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Jean Racine | |
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![]() Portrait of Racine | |
Born | Jean-Baptiste Racine 21 December 1639 La Ferté-Milon, Picardy, France |
Died | 21 April 1699 Paris, France | (aged 59)
Occupation | Dramatist |
Period | Seventeenth century |
Genre | Tragedy (primarily), comedy |
Literary movement | Classicalism, Jansenism |
Notable works | Andromaque, Phèdre, Athalie |
Jean-Baptiste Racine (/ræˈsiːn/ rass-EEN, US also /rəˈsiːn/ rə-SEEN; French: [ʒɑ̃ batist ʁasin]; 22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western tradition and world literature. Racine was primarily a tragedian, producing such "examples of neoclassical perfection"[1] as Phèdre,[2] Andromaque,[3] and Athalie.[4] He did write one comedy, Les Plaideurs,[5] and a muted tragedy, Esther[6] for the young.
Racine's plays displayed his mastery of the dodecasyllabic (12 syllable) French alexandrine. His writing is renowned for its elegance, purity, speed, and fury,[7][8] and for what American poet Robert Lowell described as a "diamond-edge",[9] and the "glory of its hard, electric rage".[10] Racine's dramaturgy is marked by his psychological insight, the prevailing passion of his characters, and the nakedness[clarification needed] of both plot and stage.
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