ABSTRACT
The great tragedies, Cinna, Horace, Polyeucte, prove that Corneille had not only grasped the rules of the psychological tragedy better than anybody else, but also that it was he who brought this art-form, quickly and forcefully, to its first climax. The rules and all possible restraints suited Jean Racine’s purpose: they simply provided a base for his quest for beauty and truth about man. He incarnates the spirit of all that is best about classicism, he brings it in a few years to an unsurpassed peak. The French classic most often quoted by the English Augustan poets was probably Boileau. Nicolas Boileau contributed greatly to shaping French classicism and he summed it up in his famous Art Poetique. His didacticism rather than his original compositions was partly responsible for the survival of classicism in the eighteenth century and, who knows, for the dearth of poetry in France until the advent of Andre Chenier.
