SOURCE: Delehanty, Ann T. “God's Hand in History: Racine's Athalie as the End of Salvation Historiography.” Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature 28, no. 54 (2001): 155-66.

[In the following essay, Delehanty maintains that in his biblical drama Athalie, Racine presents two opposing models of historiography: salvation history and teleological history.]

Generally, when we speak of a contemporary historical account, we mean a narrative text that describes, in a logically cohesive fashion, events that took place entirely in the past. The narrator of the account, the historian, must balance conveying the truth of what happened with creating a compelling narrative. In his discussion of the modern, narrative form of history, in The Content of the Form, Hayden White identifies the sign that a historical account may have gone too far in the service of a compelling narrative as “the embarrassment of plot” (21). In other words, reality is presumed to be without a plot or central theme; modern historical representations of reality ring false when too neatly ordered.¹ Prior to the Enlightenment, however, the notion of a plot to history would not have been quite so embarrassing. In fact, in the western Christian tradition, it was generally acknowledged that history had some sort of a plot, in the form of a telos or purpose, which it was meant to follow. Old Testament history was seen as leading towards the necessary endpoint of Christ's advent; New Testament history and beyond was to lead towards the Apocalypse.² The purview of history was not simply the past, but extended to include the present and the future. The ultimate goal of this historical continuum was the salvation of humankind at the future moment of final judgment, whence the name “salvation history.” With salvation as both the individual and common goal in life, the final meaning of all of history would be entirely determined (and judged) in relation to that purpose.

In Athalie, by choosing a story from the Old Testament, Racine clearly positions his drama in the context of salvation history. Because of the story's place in a strict economy of teleological meaning—i.e., a predetermined plot—, the changes that Racine made to the biblical account are particularly notable. The biblical passages in II Kings and II Chronicles³ begin by telling how Queen Athalie murders her grandchildren, the heirs to the line of David, in retribution for the murder of her son, Ochosias.⁴ Both biblical versions then skip over the seven years of Athalie's reign and go directly to the moment when Joad, the priest of the temple, reveals to Athalie that his wife, Josabeth, rescued one of the grandchildren, Joas. It is brought to light that Joas has been brought up in safety by Joad and Josabeth. With this news, Joas is restored to the throne and Athalie is put to death. Racine's version of the story, however, does not restrict the plot of the drama to the limits of the biblical text; rather, Racine fills in that unwritten space of biblical history during the seven years of Athalie's reign by describing how society changed when the heir to the line of David was presumed dead.⁵ Through this vision of history without a divine purpose, we can clearly see Racine's idea of what would happen if history's telos were to be lost. He paints a world caught in a stagnant present, full of moral ambiguity, and without a divine assurance of any meaning, a world where the queen, Athalie, has replaced the divine with political ends.

It is that space of unwritten history that is the subject of my analysis. In this essay, I am arguing that in Athalie, Racine stages a battle between two opposing models of historiography—salvation history and political history. The potential tragedy that hangs in the balance in the play is not simply the death of a single character but the end of transcendental meaning in history; the assurance that there is a deeper purpose to life than the present moment is at risk. Racine's portrayal of teleological history gone awry during Athalie's reign depicts the ambiguity that arises when the purposes of the state replace the divine purpose for the future. The play personifies this conflict between the divine and the political in the character of the monarch (both Athalie and Joas) who bears responsibility for the future end of history as well as the present purposes of the state. The incompatibility of these ends is what renders the play tragic. Given the political and religious climate at the end of the seventeenth century, when historiography was perched between salvation and political history, Athalie serves as a literary warning to Racine's contemporaries of the perils of severing the divine hand from history.⁶

In the opening scene of Athalie, one of the chief captains of the kings of Judah, Abner, gives a speech about the disastrous consequences after Athalie destroyed (as the people believe) the successor to the line of David by killing all of her own grandchildren. The day is Pentecost and Abner has just been to the temple.⁷ We enter the scene in medias res:

Oui, je viens dans son temple adorer l'Eternel;
Je viens, selon l'usage antique et solennel,
Célébrer avec vous la fameuse journée
Où sur le mont Sina la loi nous fut donnée.
Que les temps sont changés!

