The Complete Plays of Jean Racine

Front Cover

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Title Page

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pp. iii-

Copyright

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pp. iv-

Table of Contents

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pp. vii-

Foreword

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pp. ix-xiii

On June 8 and 9, 2001, a conference was held in Uzès, a small town in southern France in which Jean Racine spent almost two years (1661– 63).¹ The conference title, “Confrontations Raciniennes” (Confrontations Among Racine Scholars), was an appropriate designation for debates about the most controversial dramatist of the past three hundred years of French literary history...

Translator's Note

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pp. xv-xix

Translator's Introduction: Taking Up the Gauntlet

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pp. xxi-lx

Poor Racine! Martin Turnell begins his Jean Racine: Dramatist by quoting François Mauriac: “Of all our authors, Racine is one of the least accessible to the peoples of other countries” (Turnell, 3). Robert Lowell’s preface to his translation of Phèdre opens with this disheartening pronouncement: “Racine’s plays are generally and...

The Fratricides: Discussion

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pp. 1-25

With The Fratricides, Racine’s first play, we are plunged into a world where human passions, whether ordained by destiny or instigated by the gods, whether resulting from an ancient curse or released by chance circumstances, hold unchallenged sway. But Racine is much less interested in the cause of passion than in its effects. As Martin...

Racine's Dedication

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pp. 27-28

Your Grace, I present to you a work which is perhaps noteworthy only for the honor of having pleased you. But in truth that honor is something so important to me that if my play had offered me no other benefit, I would be able to say that its success had surpassed my...

Racine's Preface

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pp. 29-30

The reader will permit me to beg a little more indulgence for this play than for the others that follow it. I was quite young when I wrote it. Some verses that I had produced at that time fell by chance into the hands of certain persons of good taste. They exhorted me to write a tragedy and proposed as its subject the Saga of Thebes. ...

The Fratricides

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pp. 31-94

The Fratricides: Notes and Commentary

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pp. 95-119

Selected Bibliography

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pp. 121-122

Copyright

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pp. 124-

Back Cover

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