"King. As the philosopher Montesquieu wrote in his ""Lettres persanes"" in 1721: ""The Prince impresses his character and his spirit on the Court; the Court on the City; and the City on the provinces."" Of the prominent French writers of the century, Moliere, the Marquise de Sévigné, La Rochefoucauld and Charles Perrault were all born in Paris. Pierre Corneille was from Normandy, Descartes from the Touraine, Jean Racine and La Fontaine from Champagne; they were all drawn to Paris by the publishing houses, theaters, and literary salons of the city. The first literary academy, the Académie Française, was formally by"
"more prestigious company at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where it opened on 18 December, creating a rift with Molière. Alexandre le Grand Alexandre le Grand is a tragedy in 5 acts (of 3, 5, 7, 5 and 3 scenes, respectively) and verse by Jean Racine. It was first produced on 4 December 1665 at the Palais Royal Theater in Paris. The subject of the play is the love of Alexander the Great and the Indian princess Cleofile complicated by intrigues between her brother Taxilus and his ally Porus. The play is largely based on a surviving work by the Roman"
"best. It was followed by ""Penthée"" (1637), ""La Mort de Seneque"" (1644), ""La Mort de Crispe"" (1645) and the ""Parasite"" (1654). He was also the author of some admirable lyrics. Three of his best plays are printed in the ""Théâtre français"" of 1737. He took his pseudonym from Tristan l'Hermite, a shadowy figure of the late Middle Ages who was provost of the marshals of the King's household under Louis XI of France. He died due to tuberculosis. François Tristan l'Hermite François l'Hermite (c. 1601 – 7 September 1655) was a French dramatist who wrote under the name Tristan l'Hermite."
"provoked such violent disturbances in the audience that one person was killed and future representations had to be guarded by the police. Lemercier wrote four long and ambitious epic poems: ""Homère"", ""Alexandre"" (1801), ""L'Atlantiade ou la théogonie newtonienne"" (1812) and ""Moïse"" (1823), as well as an extraordinary ""Panhypocrisiade"" (1819–1832), a distinctly romantic production in sixteen cantos, which has the sub-title ""Spectacle infernal du XVIe siècle"". In it 16th century history, with Charles V and Francis I as principal personages, is played out on an imaginary stage by demons in the intervals of their sufferings. Lemercier died on 7 June 1840"
"Alexandre le Grand Alexandre le Grand is a tragedy in 5 acts (of 3, 5, 7, 5 and 3 scenes, respectively) and verse by Jean Racine. It was first produced on 4 December 1665 at the Palais Royal Theater in Paris. The subject of the play is the love of Alexander the Great and the Indian princess Cleofile complicated by intrigues between her brother Taxilus and his ally Porus. The play is largely based on a surviving work by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus. Shortly after the play's opening at the Théâtre Palais Royal, Racine moved it to the"
"by his rival Jean Racine, who also wrote tragedies based on the stories of Bajazet (Bayezid I) and Phaedra (""The only difference between Pradon and me is that I know how to write"", Racine is reported to have said), and Racine's supporter Nicolas Boileau. This rivalry was particularly intense when Pradon brought out his ""Phèdre et Hippolyte"" at the same time as Racine's ""Phèdre"" (the writers Donneau de Visé and Adrien-Thomas Perdou de Subligny both took Pradon's side), and throughout his life Pradon wrote several attacks on Boileau. He died in Paris. Pradon's plays have been largely denigrated by modern"
"of French pupils had to learn his fables, that were seen as helping teaching wisdom and common sense to the young people. Some of his verses have entered the popular language to become proverbs, such as """"À l'œuvre, on connaît l'artisan.""[A workman is known by his chips]."" Jean Racine, whose incredible mastery of the alexandrine and of the French language has been praised for centuries, created plays such as ""Phèdre"" or ""Britannicus"". He is, along with Pierre Corneille (""Le Cid"") and Molière, considered as one of the three great dramatists of the France's golden age. Molière, who is deemed to"
"be one of the greatest masters of comedy of the Western literature, wrote dozens of plays, including ""Le Misanthrope"", ""L'Avare"", ""Le Malade imaginaire"", and ""Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme"". His plays have been so popular around the world that French language is sometimes dubbed as ""the language of Molière"" (""la langue de Molière""), just like English is considered as ""the language of Shakespeare"". French literature and poetry flourished even more in the 18th and 19th centuries. Denis Diderot's best-known works are ""Jacques the Fatalist"" and ""Rameau's Nephew"". He is however best known for being the main redactor of the ""Encyclopédie"", whose aim"
"Berenice (play) Berenice () is a five-act tragedy by the French 17th-century playwright Jean Racine. ""Berenice"" was not played often between the 17th and the 20th centuries. Today it is one of Racine's more popular plays, after ""Phèdre"", ""Andromaque"" and ""Britannicus"". It was premiered on 21 November 1670 by the Comédiens du Roi at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Racine seems to have chosen the subject in competition with Pierre Corneille, who was working on his drama ""Tite et Bérénice"" at the same time. The subject was taken from the Roman historian Suetonius, who recounts the story of the Roman emperor"