(I:1:1-5)

Racine's famous tendency to start his plays in mid-conversation here signals the unboundedness of history in the play. Because the teleological continuum has stopped and there is no clear order to history, the story must leap into the action whenever it can. Abner's speech tells us that time has entered a new rhythm where the old patterns are no longer observed, the future is uncertain and the present is unrecognizable. The faithful used to inundate the gates of the temple, bringing the fruits of the first harvest to offer up to God (I.1.9-11). Now, because of Athalie's murderousness, only a few dare to come to the temple; the rest, because of an “oubli fatal,” have converted to Baal, the chosen divinity of Athalie (I.1.17-18).⁸

By setting the play's events on a forgotten feast day, Racine further signals the alterations that history has suffered. If the harvest passes by without acknowledgment, the people have forgotten the most basic of temporal cycles. Racine says in his preface that, although no day when these events take place is indicated in the Bible, he chose Pentecost for his story since it celebrated the giving of the law on Mount Sinai to the Old Testament faithful (284).⁹ Because of the disappearance of the heir to the line of David, the Pentecost of this story points to the loss of that law. Without the law, there is no divinely ordained arbiter of morality; humans must judge themselves. The people are left in a stagnant present, without a historical sense of self, a knowable order, or a future: “Benjamin est sans force, et Juda sans vertu” (I.1. 94). The word of God, which might somehow rectify the situation has been silenced: “L'arche sainte est muette, et ne rend plus d'oracles” (I.1.103).

Joad, responding to Abner's apparent loss of faith, tries to convince Abner that God has not forsaken his people. But Joad's words have little effect on Abner, who responds with disbelief:

Ce roi fils de David, où le chercherons-nous?
Le ciel même peut-il réparer les ruines
De cet arbre séché jusque dans ses racines?
Athalie étouffa l'enfant même au berceau.
Les morts, après huit ans, sortent-ils du tombeau?

(I.1.138-142)

Abner responds only with questions; without history moving forward, he is condemned to the temporality of the interrogative which suspends assertions of meaning in favor of the atemporality of perpetual uncertainty.¹⁰ With no visible body of the heir to the line of David, Joad's assurances about the need to have faith in God become mere words. Abner no longer believes that God would have the power to restore time: the very roots of time have dried up and the dead are too long dead.

The people see no means to bring back the body that represents the promise of God and assures the purposeful relationship between the past, present, and future. Without the link between the promise (the telos of history) and the incarnate sign of the promise (the heir to the line of David), history cannot continue along its course. Only words remain and they are appropriated by Athalie and her followers to convert the faithful away from their former beliefs. The incarnate sign of the heir is replaced with simulacra of that sign. As a result, the play is filled with human doubles of the divinely ordained—the anti-God, Baal, the anti-priest, Mathan, and the anti-king, Queen Athalie. These doubles are meant to replace the forgotten God by capitalizing on the lost attachment between the word of the promise and the body of the heir.¹¹

For example, in the second act, Athalie speaks to Abner and Mathan about the history of her reign. She begins by claiming that she did what she felt she had to do in slaughtering her progeny: “Ce que j'ai fait, Abner, j'ai cru le devoir faire” (II.5.467). Personal beliefs about morality and necessity (“j'ai cru le devoir faire”) replace the divinely instituted law. She justifies her breach of the law by arguing that because of her acts and subsequent leadership the realm has enjoyed calm during her reign:

Je ne prends point pour juge un peuple téméraire: […]
Le ciel même a pris soin de me justifier.
Sur d'éclatants succès ma puissance établie
A fait jusqu'aux deux mers respecter Athalie;
Par moi Jérusalem goûte un calme profond.

(II.5.468-473)

Athalie does not present her case as one meant to inspire faith or filled with promise for the future; on the contrary, she argues that her acts as queen speak for her. Athalie substitutes the political body, Jerusalem, for the divine body. She offers a peaceful, undivided nation, which would be subject only to human law and define its history through its past, to replace a promise of future redemption at an unknown time. In Athalie's historical model, political harmony in the present, due to prudent measures in the past, is the “end” of history.¹²

Because there is no impending future judgment and no appeal to others for judgment, Athalie's subjects are not tied to a moral law that regulates their actions. They can find success in her court through artful self-representation and dissimulation. Mathan admits to Nabal that he came to power by means of fashioning himself to reflect the members of Athalie's court:

J'étudiai leur cœur, je flattai leurs caprices;
Je leur semai de fleurs le bord des précipices;
Près de leurs passions rien ne me fut sacré;
De mesure et de poids, je changeais à leur gré.

