The Complete Plays of Jean Racine Volume 3 Iphigenia [Paperback]

This is the third volume of a projected translation into English of all twelve of Jean Racines playsonly the third time such a project has been undertaken. For this new translation, Geoffrey Alan Argent has rendered these plays in the verse form that Racine might well have used had he been English: namely, the heroic couplet. Argent has exploited the couplets compressed power and flexibility to produce a work of English literature, a verse drama as gripping in English as Racines is in French.

Complementing the translation are the illuminating Discussion, intended as much to provoke discussion as to provide it, and the extensive Notes and Commentary, which offer their own fresh and thought-provoking insights.

In Iphigenia, his ninth play, Racine returns to Greek myth for the first time since Andromache. To Euripidess version of the tale he adds a love interest between Iphigenia and Achilles. And dissatisfied with the earlier resolutions of the Iphigenia myth (her actual death or her eleventh-hour rescue by a dea ex machina), Racine creates a wholly original character, Eriphyle, who, in addition to providing an intriguing new denouement, serves the dual dramatic purpose of triangulating the love interest and galvanizing the wholesome family values of this play by a jolt of supercharged passion.