LA Gloire

In a charming collection of elegant essays, one of the twentieth century's leading men of letters turns his vast knowledge and worldly authority to the texts of two seventeenth-century French dramatists. Louis Auchincloss considers sixteen plays by Pierre Corneille (1606-84) and his younger theatrical rival, Jean Racine (1639-99). Musing on the ideas that informed the court of the Sun King and on what classical allusions meant to them, Auchincloss offers thoughtful readings, new translations, and a wealth of shrewd observations about French classic tragedy, passion, self-sacrifice,…