Books about Britannicus from Amazon.com

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Price: $15.58 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is the first volume of what is planned to be a complete traversal in English of Racine's twelve plays, only the third time such a project has been undertaken in the three hundred years since Racine's death. Volume I comprises "Iphigenia," "Andromache" and "Britannicus"; all three are potent blends of passion and politics, explosive in their confrontations between Racine's highly charged, highly volatile characters.

For this new translation, Geoffrey Alan Argent has taken a fresh approach: he has rendered these three plays in a verse form that Racine might very well have utilized had he been English, namely, the rhymed "heroic" couplet, which, as Argent powerfully argues in his stimulating Introduction, is particularly well-suited to convey the genius of Racine.

While his versions are remarkably faithful to Racine's textual content and emotional tone, Argent's aim has been to produce, not something that sounds like bad Racine, but something that sounds like good English. To effect this, he has brought to bear on Racine's rhymed alexandrines all the resources of English prosody, allowing their English counterparts to perform according to their own nature, rather than wrenching the verse into a superficial resemblance to the original.

Argent's translations, resuscitating a great and still-viable English verse form, should prove to be the first complete traversal worthy of "the greatest French author" (in the words of Roland Barthes)..
Price: $12.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Jean Racine remains to this day the greatest of French poetic dramatists This volume brings together three of his most important plays in an entirely new translation. C.H. Sisson captures the clarity, passion, and rhythm of Racine's language as he portrays characters wrestling with ambition, treachery, religion, and love..
Price: $25.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595-1640) was known in his lifetime as the Christian Horace. He was one of the most famous Neo-Latin poets of the Baroque, widely read, commented upon, and translated throughout Europe. He was nominated Poet Laureate by Pope Urban VIII. His Latin poetry was also read, translated, and imitated in England, especially from 1646 until the first half of the 19th century. The first edition of Sarbiewski's English translations, by George Hils, was published in 1646. From that time onwards, Sarbiewski was translated by a variety of poets ranging from Hils to such famous authors as Vaughan and Coleridge. His poetry was universally read in grammar schools and used as a medium of improving the knowledge of Latin during a period exceeding two centuries. Thanks to Sarbiewski, English poets started to imitate Horace, which was an important factor in overcoming the Pindaric tradition. Sarbiewski's oeuvre was also attractive owing to its immersion in various cultural traditions such as Stoicism, Ignatian spirituality, Platonism, and Hermeticism..
Price: $23.67 [Notify me when price goes down.]