His research interest lies in French theater in the early modern period. Ainan: Thank you Gary for the introduction and the opportunity to come on your show. When we think of English theater, we immediately associate it with William Shakespeare who has left behind such an influential corpus that still remains the frame of reference for daily and academic discourse.
The connection between Racine and Shakespeare was made most notably by the Romantic writer Stendhal in his book titled, well, Racine et Shakespeare. In these plays you find representations of human weakness, noble sacrifice, and all-consuming inner struggle.
The main story and characters were inspired by two main classical sources, which are Hippolytus by Euripides from the 5 th century BCE and Phaedra by Seneca from the first century CE. Now that the context is out of the way we can get to the meat and potatoes. I hope that by the end of this episode I will have made what has to be an imperfect attempt at capturing the three Aristotelian objectives of poetry that Racine has so masterfully accomplished: to instruct, to please, and to move.
The story takes place in Troezen in the Greek Peloponnesus. Troezen is a kind of backwater that is part of the kingdom of Athens ruled by King Theseus. The reason why the characters find themselves in Troezen is because of its remoteness from the political center of Athens. It is almost a site of exile and imprisonment.
Since we have already mentioned a few of the characters, let us introduce them in greater detail. In this play Theseus plays the role of both the head of the household and the political structure. Theseus inherited the kingdom of Athens from his father Aegeus, the adoptive son of king Erectheus. To secure his legitimacy Theseus has earlier on purged all the Pallantides except one.
