Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille (born June 6, 1606 in Rouen , † October 1, 1684 in Paris ) was a French author who was mainly active as a playwright. On a European scale, all of his oeuvre belongs to the Baroque era . Along with Molière and Jean Racine, he is considered one of the great playwrights of French classical music .

Life and work

Pierre Corneille

Youth and literary beginnings

Corneille grew up as the first of six children of a wealthy royal hunting and fishing overseer in Rouen, where he also attended the Jesuit college and then studied law. At the age of 18 he was admitted to the Parlement de Rouen, the highest court in Normandy, as an intern . When he was 22 years old (1628), his father bought him two smaller judges, one of which was at the parliament.

His real ambition, however, has been to write poems (also in Latin) and plays since he was at school. When the well-known actor Mondory made a guest appearance with his traveling troupe in Rouen in 1629 , Corneille offered him his comedy Mélite , which he had written the previous year at the latest, perhaps as early as 1625. This confusion about six young people who eventually get together as three couples was staged with success in Paris in the winter of 1629/1630 and helped Mondory to establish itself there with a new theater, the Théâtre du Marais .

In the following years Corneille wrote numerous pieces for the Marais. The first was the tragic comedy Clitandre, Ou l'innocence persécutée (Clitandre or the persecuted innocence, 1631), a complicated play about love, jealousy, hatred, attempted murder, confusion and the anger of a prince who believed the title hero, a courtier, as supposed Traitors convicted but then pardoned. With Clitandre , Corneille refers for the first time, if only vaguely, to contemporary events, namely the trial of the anti- Richelieu conspirator Marillac . Clitandre was also the first piece that he had printed, adding a selection of his previously written poems under the title Mélanges poétiques . This was followed by the comedies La Veuve (The Widow, 1633), La Galerie du Palais (The great hall of the [Justice] Palace , 1634), La Suivante (The companion, 1634) and La Place Royale (The King's Square , 1634), a comedy in which Corneille seems to create a problem of his own with the disorder of attachment of the protagonist Alidor, which may have been exacerbated by his disappointed childhood love to a certain Catherine Hue.

These early pieces are now considered to be less important works for young people, but at that time they looked new because, despite their conventional presentation, they seemed to reflect contemporary society and mostly played explicitly in Paris. Accordingly, they had reasonable to great success , La Galerie even very great success, and early on gave Corneille the status of a recognized author.

Although he still lived in Rouen, where he also exercised his offices, on his frequent visits to Paris he had come into contact with literary circles and salons, including the Marquise de Rambouillet . Corneille was not considered a witty entertainer there and reading from his plays was not very effective, but the occasional poems that he contributed to this or that social occasion were appreciated.

In 1633 he worked as a panegyric for the first time , an aspect of his work that is little known today: On behalf of the Bishop of Rouen, he wrote a poem of welcome and praise on the occasion of a visit by King Louis XIII. and Richelieu.

In 1634, after the great success of the tragedy Sophonisbe by Jean Mairet , Corneille also tried his hand at this genre, initially unconvincingly, with Médée ( Medea , performed 1635), his first play with a material from antiquity.

The way up

In 1635 he became a member of a group of five authors in the service of Richelieu , among others, together with the somewhat younger Jean Rotrou , who tried to turn the theater into a place of political propaganda for a strengthening of the absolute monarchy. After two jointly written pieces, Corneille ceased to work, but received the annual salary ("pension") of 1500 Francs (about what a modest person and a domestics needed) until Richelieu's death in 1642.

Also from 1635 Corneille apparently dealt with Spanish literature . On the one hand, his competitor and colleague Jean Rotrou had recently begun to rewrite Spanish plays for the French theater. On the other hand, with the beginning of the decades-long Franco-Spanish war , Spain also received political interest.

In the winter of 1635/1636 Corneille brought out L'Illusion comique , a comedy in which he used the popular baroque motif of the theater in the theater and at the same time, in the spirit of his employer Richelieu, promoted the upgrading of the acting profession, again very successfully . Within a fairytale-like framework, L'Illusion plays other acts that are only recognizable as mere theater in retrospect (in which, among other things, the boastful warrior Matamoro turns out to be a coward and loses the woman he is courting to his follower Clindor). L'Illusion is the last piece in which Corneille ignores the doctrine of the three units (place, time and action), which has just been lively discussed in Parisian literary circles.

