French Renaissance Tragedy: The Dramatic Word

by Gillian Jondorf

Overview

Gillian Jondorf challenges the traditional critical approaches to French Renaissance theater, reevaluating its literary merit and originality. She shows how playwrights of the sixteenth century actually achieved an originality by introducing classical themes, breaking with the medieval tradition of religious and morality plays. Whereas many critics have considered writers of French Renaissance drama as mere forerunners of the more famous seventeenth-century writers such as Molière or Racine, Jondorf argues that these plays should be seen as competent and skillfully-composed in their own right. This book will appeal to students of Renaissance literature and European drama, as well as those interested in questions of originality and literary influence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521025584
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/20/2006
Series:	Cambridge Studies in French , #32
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	5.47(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.43(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Note on references and spelling; Introduction; 1. Allusiveness; 2. Exposition; 3. The rhetor; 4. The chorus; 5. Characterisation; 6. Shape; 7. Pleasures; Appendix; Notes; List of works cited and consulted; Index.