(III.3.934-38)¹³

Mathan ingratiated himself by getting to know the passions of those he wished to impress. He changed himself, then, in order to become more like the objects of his study; effectively, he became their double. Mathan's arrivisme demonstrates the manner in which representation supplants the real in this future-less history; through the creation of an image of the truth and a pretension to parity, Mathan becomes a member of the court of Athalie.

History built on dissimulation and doubles begins to crack in the play, however, as the incarnate sign of the promise, in the form of the hidden body of the heir, reasserts its presence. Both Mathan and Athalie are haunted by memories of the divine presence in history. Mathan says to Nabal in Act III:

Toutefois, je l'avoue, en ce comble de gloire,
Du Dieu que j'ai quitté l'importune mémoire
Jette encore en mon âme un reste de terreur.

(III.3.955-57)

Beneath the rhetorical surface of Mathan's persona, his soul is troubled by the memory of the God he abandoned; “un reste de terreur” cannot be eliminated. The historically real remains to terrify him in his world of representation. For her part, Athalie has recurrent nightmares where she is murdered by a young child: “J'ai senti tout à coup un homicide acier/ Que le traître en mon sein a plongé tout entier” (II.5.513-14). When she sees Eliacin (the name given to Joas by Josabeth and Joad), she recognizes the child of her visions. The representation of her dreams coincides with the real, forcing her to acknowledge a world order other than the one she wishes to represent.

The culmination of the play lies in the revelation of Eliacin's name and station as Joas the heir and the restoration of the visible sign of God's promise in history. The revelation begins when Athalie realizes that Eliacin is immune to the effects of her rhetoric. She tries vainly to convince the young Eliacin to come live with her. After questioning him thoroughly about his origins and receiving only responses filled with piety, Athalie proposes to Eliacin that he leave his bare existence as Joad's assistant and adopted son to live in splendor with her:

Vous voyez, je suis reine et n'ai point d'héritier:
Laissez là cet habit, quittez ce vil métier;
Je veux vous faire part de toutes mes richesses;
Essayez dès ce jour l'effet de mes promesses.
A ma table, partout à mes côtés assis,
Je prétends vous traiter comme mon propre fils.

(II.7.693-98)

Athalie's visible lack of an heir points to her own lack of a future, i.e., there will be no remaining incarnate signs of Athalie after her death. She offers herself as a substitute, reified God for Joas—complete with a set of promises replacing spiritual with material good. “Dès ce jour,” Joas could leave the temple for Athalie's worldly ends in order to be treated “as if” he were her child. Joas flatly refuses Athalie's offer, astonished at the verbal substitution of such a father (“quel père” II.7.699, which could be referring to God or Joad) for a mere representation of a mother.

Racine sets up the scene of the restoration of the heir as a drama within the drama which, through sacramental gesture and naming, converts Eliacin to Joas. Eliacin is set upon a throne and hidden behind a curtain to be revealed to Athalie. He is given the accidents of a king with “ce livre saint, ce glaive, ce bandeau” (III.8.1248), and, in preparation for the scene of revelation, he is consecrated by Joad with holy oil (IV.3.1411). These actions resonate with “le sacre du roi,” the king's coronation, as well as several of the Roman Catholic sacraments, more generally. Joas is then ‘resurrected’ in front of the people (V.5.1718), and proved to be the heir to the line of David through physical marks on his flesh (V.5.1720). Just as in the Catholic sacrament of communion, real presence is called back into history through this enactment. The scene revealing Joas' identity then dramatizes the reassignment of the word to the thing itself, giving history back its meaningful order.¹⁴ Josabeth, his adoptive mother, names him by saying: “De votre nom, Joas, je puis donc vous nommer.” and Joas responds with: “Joas ne cessera jamais de vous aimer” (IV.3.1419-20).¹⁵ With Josabeth's words, the telos of history is restored and the ordered future is once again assured. Joas signals this with his use of the future tense: “Joas ne cessera jamais …”.

Once the telos of history has been restored, the play seems to invite a typological reading of Joas where Joas' body would prefigure Christ. This is particularly indicated when, like doubting Thomas,¹⁶ Athalie recognizes Joas because of his scars:

Oui, c'est Joas; je cherche en vain à me tromper;
Je reconnais l'endroit où je le fis frapper;
Je vois d'Ochosias et le port et le geste;
Tout me retrace enfin un sang que je déteste.