The breakthrough with Le Cid

Corneille coat of arms from 1637

After the Spaniards conquered the border and fortress town of Corbie in the summer of 1636 , but lost it again after a long struggle, Corneille completed a tragic comedy in late autumn that seems to contain references to this fight: Le Cid . The performance of the piece towards the end of the year was Corneille's final breakthrough. The play is considered to be the beginning of the high time of classical theater. The action of the Cid takes place in Spain in the 11th century and is based on the play Las Mocedades del Cid by Guillén de Castro from 1618, in which the heroic deeds of the young Cid , the medieval Spanish national hero, are described. The plot is a classic example of the conflict between love and duty that manifests itself in the engaged aristocratic couple Rodrigue and Chimène: Rodrigue, obeying the commandments of family honor, has to challenge the father of his fiancée to a duel, because he has his own, already elderly father offended by a slap in the face. Chimène, on the other hand, has to demand the death penalty from the king after Rodrigue kills her father in the duel. After some back and forth, Rodrigue is pardoned by the king for reasons of state and betrothed to Chimène again. The reason for this is that he has now rendered services to the fatherland by defeating the army of the Moors before Seville as a general . The king's decision is, however, also confirmed as morally correct by the fact that Chimène professes her love when she mistakenly assumes for a moment that an advocate she accepted, who in turn had challenged Rodrigue to a duel, had defeated and killed him.

Le Cid was one of the greatest events in French theater history. The success was so spectacular that Louis XIII. Immediately elevated Corneille's father to the nobility , with the result that the son was already born noble. Several imitators hurried to continue the plot with their own pieces (e.g. Le Mariage du Cid or La Mort du Cid ). However, envious people and brokers quickly appeared, including rival playwrights Georges Scudéry and Jean Mairet . They attacked Corneille ostensibly with the argument that he had violated the rules of the "bienséance" (propriety, modesty), plagiarized his role model and also failed to properly observe the three units that are now considered mandatory - especially those of place and time. When Corneille reacted confidently in early 1637 with an ironic little script, the Excuse à Ariste (apology to A.), he sparked a heated controversy, the Querelle du Cid , in which other writers interfered with pamphlets (around 35 of them have survived ). The month-long dispute ended with the intervention of Richelieu, who had been annoyed by the positive portrayal of the duel between nobles, which he had repeatedly forbidden, but who liked the praise of the raison d'état. He commissioned the young Académie Française to deliver a judgment that was mainly written by Jean Chapelain and that was negative but conciliatory.

While the audience continued to applaud the cid , which in the long run remained the most played piece of Corneille, the latter withdrew to Rouen unsettled. Here he tried in vain in 1638 to prevent a double occupation of his offices, which meant a halving of his income from them and thus also reduced their resale value.

The great tragedies

"Cinna or the grace of Augustus".
Title page of the 1643 edition

It was not until 1640, in the midst of uprising-like turmoil in Rouen, which had been triggered by tax increases due to the war and were finally suppressed by troops, that Corneille wrote his next play: the tragedy Horace , set in ancient Rome , in which he describes the legendary material of the struggle between the gentes of the Horatians and Curiatier processed. The drama clarifies theses that although interpersonal ties, for example between spouses and siblings, are of great value, the benefit and fame of the fatherland have priority and a ruler may therefore amnesty a lawbreaker, here a sister-murderer in affect, if he have made a contribution to the state. Corneille dedicated the print version of the work to Richelieu, who had found it good after a private performance. In order to demonstrate historical fidelity and respect for the Aristotelian units, Corneille provided many of his pieces with sources in the original language (in this case with the report of the Roman historian Livy ) as well as with an examination with explanations on the respective unity of time, place and action .

At the beginning of 1641, Corneille Cinna, ou la clémence d'Auguste , concluded a play about the conspiracy of some republican patricians against Emperor Augustus and his generous, but also politically wise forgiveness, when he discovered the plot. The emerging Cabale des Importants , a contemporary intrigue of high-ranking aristocrats against Richelieu and his policy of centralistic absolutism, is clearly reflected in this work .

Horace and Cinna were very successful, and the latter piece, which is considered the author's most formally successful piece, also became his most played after the Cid . Nevertheless, Corneille's artistic creativity stalled in the following years. In 1641, at the age of 35, very late for the time, he married the judge's daughter Marie de Lampérière, eleven years his junior, with whom he would have four sons and two daughters. In 1642, when his father died, he took over his father's house and the guardianship of two siblings who were still underage, including his 19-year-old brother Thomas , who later became a playwright.

