
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description


Four French Plays

Four French Plays PDF Author: Jean Racine
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141392096
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
The 'greatest hits' of French classical theatre, in vivid and acclaimed new Penguin translations by John Edmunds and with editorial apparatus by Joseph Harris. The plays in this volume - Cinna, The Misanthrope, Andromache and Phaedra - span only thirty-seven years, but make up the defining period of French theatre. In Corneille's Cinna (1640), absolute power is explored in ancient Rome, while Molière's The Misanthrope (1666), the only comedy in this collection, sees its anti-hero outcast for his refusal to conform to social conventions. Here also are two key plays by Racine: Andromache (1667), recounting the tragedy of Hector's widow after the Trojan War, and Phaedre (1677), showing a mother crossing the bounds of love with her son. This translation of Phaedra was originally broadcast on Radio Three with a cast including Prunella Scales and Timothy West, and was praised by playwright Harold Pinter. This is the first time it has been published. The edition also includes an introduction by Joseph Harris, genealogical tables, pronunciation guides, critiques and prefaces, as well as a chronology and suggested further reading. After a varied career as an actor, teacher, and BBC TV national newsreader, John Edmunds became the founder-director of Aberystwyth University's department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies. Joseph Harris is Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London and author of Hidden Agendas: Cross-Dressing in Seventeenth-Century France (2005).

Phèdre

Phèdre PDF Author: Jean Racine
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140445916
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Racine’s play Phèdre—which draws on Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus—is the supreme achievement of French neoclassic theater. In her amusing foreword, Margaret Rawlings explains how this particular translation—made specifically from the actor’s point-of-view—evolved from the 1957 Campbell Allen production. Containing both the French and English texts on facing pages, as well as Racine’s own preface and notes on his contemporary and classical references, this edition of Phèdre is a favorite among modern readers and is of special value to students, amateur companies, and repertory theaters alike. Translated and with a foreword by Margaret Rawlings.

Second Space

Second Space PDF Author: Czeslaw Milosz
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060755245
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz's most recent collection Second Space marks a new stage in one of the great poetic pilgrimages of our time. Few poets have inhabited the land of old age as long or energetically as Milosz, for whom this territory holds both openings and closings, affirmations as well as losses. "Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, / I felt a door opening in me and I entered / the clarity of early morning," he writes in "Late Ripeness." Elsewhere he laments the loss of his voracious vision -- "My wondrously quick eyes, you saw many things, / Lands and cities, islands and oceans" -- only to discover a new light that defies the limits of physical sight: "Without eyes, my gaze is fixed on one bright point, / That grows large and takes me in." Second Space is typically capacious in the range of voices, forms, and subjects it embraces. It moves seamlessly from dramatic monologues to theological treatises, from philosophy and history to epigrams, elegies, and metaphysical meditations. It is unified by Milosz's ongoing quest to find the bond linking the things of this world with the order of a "second space," shaped not by necessity, but grace. Second Space invites us to accompany a self-proclaimed "apprentice" on this extraordinary quest. In "Treatise on Theology," Milosz calls himself "a one day's master." He is, of course, far more than this. Second Space reveals an artist peerless both in his capacity to confront the world's suffering and in his eagerness to embrace its joys: "Sun. And sky. And in the sky white clouds. / Only now everything cried to him: Eurydice! / How will I live without you, my consoling one! / But there was a fragrant scent of herbs, the low humming of bees, / And he fell asleep with his cheek on the sun-warmed earth."

Making an Entrance

Making an Entrance PDF Author: Juliane Vogel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110754495
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
How does the entrance of a character on the tragic stage affect their visibility and presence? Beginning with the court culture of the seventeenth century and ending with Nietzsche’s Dionysian theater, this monograph explores specific modes of entering the stage and the conditions that make them successful—or cause them to fail. The study argues that tragic entrances ultimately always remain incomplete; that the step figures take into visibility invariably remains precarious. Through close readings of texts by Racine, Goethe, and Kleist, among others, it shows that entrances promise both triumph and tragic exposure; though they appear to be expressions of sovereignty, they are always simultaneously threatened by failure or annihilation. With this analysis, the book thus opens up possibilities for a new theory of dramatic form, one that begins not with the plot itself but with the stage entrance that structures how characters appear and thus determines how the plot advances. By reflecting on acts of entering, this book addresses not only scholars of literature, theater, media, and art but anyone concerned with what it means to appear and be present.

The Phaedra Syndrome

The Phaedra Syndrome PDF Author: Gérard
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004648186
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Originating probably in some oral cautionary tale, the Phaedra story illustrates a peculiar pattern of transgression and retribution. This Phaedra syndrome provided inspiration for many major writers from Euripides to Gabriele d'Annunzio. The present book offers a close re-reading and a re-assessment of four acknowledged masterpieces - Euripides' Hippolutos, Seneca's Phaedra, Lope de Vega's Castigo sin venganza and Racine's Phèdre: together with Lope's Italian source. Matteo Bandello's Novella 44, they all deal with the old tale or none of its analogues. While paying minute comparative attention to the texts, it aims at clarifying the relevance of each work for the meandrous evolution of religious beliefs and ethical criteria in the history of European society, ranging from Democritus' effort to react against his contemporaries' archaic shame-culture attitudes to Latin Stoicism, to the syncretic Baroque outlook in siglo de oro drama and to the radical puritanical inwardness of French Jansenism. The last two chapters offer an original interpretation of Phèdre as the supreme poetic utterance of Racine's confusion and perplexity in front of the unresolved contradictions in his faith; a case is made in the Conclusion the view that the puzzled and puzzling mood of this mysterious play exemplifies the new mind-set that was paving the way for Enlightenment rationalism and the ensuing dechristianisation of the Western intelligentsia.

Ibsen's Selected Plays (Norton Critical Editions)

Ibsen's Selected Plays (Norton Critical Editions) PDF Author: Henrik Ibsen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393924041
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 11

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Book Description
Collects five plays spanning Ibsen's career, with general introductions, explanatory annotations, criticism, and selections from his correspondence and other writings.

The Rise And Fall of Athens

The Rise And Fall of Athens PDF Author: Plutarch
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1802067299
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Plutarch traces the fortunes of Athens through nine lives - from Theseus, its founder, to Lysander, its Spartan conqueror - in this seminal work What makes a leader? For Plutarch the answer lay not in great victories, but in moral strengths. In these nine biographies, taken from his Parallel Lives, Plutarch illustrates the rise and fall of Athens through nine lives, from the legendary days of Theseus, the city's founder, through Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias and Alcibiades, to the razing of its walls by Lysander. Plutarch ultimately held the weaknesses of its leaders responsible for the city's fall. His work is invaluable for its imaginative reconstruction of the past, and profound insights into human life and achievement. This edition of Ian Scott-Kilvert's seminal translation, fully revised with a new introduction and notes by John Marincola, now also contains Plutarch's attack on the first historian, 'On the Malice of Herodotus'.