The Complete Plays of Jean Racine

Volume 3: Iphigenia

Jean Racine and Translated into English rhymed couplets with critical notes and commentary by Geoffrey Alan Argent

Publication Year: 2011

This is the third volume of a projected translation into English of all twelve of Jean Racine’s plays—only the third time such a project has been undertaken. For this new translation, Geoffrey Alan Argent has rendered these plays in the verse form that Racine might well have used had he been English: namely, the “heroic” couplet. Argent has exploited the couplet’s compressed power and flexibility to produce a work of English literature, a verse drama as gripping in English as Racine’s is in French. Complementing the translation are the illuminating Discussion, intended as much to provoke discussion as to provide it, and the extensive Notes and Commentary, which offer their own fresh and thought-provoking insights. In Iphigenia, his ninth play, Racine returns to Greek myth for the first time since Andromache. To Euripides’s version of the tale he adds a love interest between Iphigenia and Achilles. And dissatisfied with the earlier resolutions of the Iphigenia myth (her actual death or her eleventh-hour rescue by a dea ex machina), Racine creates a wholly original character, Eriphyle, who, in addition to providing an intriguing new denouement, serves the dual dramatic purpose of triangulating the love interest and galvanizing the wholesome “family values” of this play by a jolt of supercharged passion.

Published by: Penn State University Press

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This translation of Iphigénie, Racine’s ninth play, is one of a series, which, when complete, will offer in English translation all twelve of Racine’s plays (eleven tragedies and one comedy), only the third such traversal since Racine’s death...

Iphigenia: Discussion

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pp. 1-46

While there might be some truth in the observation that in both Iphigenia and Bajazet a key element of the drama involves the stoppage of the wind, the fact that in Iphigenia the wind in question is in the sails, whereas in...

Racine's Preface

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pp. 47-55

There is nothing more celebrated among the poets than the sacrifice of Iphigenia; but they are not all in agreement about the most important particulars of this sacrifice. Some of them, like Aeschylus in...

Iphigenia (1674)

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pp. 57-130

Iphihenia: Notes and Commentary

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pp. 131-152

Selected Bibliography

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pp. 153-154

CIP Page

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Back Cover

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E-ISBN-13: 9780271052281
E-ISBN-10: 0271052287
Print-ISBN-13: 9780271048598
Print-ISBN-10: 027104859X

Page Count: 168
Publication Year: 2011

Volume Title: The Complete Plays of Jean Racine: Volume 3: Iphigenia