Download Free French Humanist Tragedy Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online French Humanist Tragedy and write the review.

In this, the first study of its kind to appear in English, the author - a professor of Romance Languages at Harvard University - discusses the concepts which determined the nature and function of French humanist tragedy and the importance of those concepts with regard to the genre's relationship to medieval, ancient and French classical drama. The emphasis on conceptual rather than formal considerations reveals strong ties between tragedy and other sixteenth century genres, now largely neglected. The book also shows that the formal changes in tragedy introduced by the humanists are less consequential than once thought, and in his last chapter suggests that a deeper appreciation of the character of French humanist tragedy can shed new light on the coming of classicism.
In this, the first study of its kind to appear in English, the author - a professor of Romance Languages at Harvard University - discusses the concepts which determined the nature and function of French humanist tragedy and the importance of those concepts with regard to the genre's relationship to medieval, ancient and French classical drama. The emphasis on conceptual rather than formal considerations reveals strong ties between tragedy and other sixteenth century genres, now largely neglected. The book also shows that the formal changes in tragedy introduced by the humanists are less consequential than once thought, and in his last chapter suggests that a deeper appreciation of the character of French humanist tragedy can shed new light on the coming of classicism.
The principle aim of this 1990 book is to encourage readers to find pleasure in sixteenth-century tragedies.
Examines the impact of the royal politics of amnesia on tragedy and national historiography in France, 1560-1630
Originally published in 1973, the history of French tragedy and tragicomedy from their origins in the sixteenth century to the last years of Louis XIV’s reign is here surveyed in a single volume. Beginning with a brief account of the development of drama from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Dr Brereton examines the plays as types of drama, the circumstances in which they were produced and their reception by contemporaries. The traditionally great figures of Corneille and Racine are treated at some length, but their work is seen in perspective against the plays of their predecessors and of their own time. Garnier and Montchrestien are discussed, among others, as notable writers of Renaissance humanist tragedy. Sections are devoted to secondary but still important dramatists such as Mairet, Rotrou, Du Ryer, Tristan L’Hermite, Thomas Corneille and Quinault. A long chapter on Alexandre Hardy reviews the work of this neglected author and stresses his interest as a transitional link between the two centuries and as a vigorous pioneer of a type of drama which flourished for several decades after him concurrently with French ‘classical’ tragedy. The main currents of critical theory, social attitudes and stage history are described in their relation to the development of the drama. Well over a hundred plays are discussed or summarized; and the author has constantly referred back to the original material and has avoided an over-simplification of a vast subject which contains more exceptions and anomalies than has generally been recognized in the past. Chronological tables of the works of major dramatists, summaries of numerous plays and a bibliography containing modern editions of plays are included.
Studies the representation of violence in tragedies written for the French stage during the sixteenth century, and explores its connection with issues such as politics, religion, gender, and militantism to place the plays within their historical, cultural, and theatrical contexts.
Richard Hillman applies to tragic patterns and practices in early modern England his long-standing critical preoccupation with English-French cultural connections in the period. With primary, though not exclusive, reference on the English side to Shakespeare and Marlowe, and on the French side to a wide range of dramatic and non-dramatic material, he focuses on distinctive elements that emerge within the English tragedy of the 1590s and early 1600s. These include the self-destructive tragic hero, the apparatus of neo-Senecanism (including the Machiavellian villain) and the confrontation between the warrior-hero and the femme fatale. The broad objective is less to 'discover' influences – although some specific points of contact are proposed – than at once to enlarge and refine a common cultural space through juxtaposition and intertextual tracing. The conclusion emerges that the powerful, if ambivalent, fascination of the English for their closest Continental neighbours expressed itself not only in but through the theatre.
This book, written by eighteen specialists, deals with the reception of Greek and Latin culture in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is intended for those interested in classical influences on French belles-lettres and visual arts. Readers will benefit from the comprehensive surveys provided by specialists on topics as diverse as the role of French travellers to classical lands in transforming perceptible reality into narrative textuality, Jacques Amyot's contribution to the reinvention of the novel in the West and the influence of ancient law in France. Major literary genres and themes, philosophy, major writers, early French humanists and Hellenists and the visual arts all receive detailed, up-to-date treatment. Contributors include: Olga Augustinos, Alain Billault, Jean Braybrook, Paola Cifarelli, Michèle Ducos, Sue Farquhar, Philip Ford, A. Trevor Hodge, George Huppert, Gillian Jondorf, John Parkin, Laurence Plazenet, Patricia Rosenmeyer, Ofelia Salgado, Gerald Sandy, Alison Saunders, Douglas Thomson, and Valerie Worth-Stylianou.
The performance of violence on the stage has played an integral role in French tragedy since its inception. Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy is the first book to tell this story. It traces and examines the ethical and poetic stakes of violence, as playwrights were experimenting with the newly discovered genre during decades of religious and civil war (c. 1550-1598). The study begins with an overview of the origins of French vernacular tragedy and the complex relationships between violence, performance, ethics, and poetics. The volume focuses on specific plays and analyzes biblical, mythological, historical, and politically topical tragedies—including the stories of Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Medea, the Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, the Roman general Regulus, and the assassination of the Duke of Guise in 1588—to show how the multifarious uses of violence on stage shed light on a range of pressing issues during that turbulent time, such as religion, gender, politics, and militantism.
The Tragedy of Pious Antigone (1580) is the first English-language translation of Robert Garnier's Antigone, ou la Pieté. Written by France's earliest career tragedian, who also worked in the Paris Parliament and as a counselor at a judicial tribunal in the town of Le Mans, the play draws on various classical sources (especially Seneca, Statius, and Sophocles) to retell the well-known story of a family torn apart by war: as brothers Eteocles and Polynices fight to the death, their sister Antigone and mother Jocasta make repeated calls for peace. Originally published at the height of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) that pitted Catholics and Protestants against each other, the five acts of Garnier's play would have had immediate resonance. Neither extolling nor defending one side or the other, this humanist tragedy, which also anticipates the style of Corneille and Racine, could have been appreciated not only by members of one religious community or the other, but by both as a seemingly non-partisan and earnest lamentation about, and reflection upon, troubled times. This famous story, re-imagined by countless authors including Bertolt Brecht, Jean Anouilh, Griselda Gambaro, Athol Fugard, and many others, is here re-told to emphasize empowered female voices in times of political division.