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This medal
has been minted in 1985 to commemorate the French dramatist, Pierre CORNEILLE,
1606 - 1684.
This medal
has been designed by E. Karolak
Pierre
Corneille (6
June 1606 – 1 October 1684) was a French tragedian who was one of the three
great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. He has been called “the
founder of French tragedy” and produced plays for nearly forty years.
av; Pierre
Corneille
rv. The
commemorative inscription
diameter
– 68 mm (2¾“)
weight
– 37.10 gr, (1.31 oz)
metal
– bronze, beautiful authentic patina
Corneille was born at Rouen, France, to Marthe le Pesant de
Boisguilbert and Pierre Corneille, a distinguished lawyer. He was given a
rigorous Jesuit education at the then named Collège
de Bourbon which has been known as the Lycée
Pierre Corneille
since 1873. At 18 he began to study law but his practical legal endeavors were
largely unsuccessful. Corneille’s father secured two magisterial posts for him
with the
The
year 1634 brought more attention to Corneille. He was selected to write verses
for the Cardinal
Richelieu’s
visit to
The
five were selected to realize
In
the years directly following this break with
The
original 1637 edition of the play was subtitled a tragicomedy, acknowledging that it
intentionally defies the classical tragedy/comedy distinction. Even though Le Cid was an enormous
popular success, it was the subject of a heated argument over the norms of
dramatic practice, known as the Querelle du Cid or The Quarrel of Le
Cid. Cardinal Richelieu's Académie
Française
acknowledged the play's success, but determined that it was defective, in part
because it did not respect the classical unities of time, place, and action
(Unity of Time stipulated that all the action in a play must take place within
a twenty-four hour time-frame; Unity of Place, that there must be only one
setting for the action; and Unity of Action, that the plot must be centred
around a single conflict or problem). The newly-formed Académie was a
body that asserted state control over cultural activity. Although it usually
dealt with efforts to standardize the French language, Richelieu himself ordered
an analysis of Le Cid.
Accusations
of immorality were leveled at the play in the form of a famous pamphlet
campaign. These attacks were founded on the classical theory that the theatre
was a site of moral instruction. The Académie's recommendations concerning the
play are articulated in Jean Chapelain's Sentiments de l'Académie
française sur la tragi-comédie du Cid (1638). Even the prominent writer Georges
de Scudéry
harshly criticized the play in his Observations sur le Cid (1637). The intensity of
this "war of pamphlets" was heightened severely by Corneille's
boastful poem Excuse À Ariste, in which he rambled and boasted about his
talents, while Corneille claimed no other author could be a rival. These poems
and pamphlets were made public, one after the other, as once 'esteemed'
playwrights traded slanderous blows. At one point, Corneille took several shots
at criticizing author Jean Mairet's family and lineage. Scudéry, a close friend
of Mariet at the time, did not stoop to Corneille's level of 'distastefulness',
but instead continued to rail Le Cid and it's violations. Scudéry even stated
of Le Cid that, "almost all of the beauty which the play contains is
plagiarized."
This
"war of pamphlets" eventually influenced Richelieu to call up the
French Academy (Académie Française) and analyze the play. In their final
conclusions, the Academy ruled that even though Corneille had attempted to
remain loyal to the unity of time, Le Cid broke too many of the unities to be a
valued piece of work.
The
controversy, coupled with the Academy's ruling proved too much for Corneille,
who decided to return to Rouen. When one of his plays was reviewed unfavorably,
Corneille was known to withdraw from public life. He remained publicly silent
for sometime, however privately, he was said to be "troubled and obsessed
by the issues, making numerous revisions to the play."
After
a hiatus from the theater, Corneille returned in 1640. The Querelle du Cid
caused Corneille to pay closer attention to classical dramatic rules. This was
evident in his next plays, which were classical tragedies: Horace (1640, dedicated to Richelieu), Cinna (1643), and Polyeucte (1643). These three plays
and Le Cid are collectively known as Corneille's 'Classical Tetralogy'.
Corneille also responded to the criticisms of the Académie by making multiple
revisions to Le Cid to make it closer to the conventions of classical
tragedy. The 1648, 1660, and 1682 editions were no longer subtitled ‘tragicomedy’, but ‘tragedy’.
Corneille’s
popularity grew and by the mid 1640s, the first collection of his plays was
published. Corneille married Marie de Lampérière in 1641. They had seven
children together. In the mid to late 1640s, Corneille produced mostly
tragedies: La
Mort de Pompée
(The
Death of Pompey,
performed 1644), Rodogune (performed 1645), Théodore (performed 1646), and Héraclius (performed 1647). He also wrote one
comedy in this period: Le Menteur (The Liar, 1644).
In
1652, the play Pertharite met with poor critical reviews and a
disheartened Corneille decided to quit the theatre. He began to focus on an
influential verse translation of the Imitation
of Christ
by Thomas à Kempis, which he completed in 1656.
After an absence of nearly eight years, Corneille was persuaded to return to
the stage in 1659. He wrote the play Oedipe, which was favored by Louis
XIV.
In the next year, Corneille published Trois discours sur le
poème dramatique
(Three Discourses on Dramatic
Poetry),
which were, in part, defenses of his style. These writings can be seen as
Corneille’s response to the Querelle du Cid. He simultaneously maintained the
importance of classical dramatic rules and justified his own transgressions of
those rules in Le Cid. Corneille argued the Aristotelian dramatic guidelines were not
meant to be subject to a strict literal reading. Instead, he suggested that
they were open to interpretation. Although the relevance of classical rules was
maintained, Corneille suggested that the rules should not be so tyrannical that
they stifle innovation.
Even
though Corneille was prolific after his return to the stage, writing one play a
year for the 14 years after 1659, his plays did not have the same success as
those of his earlier career. Other writers were beginning to gain popularity.
In 1670 Corneille and Jean Racine, one of his dramatic rivals,
were challenged to write plays on the same incident. Each playwright was
unaware that the challenge had also been issued to the other. When both plays
were completed, it was generally acknowledged that Corneille’s Tite
et Bérénice
(1671) was inferior to Racine’s play (Bérénice). Molière was also prominent at the
time and Corneille even composed the comedy Psyché (1671) in collaboration with
him (and Philippe Quinault). Most of the plays that
Corneille wrote after his return to the stage were tragedies. They included La
Toison d'or
(The Golden Fleece, 1660), Sertorius (1662), Othon (1664), Agésilas (1666), and Attila (1667).
Corneille’s
final play was the tragedy Suréna (1674). After this, he retired from the stage for the
final time and died at his home in Paris in 1684. His grave in the Église
Saint-Roch
went without a monument until 1821.