"Euripides, as well as the ""Antigone"" of Rotrou, and the ""Oedipus"" of Pierre Corneille. Molière may also have assisted in the play's composition. Traditional scholarship saw limited merit in the play, deeming it an only partially successful work of a still maturing dramatist. In his groundbreaking work ""On Racine"", however, Roland Barthes treats the play as seriously as Racine's greatest Greek dramas, including ""Phèdre"" and ""Iphigénie""). Since Barthes, recent scholarship has shown greater interest, exploring, for example, power relationships driving the action, and, more broadly, fundamental problems of political philosophy that arise with respect to the legitimacy of the modern"
"manners of the 17th century were permanently changed by it. From the 1660s, three poets stand out. Jean de La Fontaine gained enormous celebrity through his Aesop inspired ""Fables"" (1668–1693) which were written in an irregular verse form (different meter lengths are used in a poem). Jean Racine was seen as the greatest tragedy writer of his age. Finally, Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux became the theorizer of poetic classicism: his ""Art poétique"" (1674) praised reason and logic (Boileau elevated Malherbe as the first of the rational poets), believability, moral usefulness and moral correctness; it elevated tragedy and the poetic epic as the"
"author in the melodrama genre are: ""le Jugement de Salomon"" (1802) and ""la Pie voleuse, ou la Servante de Palaiseau"" (1815). These two plays were presented with the same long success, both in Paris and in the cities of the province and abroad ; Rossini composed his opera ""La gazza ladra"" after the second. Louis-Charles Caigniez Louis-Charles Caigniez (13 April 1762 – 19 February 1842) was a 19th-century French playwright. Endowed with a real talent for the stage, Caigniez competed on the boulevard theaters with René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt and was nicknamed ""the Racine of melodrama"", of which Pixérécourt"
"Pléiade. From 1550 on, one finds humanist theatre written in French. The influence of Seneca was particularly strong in humanist tragedy. His plays — which were essentially chamber plays meant to be read for their lyrical passages and rhetorical oratory — brought to many humanist tragedies a concentration on rhetoric and language over dramatic action. Humanist tragedy took two distinct directions: During the height of the civil wars (1570–1580), a third category of militant theatre appeared: Along with their work as translators and adaptors of plays, the humanists also investigated classical theories of dramatic structure, plot, and characterization. Horace was"
"plots were taken from classical authors such as Plutarch and Suetonius, and from Italian, French and Spanish short-story collections. The Greek tragic authors (Sophocles and Euripides) would become increasingly important by the middle of the 17th century. Important models for the 17th century's comedy, tragedy and tragicomedy were also supplied by the Spanish playwrights Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina and Lope de Vega, many of whose works were translated and adapted for the French stage. Important theatrical models were also supplied by the Italian stage (including the pastoral) and Italy was also an important source for theoretical"
"in his ""The Birth of Tragedy"" (1872) was to support Wagner in his claims to be a successor of the ancient dramatists. For much of the 17th century, Pierre Corneille, who made his mark on the world of tragedy with plays like ""Medée"" (1635) and ""Le Cid"" (1636), was the most successful writer of French tragedies. Corneille's tragedies were strangely un-tragic (his first version of ""Le Cid"" was even listed as a tragicomedy), for they had happy endings. In his theoretical works on theatre, Corneille redefined both comedy and tragedy around the following suppositions: Corneille continued to write plays through"
"and amorous passion (like Phèdre's love for her stepson) and his impact was such that emotional crisis would be the dominant mode of tragedy to the end of the century. Racine's two late plays (""Esther"" and ""Athalie"") opened new doors to biblical subject matter and to the use of theatre in the education of young women. Racine also faced criticism for his irregularities: when his play, ""Bérénice"", was criticised for not containing any deaths, Racine disputed the conventional view of tragedy. For more on French tragedy of the 16th and 17th centuries, see French Renaissance literature and French literature of"
"Fuzelier (another librettist working for Rameau), was director of the ""Mercure de France"" by royal patent. In 1749, he went to Rome as secretary of embassy to the Duke of Nivernais. Charles-Antoine Leclerc de La Bruère Charles-Antoine Leclerc de La Bruère (1716 in Crépy-en-Valois – 18 September 1754 in Rome) was an 18th-century French historian and diplomat. He is mostly known as the librettist of the tragédie lyrique ""Dardanus"" by Jean-Philippe Rameau. The booklet was generally considered one of the worst that has been set to music by the composer. La Bruère amalgamated second rank mythological elements and epic reminiscences"