It was not until the beginning of 1643 that Corneille brought out a new play, Polyeucte martyr (“ Polyeuctos the Martyr ”), a “Christian tragedy” set in Armenia around 250 . It became a success with the audience, thanks mainly to the love story interwoven with religious events. The clergy, however, reprimanded the profanation of religious material through its representation on the stage.

Also in 1643, Corneille succeeded in gaining the favor of Cardinal Mazarin , Richelieu's successor, with a poem of praise, and receiving an annual pension of 1,000 francs from him.

After Polyeucte , Corneille had a whole series of pieces in which he pursued the path he had taken with Le Cid , Horace and Cinna and thus gained renown. The actions, all of which are based on historical material, usually have a covert reference to the politics of the time and revolve around high-ranking people who resolve the conflict between inclination and duty in favor of the latter, in particular in terms of the reasons of state, but also the ethics of René Descartes . The most important titles up to 1648 are La Mort de Pompée ("The Death of Pompey ", 1643), Rodogune, princesse des Parthes ("Rodogune, the Parthian princess", 1644), Héraclius (1647). The only comedies from this period are Le Menteur ("The Liar", 1643) and La Suite du Menteur (1644). The first mentioned more successful is considered the first French character comedy before Molière and an important role model for this. The tragedy Andromède , which Corneille wrote in 1647 on Mazarin's order, but which was not performed until 1650 due to adverse circumstances, was his first piece with vocal interludes and the use of machines .

In 1647 Corneille was accepted into the Académie Française . After he had published a first anthology of his pieces in 1644, he brought out a second one in 1648. It now seemed fully established.

The time of the Fronde

After that, however, he got caught up in the turmoil of the anti-absolutist uprisings of the so-called Fronde (1648-52) against Queen Anna , who ruled for her son Louis XIV , who was still underage . Before that, however, Corneille came into conflict with Mazarin, who continued the absolutist policies of his predecessor Richelieu. In 1649, for example, the Dom Sanche d ' Aragon, which was initially well received by the public, was ultimately a failure because Prince Condé , the highest-ranking co-leader of the Frondeurs who ruled Paris, understood the play as a homage to Mazarin and lowered his thumb.

In return, Corneille was rewarded by Mazarin in early 1650 after his preliminary victory, when he received the high-level office of solicitor of the Normandy Estates Assembly at the Parlement of Rouen, whose owner, a Frondeur, had been deposed. After that he was able to sell his two previous, smaller offices.

Nevertheless, he seems to have soon broken away from Mazarin inwardly, because in 1650 he and Nicomède visibly paid homage to Prince Condé, who had been captured and had become a kind of anti-absolutist figure of light. However, Corneille had to experience that Condé was finally defeated after his release in 1651 and that as a result Pertharite , a piece around a king who had been ousted from the throne, failed in Paris because the subject became obsolete after the victorious return of the young Louis XIV and the Queen Mother to the capital had become.

Corneille, who moreover had to give back his new office to his predecessor, who had meanwhile been amnestied and reinstated, withdrew disappointed. During this time of frustration, he mainly worked on a verse transmission of the Imitatio Christi of Thomas a Kempis . It appeared from 1652 to 1654 in three volumes under the title L'Imitation de Jesu-Christ (The Imitation of Jesus Christ), earned him a lot of recognition and was reprinted several times. It is little known that Corneille was often active as a religious author.

A new beginning in Paris

Corneille did not end his inner emigration until 1658. One reason was undoubtedly that in the summer months the Molière traveling company made a long guest appearance in Rouen, where they also played a few pieces by Corneilles. This brought him into contact with the troupe and fell in love with the young actress Marquise du Parc . When the troupe moved on to Paris in the autumn, he had an additional reason to follow the long persuasion of his brother Thomas, who had started his own career as a playwright in the capital in 1656 . Corneille also attracted the favor of the finance minister Nicolas Fouquet , who acted as a grand patron , who offered him a pension of 2,000 francs. He now traveled frequently to Paris again and, launched and flanked by the more socially skilled Thomas, moved as a recognized author and gallant poet in the circle around Nicolas Fouquet and in other salons. He soon tried again as a playwright by writing the tragedy Œdipe ( Oedipus ) on a suggestion from Fouquet . The performance in early 1659 by the Molières troupe and with Du Parc as Jocaste turned out to be a glamorous event, but it seemed to some that Corneille had slacked off.