(V.6.1769-72)

Joas is known to Athalie through ‘le port,’ ‘le geste,’ and his scars. The heir to the line of David and the forerunner of Jesus is resurrected and recognized by his bodily marks, just as Jesus will be.

The typological reading becomes problematic, however, when we consider Joad's prophecy, from the third act. In his vision, he sees a priest of the temple lying murdered (III.7.1142-43). From the Bible story, we know that Joas as king will order Zacharie, the son of Joas and Josabeth, killed. At the end of the play, Athalie invokes this treachery by praying that Joas will repeat the tradition of atrocities that preceded him in his lineage.¹⁷ Through his future, murderous acts, we realize that Joas does not prefigure Jesus. Joas' betrayal of his adopted brother reveals, instead, that Joas is a figure of the murderous Cain.¹⁸ The scar on Joas' chest does not foretell Jesus' proof of his identity to the doubting Thomas—but is a return of the mark of Cain (“And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who came upon him should kill him.” Genesis IV: 15).

This mention of the murderous acts of Joas serves to remind the reader or viewer of the play that the restoration of the divinely ordained future does not preclude the exercise of free will, for good or for evil, by the human actors in history.¹⁹ Along with the assurance of meaning in history comes the restoration of the law and the guarantee of judgment. Even the incarnate sign of the divine in history is subject to history's judgment. The last words of the play, spoken by Joad, are:

Apprenez, roi des Juifs, et n'oubliez jamais
Que les rois dans le ciel ont un juge sévère,
L'innocence un vengeur, et l'orphelin un père.

(V.5.1814-16)

Joad proclaims the inevitability of a harsh judgment for those who, like Athalie, promote human ends instead of divine ones, or who, like Joas, forget the divine law in the service of their own interests. Through Joas' downfall, we once again witness the paradox of humankind's simultaneous possession of la gloire and la misère (to evoke Pascal's famous pairing). For the monarch, la gloire is found in his or her position as incarnate sign of the divine promise for history, and la misère lies in the assertion of private or political ends that do not lead towards future redemption. Thus, Athalie's status as glorious is derived from her position as mother who gave birth to the heir to the line of David, and as miserable, from her status as the murderer of most of her grandchildren. As for Joas, he possesses momentary glory as resurrected king, and then misery in the killing of his adopted brother.

With this in mind, we can see that Racine's play, through the vehicle of Old Testament history, provides an augury of a troubled future—without moral law and without meaning in history—if society loses sight of the presence of a divine order to history. By staging his play at a moment of historical crisis in the political and religious domains, Racine is able to articulate the dangers of exclusively political history as well as the ultimate triumph of religious history: all of Racine's viewers would have known that despite Joas' malevolant acts, the telos of Old Testament history was successfully fulfilled in the advent of Jesus Christ (at least as the Christian tradition sees it). Thus, the tragedy of history was averted within the temporal boundaries of the play as well as in its longer, teleological trajectory. This leads to another important question, however: did Racine intend his play to suggest the eventual triumph of Christian teleological history in his own day, when a similar crisis was underway?

Such a prediction of success was unlikely since Racine was probably aware of the waning power of Christian teleology. As Reinhard Koselleck has argued, the peace of Augsburg, more than a century before Racine's drama, signaled the beginning of the end of the Church's control over the future (23-24).²⁰ Closer to Racine's day, Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes may have been an attempt to restore a unified religion in France with him presiding at its helm, but this attempt failed to restore the union of church and state that he had desired. Furthermore, Racine's return to an originary scene of division between church and state does not suggest that they can exist independently and peacefully within history. As Jean-Marie Apostolidès has argued about Athalie:

Il nous paraît aussi fructueux de considérer Athalie dans un contexte plus large, c'est-à-dire comme un objet culturel trouvant sa fin en soi. Vue sous cet angle, la pièce termine l'exploration des sources imaginaires de l'Etat en faisant un retour à l'origine. … Au moment même où le domaine politique doit se laïciser, comme l'ont montré les conséquences désastreuses de l'abrogation de l'édit de Nantes, cette tragédie revient au point de départ, comme pour mieux souligner la distance séparant désormais le rex du sacerdos.