"- their style is less trivial but still lacks elegance, though their dialogue is naturalistic. The two most notable ones are ""le Procureur arbitre"" (1728) and ""l’Impromptu de campagne"" (1733), whilst the others are ""la Boite de Pandore"" (1729), ""Alcibiade"" (1731), ""le Réveil d’Épiménide"" (1736), ""le Mariage par lettres de change"" (1735), ""les Ruses d’amour"" (1736) and ""l’Actrice nouvelle"" (a comedy, never performed after Adrienne Lecouvreur wrote a satire mocking it). Philippe Poisson (actor) Philippe Poisson (8 February 1682 - 4 August 1743) was a French actor and playwright. He, the actor François-Arnoul Poisson de Roinville and the novelist and"
"Robert Lowell's English translation ""Phaedra"" was published in 1961. ""Phèdre"" was translated by Scottish poet Edwin Morgan (1920–2010) into Scots in 2000, and won the 2001 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Phèdre Phèdre (originally ""Phèdre et Hippolyte"") is a French dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677 at the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. With ""Phèdre"", Racine chose once more a subject from Greek mythology, already treated by Greek and Roman tragic poets, notably by Euripides in ""Hippolytus"" and Seneca in ""Phaedra"". As a result of an intrigue by the"
"His major works include ""Les Fausses Confidences"" (1737), ""le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard"" (1730), and ""l'Île des esclaves"" (1725). Jean-François Regnard et Alain-René Lesage (1668–1747) also had great success with comedies of manners, such as Regnard's ""Le Légataire universel"", and Lesage's ""Turcaret"" in 1709. But the greatest author of French comedies in the 18th century was Beaumarchais (1732–1799), who displayed a mastery of dialogue and intrigue combined with social and political satire through the character of Figaro, a valet who challenges the power of his master, who is featured in two major works; ""le Barbier de Séville"" (1775)"
"""peinture"", ""sculpture"" and ""gravure"". Paul Landois Paul Landois was an 18th-century French playwright. We have no information on the life of this obscure writer regarded as the inventor of an intermediary theatrical genre which he called bourgeois tragedy and which was adopted by La Chaussée, Diderot, Beaumarchais, and finally by the playwrights of the 19th century. He composed some plays, including one entitled ""Silvie"", in one act and in prose, played by the comedians of the Comédie-Française in 1741. He also is the author, under the signature ""R"", of more than 110 articles of the ""Encyclopédie"" by Diderot and D’Alembert,"
"Andromaque Andromaque is a tragedy in five acts by the French playwright Jean Racine written in alexandrine verse. It was first performed on 17 November 1667 before the court of Louis XIV in the Louvre in the private chambers of the Queen, Marie Thérèse, by the royal company of actors, called ""les Grands Comédiens"", with Thérèse Du Parc in the title role. The company gave the first public performance two days later in the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. ""Andromaque"", the third of Racine's plays, written at the age of 27, established its author's reputation as one of the great"
"is the same as Aristotle's ""Poetics"". Yves Lavandier examines works by major scriptwriters and playwrights (Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Charles Chaplin, Hergé, Alfred Hitchcock, Henrik Ibsen, Ernst Lubitsch, Molière, Dino Risi, William Shakespeare, Sophocles, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, etc.) in order to answer three questions: The author scans all the tools of dramatic narrative: conflict, protagonist, obstacles, suspense, characterisation, three-act structure, preparation, dramatic irony, comedy, activity, dialogue. A play written by Molière, ""The School for Wives"", and a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, ""North by Northwest"", are analysed in detail. Several appendices deal with writing for children, drama and literature,"
"performed in 2006 at the Stuttgart Opera, and in 2009 in Paris. In his work ""The social destiny of man: or, Theory of the four movements"", Charles Fourier discussed celadony (""l'amour Céladonique""), describing it as purely spiritual love embodied by Céladon in ""L'Astrée"". L'Astrée L'Astrée is a pastoral novel by Honoré d'Urfé, published between 1607 and 1627. Possibly the single most influential work of 17th century French literature, ""L'Astrée"" has been called the ""novel of novels"", partly for its immense length (six parts, forty stories, sixty books in 5399 pages) but also for the success it had throughout Europe: it"
"piece, by opposition with Euripide, Sénèque and Racine's versions. Jacques Pradon Jacques Pradon, often called Nicolas Pradon (1632 – 14 January 1698), was a French playwright. Early in his career, he was helped by Pierre Corneille and was introduced to the salons at the Hôtel de Nevers and the Hôtel de Bouillon by Madame Deshoulières. Pradon was born in Rouen and is the author of eight tragedies: ""Pyrame et Thisbé"" (1674) (see Pyramus and Thisbe), ""Tamerlan, ou la mort de Bajazet"" (1676), ""Phèdre et Hippolyte"" (1677), ""La Troade"" (1679), ""Statira"" (1680), ""Regulus"" (1688), ""Germanicus"" (1694) and ""Scipion"" (1697). His plays"