The next piece followed in 1660: the tragedy La Toison d'or (The Golden Fleece ), which was commissioned by a wealthy nobleman, Alexandre de Rieux, Marquis de Sourdéac , and with elaborate machines in his Norman castle in summer and in Paris in winter was performed. In the same year Corneille brought out a new complete edition of his pieces, now in three volumes. He opened each volume with a Discours sur la poésie dramatique and left out the pompous dedication addresses that he had put in front of the earlier individual editions of the pieces, but now apparently considered below his dignity. In fact, as “le grand Corneille” he had become a kind of top dog in Parisian theater life.

Corneille survived the fall of Fouquet, who was arrested in 1661 and sentenced for enrichment in office, unscathed. He quickly found a new patron in Duke Henri de Guise , who took him and Thomas (who had married a sister of his wife) into his city ​​palace in 1662, together with their families . After moving from Rouen to Paris, the Corneille brothers lived there for the rest of their lives, mostly in the same house as they did in their hometown.

The slow decline with no descent

In 1663, the new minister Colbert compiled a list of authors whom he and his young king considered worthy of a pension and from whom, in return, regime-friendly and panegyric texts were expected. Corneille also came up with a gratifying 2000 francs. He immediately met the expectations that were directed at him with the note of thanks Remerciement présenté au Roi en 1663 and did so frequently in the following. As early as 1664, for example, in a sonnet , he asked the king to reissue his letter of nobility, which, along with hundreds of others, had been collected by a Colbert decree. Corneille later asked him poetically to promote the careers of his older sons, a clergyman and two officers.

With the passably successful Œdipe and the much admired machine piece La Toison d'or , Corneille had fully resumed his work as a playwright. As before, he mainly wrote tragedies with material from older, mostly Roman history ( Sertorius , 1661/62; Sophonisbe , 1662; Othon , 1664; Agésilas , 1665/66; Attila , 1666/67). All in all, however, he now preferred rather novel-like acts, imitating his now very successful brother Thomas. In doing so, he tried to respond to the public's taste, which had changed considerably: because of the domestic political calm that reigned after the victory of absolutism under Mazarin, but also because of the economic and cultural optimism that France felt after the end of the war against Spain (1659 ) and the beginning of the sole rule of the young Louis XIV in 1661. All of the new pieces were performed, some of them by the Molières troupe, which had been playing in the capital since 1659. They always had a certain degree of success, but they no longer caught the spirit of the times. Obviously, they largely lacked the reference to political reality that had characterized those pieces that had been made in the turbulent times before and during the Fronde. In addition, they soon suffered from being compared with the pieces by their younger rival Jean Racine , who from 1665 began to dominate the Paris stage and to determine the taste.

In 1667, Corneille acted again as a panegyricist, welcoming Louis XIV, who returned victorious from the war of devolution in August, with the poem Au Roi sur son retour de Flandre (The King on his return from Flanders) and a little later with the long poem Les victoires du Roi in 1667 .

When at the end of 1667 Racine finally prevailed with the tragedy Andromaque , Corneille was so frustrated that he thought of a complete retirement from the theater. In this situation he wrote another long pious work in 1669, the Office de la Vierge traduit en français, tant en vers qu'en prose, par P. Corneille, avec les sept psaumes pénitentiaux, les vêpres et complies du dimanche et tous les hymnes you breviaire romain . It came out in print at the beginning of 1670 with a dedication to Queen Marie-Thérèse. Unlike the imitation from 1652–1654, however , the Office received hardly any attention and was not reissued.

The last few years

At the end of 1670, Corneille attempted a new comeback with the "comédie héroïque" Tite et Bérénice , urged by old friends and admirers as well as by enemies and envious people of Racine . However, at the same time, the now self-confident Racine brought out the themed piece Bérénice , which was rated by the audience as the significantly better one.

Nevertheless, Corneille wrote three more pieces, which, however, were no longer popular: Psyché (1670/71), Pulchérie (1671/72) and Suréna, général des Parthes (1674). The “ballet tragedy” Psyché , whose plan and first act came from Molière, while the last three quarters were written by Corneille, occupies a special position . Today, the last, the tragedy Suréna, is considered the best piece of his late work .

