Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy: 55 (Options for Teaching) - Softcover

Hélène E. Bilis (editor) & Ellen McClure (editor)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1603295313 ISBN 13: 9781603295314

Publisher: Modern Language Association, 2021

Synopsis

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Modern Language Association
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1603295313
• ISBN 13: 9781603295314
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376