De la tragédie classique au drame romantique en France

In France, during the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries, classical tragedy and comedy were the highest forms of French literature. Suddenly, on 10 February 1829, the Romantic drama triumphed. This drama, reacting against the classical trends, rejects the influence of Antiquity, the unities of time and place, the use of a noble poetical style; and instead mixes in the same play tragic and comic elements. How did this complete change come about? It is the result of a slow evolution, which can be traced all through the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth centuries. The mixture of genres started from the comedy which was freer than the tragedy. Comedy became progressively more serious and melodramatic, while the tragedy started to treat historical subjects, under the influence of Shakespeare, and of German, Italian, and British contemporary playwrights and novelists. (In French) (FB)