Its high status in the literary scene and in Parisian society was true Corneille until the end of his life, thanks to the skill and the influence of his more loyal brother and thanks to my colleague Jean Donneau de Visé , which was founded in his 1672 journal Le Mercure Galant faithful stood by Corneille. In addition, he often received praise from Racine's enemies and envious people who tried to offend him.

Corneille also retained his admirers in Parisian aristocratic circles and at court, and King Ludwig was also favored by him, to whom he wrote the long poem Les victoires du Roi sur les États de Hollande en l'année 1672 (The victories of the king over the Dutch estates in 1672 Year 1672). In 1675 and 1676 he was satisfied that Ludwig had him perform four or six older pieces at court.

The occasional statement that Corneille is impoverished in old age is incorrect.

After his death, his armchair was given to his brother Thomas in the Académie Française, whose meetings he had always attended conscientiously. Former rival Jean Racine gave a laudatory speech in honor of Corneille.

Aftermath

With around 35 pieces, Corneille influenced all dramatists next to and immediately after him, especially Racine; But he also remained a role model for the following generations of authors. B. for Voltaire . Accordingly, he was and is still considered to be one of the greatest French dramatists and the greatest tragedy alongside Racine, who, despite his much narrower oeuvre, is often considered the greater.

Due to his success in France, Corneille's plays were broadcast by German theater troupes during his lifetime. As a result, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing made Corneille and his plays, which were on the program of the Hamburg National Theater , one of the main subjects of his drama-theoretical polemics in the Hamburg Dramaturgy . For Lessing, Corneille became the representative of a French classical theater tradition that was strongly present on the German stage, against which he wrote. When trying to work towards an independent national stage poetry, Lessing Corneille et al. a. the wrong interpretation of the Aristotelian poetics , lack of genius , bad motivation technique, since it is not oriented towards human nature, and all in all "misrepresented characters" are the reproach.

Corneille's brother Thomas, who was even more successful at times, has been largely forgotten for a long time.

The Corneille / Molière controversy

At the center of this controversy is the controversial authorship of Molière's works . It is about clarifying the question of whether Pierre Corneille has written some works, which are traditionally attributed to Molière , as his ghostwriter .

In the 21st century, attempts were made to resolve this issue with the help of mathematical- stylometric methods of computer philology .

Works

(The names of the pieces as tragédie , comédie or tragi-comédie are the Corneilles themselves. They do not always correspond to the current definition of the terms. The years are those of the time of origin.)

• Mélite (comédie), 1625?, Auff. 1629
• Clitandre (tragi-comédie, later renamed tragédie), 1630/31
• La Veuve, Ou le Traître trahi (comédie), 1631/32
• La Galerie du Palais (comédie), 1632/33
• La Place Royale (comédie), 1634
• Médée (tragédie), 1635, texts établi et prés. par André de Leyssac, Genève: Droz, 1978 [Textes littéraires français, 258]
• L'Illusion comique (comédie), 1636
• Le Cid (tragi-comédie, later renamed tragédie), 1636/1637
• Horace (tragédie), 1640
• Cinna ou la clémence d´Auguste (tragedy), 1641
• Polyeucte (tragédie), 1643 (after the martyr report of St. Polyeuctus )
• La Mort de Pompée (tragédie), 1641/42
• Le Menteur (comédie), 1643
• La Suite du Menteur (comédie), 1643
• Rodogune (tragédie), 1644 new edition: Rodogune . Gallimard-Jeunesse, 2004, ISBN 2-07-041946-0 (French). E-book: Rodogune, Princesse des Parthes . Phonereader, ISBN 2-84854-580-6  ( formally incorrect ) (French, phonereader.eu ). German: Rodogune . Rowohlt Theaterverlag ( rowohlt-theaterverlag.de ). - Tragedy about the Parthian princess Rhodogune and her fight with the Syrian queen Cleopatra Thea Euergetes over her sons Seleukos Philometor and Antiochus Grypos . Alludes to the reign of Anna of Austria 1643–1651 and to the political opponents of that time, Prince Condé and Prince Gaston d'Orléans.
• Théodore (= Theodora, tragédie chrétienne ). 1645
• Héraclius (tragédie), 1646
• Andromède (tragédie), 1647, Auff. 1650
• Don Sanche d'Aragon (comédie héroïque), 1649
• Nicomède (tragédie), 1650
• Pertharite (tragédie), 1651
• Œdipe (tragédie), 1658/59
• Trois Discours sur la poésie dramatique , 1660
• La Toison d'or (tragédie), 1660 (staged with elaborate machineries)
• Sertorius (tragédie), 1662 ( urn : nbn: de: gbv: 9-g-4890649 digitized version of the German edition from 1694 in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Digital Library)
• Othon (tragédie), 1664
• Agésilas (tragédie), 1666
• Attila (tragédie), 1667
• Tite et Bérénice (comédie héroïque), 1670
• Psyché , 1671 (The plan and beginning of this "ballet day-tragedy" are by Molière.)
• Pulchérie (comédie heroïque), 1672
• Les victoires du Roi sur les États de Hollande en l'année 1672 , (poem of homage to Louis XIV.), 1672
• Suréna (tragédie), 1674

