To read and understand French classical tragedy is to penetrate a rhetorical code that reduces myth and history to certain powerful common denominators. Against a backdrop of absolutist notions of statecraft Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine wrote plays that transcend their particular historical moment to uncover deep, primal truths about the human psyche and its relation to the cosmos. This course will examine some of the most profoundly troubling and challenging works of these two seventeenth-century playwrights in order to reach a clearer understanding of why their resonance as literature came to be refracted through the richest inflections of modern criticism: Goldmann and neo-Marxism, Barthes and the French New Criticism, psychoanalysis, and structuralism. Among the works to be read are: Corneille's Le Cid, Horace, Cinna, and Polyeucte, and Racine's Iphigenie, Phedre, Andromaque, and Mithridate. Conducted in French. Requirements: class participation, two papers, an oral presentation, and a one-hour exam. Prerequisite: French 109, 110, 112, or permission of instructor.