(128)

Of equal importance, moreover, is the fact that religious historiography had also moved away from this teleological model by Racine's day. As Frank Kermode has aptly put it, “No longer imminent, the End is immanent” (25). That is to say, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation had also influenced the theological interpretation of the concept of an “end-time,” shifting from the expectation of a future Apocalypse to an assertion of the continued presence of the divine within the present moment. Rudolf Bultmann demonstrates that such a shift had already happened numerous times throughout church history and the seeds of such an interpretation can be found in the gospel of John (48-49). He argues that one effect of this increased interest in the present is heightened attention to the sacraments—which, at least in the Catholic church and some reformed denominations in Racine's day, purported to bring divine presence into present history. Bultmann writes,

Two effects of sacramentalism were: (1) The interest of the believers was directed not so much to the universal eschatology, the destiny of the world, as rather to the salvation of the individual soul; to it a blessed immortality is guaranteed by the sacrament; (2) The powers of the beyond, which will make an end of this world, are already working in the present, namely, in the sacraments which are administered by the Church.

(51)

I would argue that Racine's play is sensitive to this shift in religious understanding and, in fact, provides an ideal example of a literary form that tries to represent divine presence in the present moment. The tragic form is a perfect medium for the representation of a pure present-time; even if the events depicted took place in the past, through its reenactment of those events, the play brings them into the present. Particularly in Athalie, Racine dramatizes this absolute “present-ness” by focusing on a moment when history seemed to have no future. Furthermore, the culminating moment of the play comes in the revelation of a hidden yet knowable divine presence within that present. In short, Racine's play embraces the vision of history that the sacramentalist model would imply. To this extent, we can conclude that Racine's play, while looking back to a kind of history that was of vital importance in the Old Testament, also reflects a late seventeenth-century model of religious history which responded to the particular changes of Racine's day.

Notes

1. Undoubtedly, Hegel's Philosophy of History would prove to be one of the major, modern exceptions to this statement. I would suggest that Hegel's advocacy of a teleological model of history—where reason is the authority that discerns the purpose of history—resonates in interesting ways with Racine's (implicit) advocacy of teleology—where divine reason is the authority that discerns the purpose of history.

2. Oscar Cullman defines Christian teleology in his book Christ and Time. He writes, “Because time is thought of as an upward sloping line, it is possible here for something to be ‘fulfilled’; a divine plan can move forward to complete execution; the goal which beckons at the upper end of the line can give to the entire process which is taking place all along the line the impulse to strive thither; finally, the decisive mid-point, the Christ-deed, can be the firm hold that serves as guidepost for all the process that lies behind and for all that lies ahead” (53).

3. II Kings: 11, and II Chronicles (Paralipomènes): 22-23.

4. The names of the Biblical characters are taken from the French version. In English, they have been translated as Athali'ah for Athalie, Ahazi'ah for Ochosias, Jo'ash for Joas, Jehosh'eba for Josabeth, and Jehoi'ada for Joad.

5. This is not to say that the play exceeds the boundaries of a single day. The first act of the play is largely dedicated to describing how history has changed.

6. Mitchell Greenberg discusses the use of the past to criticize the present when he distinguishes between history and historical tragedy: “History colonizes the past with the present, while historical tragedy represents the present as past” (53). Racine's play can certainly be categorized as the latter.

7. See Robert Hill's essay, “Racine and Pentecost: Christian Typology in Athalie” for further discussion of the role of Pentecost in the play.

8. If we think of Augustine's dictum, “ego sum, qui memini, ego animus” [“It is I who remember, I the mind” (X.16.25).], the “fatal forgetting” of the believers signals a double loss: of history and of self. To forget the divine plan for history is at the same time to forget the meaning that stems from the divinely-ordained relation between all things in the world, including one's self in relation to all other things.

9. All references to Racine's work come from the Intégrale edition of Racine's Œuvres complètes.

10. See Georges Poulet's chapter on Racine for an interesting discussion of the role of the interrogative in Racine's work.

