Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy, Hélène E. Bilis and Ellen McClure (ed.), Modern Language Association, 2021.
Tragedy has been reborn many times since antiquity. Seventeenth-century French playwrights composed tragedies marked by neoclassical aesthetics and the divine-right absolutism of the Grand Siècle. But their works also speak to the modern imagination, inspiring reactions from Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault; adaptations and reworkings by Césaire and Kushner; and new productions by francophone and anglophone directors.
This volume addresses both the history of French neoclassical tragedy—its audiences, performance practice, and development as a genre—and the ideas these works raise, such as necessity, free will, desire, power, and moral behavior in the face of limited choices. Essays demonstrate ways to teach the plays through a variety of lenses, such as performance, spectatorship, aesthetics, rhetoric, and affect. The book also explores postcolonial engagement, by writers and directors both in and outside France, with these works.
Pages: 374
Published: 2021
ISBN: 9781603295307 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 9781603295314 (Paperback)
Available on the publisher's website.