La Thébaïde

This ancient Theban drama attracted great interest among 17th century French writers. The young Racine drew principally upon sources from Sophocles and Euripides, as well as the Antigone [fr] of Rotrou, and the Oedipus of Pierre Corneille. Molière may also have assisted in the play's composition.

Plot

The plot is the same as the rest of the Theban plays and poems, in which

Analysis

Traditional scholarship saw limited merit in the play, deeming it an only partially successful work of a still maturing dramatist. In his groundbreaking work On Racine, however, Roland Barthes treats the play as seriously as Racine's greatest Greek dramas, including Phèdre and Iphigénie).^[2] Since Barthes, recent scholarship has shown greater interest, exploring, for example, power relationships driving the action, and, more broadly, fundamental problems of political philosophy that arise with respect to the legitimacy of the modern state.^[3]

References

Further reading

• Hochman, Stanley, editor (1984). McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama (second edition, 5 volumes). New York: McGraw-Hill.
  ISBN 978-0-07-079169-5
  .

• The Thebaid, or The Brothers at War public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• The Thebaïd; or, The Brothers at War (translated by Robert Bruce Boswell, 1890) at Internet Archive

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