French classicism
A seventeenth-century French artistic and literary movement that favored order, clarity, restraint, and models drawn from ancient Greece and Rome.
Aristotelian poetics: A theory of poetry and drama derived from Aristotle, especially his account of tragedy in the Poetics. French dramatists adapted its account of dramatic unity and tragic structure.
Le Cid: A tragicomedy by Pierre Corneille, first performed in 1637 and set in medieval Spain. Its success and its breach of emerging dramatic expectations provoked the Querelle du Cid.
Pierre Corneille: A French dramatist whose tragedies and tragicomedies include Le Cid and Horace. His plays helped define the movement’s dramatic possibilities and its controversies.
Baroque: A European artistic style marked by dramatic movement, elaborate form, and heightened contrast. Its expressive abundance contrasts with classicism’s preference for restraint and ordered form.
Three unities: Rules prescribing unity of action, time, and place in drama. These rules became a prominent test of dramatic order in French classical theater.
Phèdre: A tragedy by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677, about forbidden desire and its destructive consequences. Its compressed action and controlled verse exemplify French classical tragedy.
Jean Racine: A French dramatist known for tragedies including Andromaque, Britannicus, and Phèdre. His tragedies are central examples of classical structure and psychological intensity.
Romanticism: A cultural movement that emphasized imagination, emotion, individuality, and the sublime. Romantic writers challenged classicist authority and its standards of restraint and imitation.
Decorum: The principle that style, behavior, and subject matter should suit their context and social rank. It linked artistic restraint to believable character and social propriety.
Tartuffe: A comedy by Molière in which a religious hypocrite manipulates a wealthy household. It uses comic structure and social observation to expose hypocrisy.