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Chapter 2 - Drama during the Wars of Religion

A Contextual Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2024

Clare Finburgh Delijani
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths, University of London
Christian Biet
Affiliation:
Université Paris Nanterre
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Summary

This chapter challenges historiographical claims that the theatre created before the seventeenth century was a mere prelude to the symphony of the neoclassical age. French-language plays written between 1550 and 1600 under the aegis of the Pléiade poets, who were charged with renewing the French language by looking back to classical Greek and Roman writings, form the focus of their study. Despite their classical credentials, these plays are best understood not by categorizing them as ‘humanist’, but instead by ‘situating’ them within the history within which they were written: the denominational split brought about by the Protestant Reformation of Christianity in Europe, which provoked a seismic upheaval and called into question representation on social, political and even cosmological levels. Whether Protestant or Catholic, explicitly militant or seemingly apolitical, literal or analogical, these plays were inevitably affected by this crisis, otherwise known as the Wars of Religion. Bouteille and Karsenti conclude that by returning to classical antiquity, Renaissance playwrights sought as much to garland their work with greater prestige as to innovate devices capable of recounting their anguished, conflicted and traumatic world.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Karsenti, Tiphaine, Le Mythe de Troie dans le théâtre français, 1562–1715 (2012). A study of playwriting and politics in adaptations of the Trojan myth in French theatre between the Wars of Religion and the end of the reign of Louis XIV.Google Scholar
Frisch, Andrea, Forgetting Differences: Tragedy, Historiography and the French Wars of Religion (2015). A study of French tragedy in the light of the monarchy’s discourse on the Wars of Religion between 1560 and 1630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buron, Emmanuel and Goeury, Julien, Théâtre tragique du XVI e siècle: Jodelle, Des Masures, La Taille, Garnier (2020). A critical edition of two biblical and two profane sixteenth-century French tragedies, containing comprehensive introductions and useful notes.Google Scholar
Meere, Michael, Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy (2021). A study that examines the place and stakes of violence on the tragic stage in France during the Wars of Religion.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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