San Antonio College Library

English translation of three plays by seventeenth-century French playwright Jean Racine.

Lectures given by Kenneth Muir, King Alfred Professor of English Literature, University of Liverpool, about three authors-- William Shakespeare, Jean Racine, and Henrik Ibsen, at Wayne State University in 1959.

Aphrodite, the goddess of love, makes Phaedra, wife of Theseus, the king of Athens, fall in love with her stepson Hippolytus. When Hippolytus rejects her love she accuses him of rape before she kills herself. Her accusation provokes Theseus into pronouncing a curse on his son that eventually leads to Hippolytus' death. But Artemis reveals Hippolytus' innocence before he dies, and the young man is able to forgive his father.

This volume, the first English translation of "Morales du Grand Siècle" by the noted French scholar Paul Bénichou, fills the need for a critical study of the great French classicists of the 17th century. The study is constructed around the works of the dominant figures of that age--the dramatists Corneille, Racine, and Molière, and the philosopher Pascal--each reflecting the social and moral relationships that bound together the conditions of life...

Six French plays: Corneille--The Cid; Moliere--The Misanthrope; Racine--Phaedra; Lesage--Turcaret; Marivaux--The False Confessions; Beaumarchais--Figaro's Marriage.