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Tragic Agency in Classical Drama from Aeschylus to Voltaire
Series: - Faux Titre Online, Volume: 451
- Faux Titre, Volume: 451
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Are we free agents? This perennial question is addressed by tragedy when it dramatizes the struggle of individuals with supernatural forces, or maps the inner conflict of a mind divided against itself.
The first part of this book follows the adaptations of four myths as they migrate from classical Greek tragedy to Seneca and on to seventeenth-century France: the stories of Agamemnon, Oedipus, Medea, and Phaedra. Detailed linguistic analysis charts the playwrights’ contrasting assumptions about agency and autonomy. In the second part, six plays by Corneille and Racine are discussed to show how the problem of agency and free will is explored in scenarios which show protagonists who are in thrall to their past, to their rulers, or to their own ideals.
The first part of this book follows the adaptations of four myths as they migrate from classical Greek tragedy to Seneca and on to seventeenth-century France: the stories of Agamemnon, Oedipus, Medea, and Phaedra. Detailed linguistic analysis charts the playwrights’ contrasting assumptions about agency and autonomy. In the second part, six plays by Corneille and Racine are discussed to show how the problem of agency and free will is explored in scenarios which show protagonists who are in thrall to their past, to their rulers, or to their own ideals.
Paul Hammond (LittD, Cambridge, 1996) is Professor of Seventeenth-Century English Literature at the University of Leeds and a Fellow of the British Academy. His books include The Strangeness of Tragedy (2009) and The Poems of John Dryden, 5 vols, co-edited with David Hopkins (1995-2005).
Preface
Glossary of Principal Greek Terms
Abbreviations
1 Preliminary
2 Greek Tragedy
3 Senecan Tragedy
4 French Tragedy
5 Agamemnon
1 Aeschylus
2 Seneca
3 Boyer
6 Oedipus
1 Sophocles
2 Seneca
3 Corneille
4 Voltaire
5 Folard
6 La Motte
7 Medea
1 Euripides
2 Seneca
3 Corneille
8 Phaedra
1 Euripides
2 Seneca
3 Racine
9 Preliminary
Neo-classical Agency and Its Constraints
10 Corneille: Cinna
Discerning Liberty and Tyranny
11 Corneille: Sertorius
Nominalism and Liberty in the Empire of Words
12 Corneille: Tite et Bérénice
Tragic Freedom
13 Racine: Andromaque
The Bondage of Time
14 Racine: Britannicus
Forms of Liberty and Servitude
15 Racine: Bérénice
The Rhetoric of Space and Self
Afterword
Bibliography
Index
Glossary of Principal Greek Terms
Abbreviations
part 1: Modes of Tragic Agency
1 Preliminary
2 Greek Tragedy
3 Senecan Tragedy
4 French Tragedy
part 2: Metamorphoses of Tragic Myth
5 Agamemnon
1 Aeschylus
2 Seneca
3 Boyer
6 Oedipus
1 Sophocles
2 Seneca
3 Corneille
4 Voltaire
5 Folard
6 La Motte
7 Medea
1 Euripides
2 Seneca
3 Corneille
8 Phaedra
1 Euripides
2 Seneca
3 Racine
part 3: Models of Freedom and Bondage
9 Preliminary
Neo-classical Agency and Its Constraints
10 Corneille: Cinna
Discerning Liberty and Tyranny
11 Corneille: Sertorius
Nominalism and Liberty in the Empire of Words
12 Corneille: Tite et Bérénice
Tragic Freedom
13 Racine: Andromaque
The Bondage of Time
14 Racine: Britannicus
Forms of Liberty and Servitude
15 Racine: Bérénice
The Rhetoric of Space and Self
Afterword
Bibliography
Index
Academics and students in Greek, Latin, and French literature; specialists in tragedy.