"1731. In France, the first ""tragédie bourgeoise"" was ""Sylvie"" by Paul Landois, which came out in 1741. Years later came two plays by Denis Diderot: ""Le fils naturel"" was first staged in 1757 and ""Le père de famille"" in the following year; while these plays were not strictly tragedies, they treat bourgeois lives in a serious manner atypical of contemporary comedy and provided models for more genuinely tragic works. While ordinary people had always been the subject of comedies, classical and neo-classical theorists asserted that tragic heroes should always be men of noble rank. Aristotle articulates this idea in ""ars"
"to the opera ""Pharamond"". He was the author of many elegiac poems as well as tragedies and novels. He died in Paris. Alexandre Guiraud Pierre Marie Jeanne Alexandre Thérèse Guiraud better known as Alexandre Guiraud (24 December 1788 – 24 February 1847) was a French poet, dramatic author and novelist. Guiraud was born in Limoux, Aude, the son of a rich cloth merchant. He studied at the ""École de droit"" de Toulouse where he created a ""Gymnase littéraire"". He made frequent trips to Paris where the success of his poetry opened the doors to the Académie française to which he"
"accusations that he was polluting the minds of his audiences. He broke all ties with Port-Royal, and proceeded with ""Andromaque"" (1667), which told the story of Andromache, widow of Hector, and her fate following the Trojan War. Amongst his rivals were Pierre Corneille and his brother, Thomas Corneille. Tragedians often competed with alternative versions of the same plot: for example, Michel le Clerc produced an ""Iphigénie"" in the same year as Racine (1674), and Jacques Pradon also wrote a play about ""Phèdre"" (1677). The success of Pradon's work (the result of the activities of a claque) was one of the"
"tragedians include: Claude Boyer, Michel Le Clerc, Jacques Pradon, Jean Galbert de Campistron, Jean de La Chapelle, Antoine d'Aubigny de la Fosse, l'abbé Charles-Claude Geneste, Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon. At the end of the century, in the plays of Crébillon in particular, there occasionally appeared a return to the theatricality of the beginning of the century: multiple episodes, extravagant fear and pity, and the representation of gruesome actions on the stage. Early French opera was particularly popular with the royal court in this period, and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully was extremely prolific (see the composer's article for more on court"
"The plays of August von Kotzebue and René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt established melodrama as the dominant dramatic form of the early 19th century. Kotzebue in particular was the most popular playwright of his time, writing more than 215 plays that were produced all around the world. His play ""The Stranger"" (1789) is often considered the classic melodramatic play. Although monopolies and subsidies were reinstated under Napoleon, theatrical melodrama continued to be more popular and brought in larger audiences than the state-sponsored drama and operas. Melodrama involved a plethora of scenic effects, an intensely emotional but codified acting style, and"
"Jacques Pradon Jacques Pradon, often called Nicolas Pradon (1632 – 14 January 1698), was a French playwright. Early in his career, he was helped by Pierre Corneille and was introduced to the salons at the Hôtel de Nevers and the Hôtel de Bouillon by Madame Deshoulières. Pradon was born in Rouen and is the author of eight tragedies: ""Pyrame et Thisbé"" (1674) (see Pyramus and Thisbe), ""Tamerlan, ou la mort de Bajazet"" (1676), ""Phèdre et Hippolyte"" (1677), ""La Troade"" (1679), ""Statira"" (1680), ""Regulus"" (1688), ""Germanicus"" (1694) and ""Scipion"" (1697). His plays enjoyed a certain limited success, but were severely judged"
"""the greatest French writer of all times"" for excelling in all literary genres. The preface of his play ""Cromwell"" is considered to be the manifesto of the Romantic movement. ""Les Contemplations"" and ""La Légende des siècles"" are considered as ""poetic masterpieces"", Hugo's verse having been compared to that of Shakespeare, Dante and Homer. His novel ""Les Misérables"" is widely seen as one of the greatest novel ever written and ""The Hunchback of Notre Dame"" has remained immensely popular. Other major authors of that century include Alexandre Dumas (""The Three Musketeers"" and ""The Count of Monte-Cristo""), Jules Verne (""Twenty Thousand Leagues"
"— of classical sources that had informed the poetic compositions of ""La Pléiade"", French humanist writers recommended that tragedy should be in five acts and have three main characters of noble rank; the play should begin in the middle of the action (in medias res), use noble language and not show scenes of horror on the stage. Some writers (like Lazare de Baïf and Thomas Sébillet) attempted to link the medieval tradition of morality plays and farces to classical theatre, but Joachim du Bellay rejected this claim and elevated classical tragedy and comedy to a higher dignity. Of greater difficulty"