Racine

Racine, described by Roland Barthes 1 as 'l'auteur le plus transparent de notre litterature', figures, by the same token, among those writers to whom, both before and after Barthes's own seminal essay, many of the critical languages available at particular historical moments have been fruitfully applied. But even if no writing on Racine since Barthes can easily ignore the impact of Sur Racine, there is still a good deal of earlier, often more eclectic material, that needs to be kept in mind. (Jean-Jacques Roubine's Lectures de Racine 2 remains the surest guide to the whole spectrum of reactions during the three centuries between the high point of the dramatist's career and 1971, the date of Roubine's survey, and is complemented theatrically by Maurice Descotes's earlier performance history. 3 ) Judd Hubert 4 still resonates with later critical perspectives, Euge`ne Vinaver 5 continues to come across as insightful, if somewhat impressionistic, Jean Pommier 6 remains a frequently cited authority, and John Lapp 7 is instructively attentive, inter alia, to classical sources. Published in both cases shortly post-Barthes, Roy Knight, also responsible for a major scholarly work on Racine and Greece, 8 brought together a whole clutch of powerful essays (Bowra, Poulet, Spitzer and so on) in a single volume devoted to the playwright; 9 and Odette de Mourgues produced what remains one of the most perceptive and accessible of English-language readings. 10 The two midcentury orthodoxies to be applied to Racine were Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis, in two studies (by Lucien Goldmann 11 and Charles Mauron 12 respectively) that have become monuments in their own right; and even if this is as much for their exposition of ideological standpoints as for their Racinian empathy, both offered suggestive insights that have served as fertile points of departure in the business of subsequent

Art · French Literature and Criticism · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical and Literary Studies · History

• Racine

  Veronique Desnain, Edric Caldicott et al.•The Modern Language Review•2003

  Add to list