literature

• Georges Couton: Corneille et la tragédie politique . (= Que sais-je? ). Paris 1985, ISBN 2-13-038375-0 .
• Georges Forestier: Essai de génétique théâtrale: Corneille à l'oeuvre . Klincksieck, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-252-03059-3 .
• Angela S. Goulet: L'univers théâtral de Corneille: paradoxe et subtilité héroïques . Cambridge, Mass. 1978, ISBN 0-674-92928-4 .
• Astrid Grewe: "Vertu" in the parlance of Corneilles and his time. A contribution to the intellectual and social history of the French 17th century . University Press C. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0885-5 .
• Klaus Heitmann : The French theater of the 16th and 17th centuries. In: New handbook of literary studies. Volume 9, Frankfurt 1972, ISBN 3-7997-0094-3 , pp. 278-289.
• Erich Köhler : Lectures on the history of French literature. Pre-classical . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1983, pp. 117-189. (An excellent representation of Corneille)
• Wolfgang Mittag: Individual and State in the Dramatic Work of Pierre Corneilles . Dissertation. Munster 1976.
• Ralf Nestmeyer : French poets and their homes. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-458-34793-3 .
• Ada Ritter: Bibliography on Corneille . 1958–1983, Erftstadt 1983.
• Franziska Sick: Theater - Illusion - Audience. Aspects of the Baroque in France. In: Anselm painter, Ángel San Miguel, Richard Schwaderer (ed.): Theater and audience in the European baroque. 2002, ISBN 3-631-38846-2 , pp. 77-94.
• Horst Turk : Theater and Drama - theoretical concepts from Corneille to Dürrenmatt. Narr, Tübingen 1992, ISBN 3-87808-388-2 .
• Reinhold Schneider : Corneille's ethos in the era of Louis XIV.: E. Study. Bühler, Baden-Baden 1947.

Web links

Commons : Pierre Corneille  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Pierre Corneille  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Pierre Corneille in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Pierre Corneille  in the German Digital Library
• Publications by and about Pierre Corneille in VD 17 .
• Works by Pierre Corneille at Zeno.org .
• Works by Pierre Corneille in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Article Corneille in Gert Pinkernell Name, title and dates of the French Literature (main source for the section "Life and Creation")
• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
• Biblioweb: Biography, Bibliography, Analysis ( Memento of January 14, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (French)
• Dossier Pierre Corneille , L'Encyclopédie de L'Agora (French, with sources on the dispute over the authorship of Corneille 's works of Molière )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Monika Fick: Lessing manual. Life - work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-476-02248-6 , pp. 342-347.
2. ↑ MOLIÈRE - You don't know. In: Der Spiegel. 24/1957.
3. ↑ Christof Schöch: Stilometric Experiments, or: Authorship and genre affiliation in the French classical theater. on the website of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
4. ^ Pierre Corneille “Medea”, German premiere 1992, Berlin (direction and translation: Christian Bertram) - ( mahagonny-ev.de ).
5. ↑ ^{a b} Henning Krauss, Till R. Kuhnle, Hanspeter Plocher (eds.): 17th century. Theatre. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-86057-902-9 (individual contributions to Le Cid. Cinna and Tite et Bérénice )
6. ^ Gervais E. Reed: Visual Imagery and Christian Humanism in Rodogune . In: The French Review . tape 63 , no. 3 , February 1990, p. 464 , JSTOR : 394491 (English, web facsimile).
7. ↑ Michael Wenzel: Heroine Gallery - Beauty Gallery. Studies on the genesis and function of female portrait galleries 1470–1715 . Dissertation Philosophical-Historical Faculty of the Ruprecht-Karls-University, Heidelberg 2001, note 259, p. 86 , doi : 10.11588 / artdok.00000044 (dissertation).