Jean Baptiste Racine

Geoffrey Alan Argent

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.

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