Silent Witness: Racine's Non-verbal Annotations of Euripides (Research Monographs in French Studies, 11) - Softcover

Phillippo, Susanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1900755610 ISBN 13: 9781900755610

Publisher: Routledge, 2003

Synopsis

This is an examination of the influence of the plays of Euripides on the French tragedian Racine, gleaned from Racine's markings on the texts. In her study, Phillippo examines the way in which the creative processes linking the two writers may have worked. She concentrates on the largely unexplored evidence supplied by "non-verbal" aspects of the annotations: the markings of lines and passages by underlining, brackets, etc. Such markings suggest how Racine probably understood the Greek "originals", and reveal the qualities of the Greek dramatist to which the French writer appears to have responded.

About this title

About the Author:

Susanna Phillippo is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Newcastle.

Review:

For anyone interested in Euripides and his influence, the research and the arguement here presented offer much to tantalize. (Clara Shaw Hardy, Carleton College The Classical Bulletin, 81 (1), 2005)

Phillippo ... is to be congratulated on finding interest in such apparently unpromising markings and on giving them voice. Indeed, her book is a triumph of sober scholarship and critical imagination. (Michael Hawcroft French Studies, LVIII.3, 2004, 408-9)

Source criticism seems to have caught a second wind lately ... Silent Witness represents an enlightened form of this methodological approach, giving an inside view of Racine’s creative process that allows us to look over his shoulder in the atelier d’artiste. (Ronald W. Tobin L'Esprit Créateur, Vol. XLIV, n. 2, Summer 2004, 97-8)

This book has been painstakingly researched and set out in a manner to facilitate the reader’s understanding of the detailed argument based on close reading of the French and Greek texts. (Rosemary Arnoux The New Zealand Journal of French Studies, 25/1, 2004, 61-2)

It is true that we will never know why Racine marked certain passages, and that we can also argue for the influence of text that is unmarked. The study of sources will necessarily often belong to the domain of informed speculation. But if we accept that literary criticism deals more in persuasion than in certainties, we will be more sympathetic to this well-judged attempt to look at an old question in what is an original, clear-headed, and stimulating way. (John Campbell Modern Language Review, 100.2, April 2005, 500-01)

Phillippo’s conclusions remain firmly within the limits of what can reasonably be deduced from the evidence and the complete listing in an appendix of Racine’s non-verbal annotations allow the sceptic to check against the original Euripidean text. This book has added an important element to the study of Racine’s work. (Mark Bannister International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Fall 2004, 312-13)

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1900755610
• ISBN 13: 9781900755610
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 230