Engaging with recent thinking about performance; political theory and canon formation; this study addresses the significance of the formal changes in seventeenth-century French theater. Each chapter takes up a particularity of seventeenth-century theatrical style and stagingrdquo;for example; the clearing of violence from the stagerdquo;and shows how the conceptualization of these French stylistic shifts appropriates a rich body of Italian political writing on questions of action; temporality; and law. The theaters appropriation of political concerns and vocabularies; the author argues; proffers an astute reflection on the practices of government that draws attention to questions obscured in reason of state; such as the instrumentalization of womens bodies. In a new reading of tragedies about government; the author shows how the canonical figure of Pierre Corneille is formally engaged with the political strategizing he often appears to repudiate; and in so doing challenges a literary history that has read neoclassicism largely as a display of pure French style.
2016-11-23 2016-11-23File Name: B01MZX9U8R
Review
