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Athalie (Athalia)
by Jean Baptiste Racine
Athalie (Athalia), with which Racine's dramatic career fitly concluded, was composed, like Esther, for semiprivate performance by the young ladies of the College of Saint Cyr, where it was first acted, as well as afterwards, at Versailles, in 1691. It was not represented at a public theatre till 1716, a delay due, it may be, in some measure to its sacred character, though probably quite as much to the general lack of appreciation with which it had for long to contend. It is now universally acknowledged to deserve either first or second place among Racine's masterpieces, Phèdre and Athalie being rivals for the palm.
The scriptural narrative is faithfully followed as the main outline of the plot; and whatever Racine has added, such as Athaliah's dream, her first sight of the youthful Joas, and the characters of Abner and Mattan, so far from presenting incongruous elements, enhances the dramatic interest of the story.
About the Author
Jean Baptiste Racine (22 December 1639 - 21 April 1699), was one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France (the two other are Molière and Corneille). Racine, a neoclassical master, wrote mostly tragedies such as Phèdre (1677),Andromaque (1677), Athalie (1669), Bérénice (1670), Bajazet (1672),Iphigenia in Aulide (1672) and Britannicus (1669). Racine was the first French playwright to live almost entirely off the earnings from his plays. He was also a member of the French Academy.
Racine had to face great enmity by various parties, most of whom supporting Pierre Corneille. The animosity became so intense that he decided to retire from commercial theater in 1677.
Racine's verse is renowned for elegance and sharpness. The language of Racine is particularly hard to translate.
He died in 1699 from the liver cancer.
About This Edition
Project Bilingual (A division of Wolf Pup Books) is a continuing project making available great original French writers' texts along with their English translation. This edition, which offers after every original language paragraph its translation, makes both grammar and vocabulary checks as painless as possible. Idiomatic forms that could be overlooked can be easily detected.
Furthermore, large paragraphs have been broken down to much smaller units so that the check is as effortless as possible. We do hope that by reading French writers that defined the language itself or whose work permeated the French culture, you will be able to get the maximum benefit from this language series. Although this edition is not a replacement for traditional methods of learning language, it is a very powerful tool to speed up the process once you have attained the intermediate level and beyond.
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