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  1. Home
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  3. Corneille, Classicism and the Ruses of Symmetry
  • Cited by 11
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2011
Print publication year:
1986
Online ISBN:
9780511898105
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511898105
Subjects:
Literature, Area Studies, Literary Theory, European Literature, European Studies
Series:
Cambridge Studies in French (17)
Information

Book description

Professor Greenberg's lucid study examines the themes of authority, power and sexuality in Corneille's major plays, drawing on the work of Foucault, and Freudian and feminist critics. He begins by considering the question of myth and of a 'pre-historical' cultural memory in Médée, and proceeds to a detailed analysis of each of the four best-known tragedies: Le Cid, Horace, Cinna, and Polyeucte. A concluding chapter discusses two middle-period plays and Suréna, Corneille's last tragedy. Professor Greenberg argues that the formal symmetries of classical tragedy reflect a desire for control in the realm of both politics and sexuality. He also seeks to show how these principles of symmetry are challenged or undermined in various ways by the plays themselves. The result is an exacerbation of sexual and political desire which invests Cornelian tragedy with its peculiar power and involves us so deeply in its world.

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