Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Paul Hammond
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Volume:   451
Weight:   0.772kg
ISBN:  

9789004467019

ISBN 10:   9004467017
Pages:   374
Publication Date:   21 October 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

Preface 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

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Author Information

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).

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