Author : Hélène E. Bilis
Release : 2021-06-19
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 321/5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy by : Hélène E. Bilis
Download or read book Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy written by Hélène E. Bilis. This book was released on 2021-06-19. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