11. It is tempting to assign political meaning to this doubling, especially with regard to the Reformation and the proliferation of new faiths. See Jean Orcibal's La Genèse d'Esther et d'Athalie for an outline of how the political events in Athalie might be inspired by events in England in the mid-seventeenth century. Orcibal's account is rejected as improbable by Lancaster (301). There does not seem to be convincing evidence that Racine himself considered either of his biblical tragedies to be allegorical to contemporary events. Nevertheless, I would argue that the rhetoric and argumentation used to compel the public to one side or another of the religious camps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (be they Jesuit and Jansenist, or Huguenot and Catholic) would be called to mind in the figure of Athalie, whether this was intended by Racine or not. It is undeniable that Racine's figure of a loss of hope during an age of a divided church would resonate with the public of his day. Probably, however, Racine would not have wanted the comparison to go much further, since these plays were written for Mme de Maintenon, of Huguenot descent, and, at the same time, could not offend Louis XIV, a Catholic king.

12. See Jean-Marie Apostolidès' analysis of Athalie in Le Prince sacrifié for further discussion of the parallels between Athalie and the ancien régime. Apostolidès writes: “Athalie, le personnage négatif, est paradoxalement celui qui est le plus proche du monarque absolu d'Ancien Régime. Elle tente de gouverner sagement, a mis fin aux hostilités avec les pays voisins, est ouverte à la pluralité religieuse. Elle s'entoure de conseillers pris dans l'élite traditionnelle. Certains, comme Mathan, le prêtre rénégat, appliquent avant la lettre des maximes de gouvernement qu'on peut dire machiaveliénnes” (128).

13. Mathan's words recall Pascal's pensée regarding the human willingness to live dangerously if one is deluded: “Nous courons sans souci dans le précipice, après que nous avons mis quelque chose devant nous pour nous empêcher de le voir” (n166-183).

14. For an essay stressing upon the momentary nature of this restoration of history, see Erica Harth's article “The Tragic Moment in Athalie.”

15. Josabeth's naming functions as an interesting case of performative speech—her words effectively transform the body of Eliacin to the body and identity of Joas. See Stephen Fleck's article on speech act theory and Racine for a discussion of performativity in Racine's work.

16. See John 20: 24-29.

17. Conforme à son aïeul, à son père semblable,
    On verra de David l'héritier détestable
    Abolir tes honneurs, profaner ton autel,
    Et venger Athalie, Achab et Jézabel.

    (V.6.1787-90)

18. Mitchell Greenberg, in a discussion of the role of children in Racine, captures the underlying effects of Joas' ancestry in his development into a murderer: “We are beginning to see the pattern of internal contradiction that emerges in Racine's theater and that focuses on the child. For in an obvious sense all Racine's characters are children and therefore all are monstrous. All bear the burden of a heterogeneous past that strives to free itself from its own heterogeneity, that strives for the realm of the absolute. It is this impossible denial, a denial that resurfaces in the violence of murder, of incest, of sexuality, that makes these children the victims of their secret monstrous origin, and coterminously makes this origin always the result of an even more primeval violence” (157).

19. See Eléonore Zimmerman's book, La liberté et le destin dans le théâtre de Jean Racine, for a contrasting view of the role of free will in Racine's plays.

20. On this subject, see also Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, and Rudolf Bultmann, The Presence of Eternity.

Works Cited

Apostolidès, Jean-Marie. Le Prince sacrifié. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1985.

Augustine. The Confessions. Trans. John K. Ryan. New York: Doubleday, 1960.

Bultmann, Rudolf. The Presence of Eternity. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957.

Cullman, Oscar. Christ and Time. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1950.

Fleck, Stephen H. “Barthes on Racine: a Different Speech Act Theory.” Seventeenth Century French Studies 14 (1992): 143-155.

Greenberg, Mitchell. Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and Prose. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.

Harth, Erica. “The Tragic Moment in Athalie” in Modern Language Quarterly 33 (1972): 382-395.

Hegel, Georg. The Philosophy of History. Trans. J. Sibree. New York: The Colonial Press, 1899.

Hill, Robert E. “Racine and Pentecost: Christian Typology in Athalie” in Papers on French 17^th Century Literature. 17:32 (1990): 189-210.

Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Koselleck, Reinhard. Le Futur-passé. Trans. Jochen Hoock and Marie-Claire Hoock. Paris: Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1990.

Lancaster, Henri Carrington. A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century. Pt. 4. Vol. 1. New York: Gordian Press, 1966.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Orcibal, Jean. La Genése d'Esther et d'Athalie. Paris: Vrin, 1950.

Poulet, Georges. Etudes sur le temps humain: Mesure de l'instant. Volume 4. Paris: Editions du Rocher, 1968.

Racine, Jean. Œuvres complètes. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1962.

White, Hayden. The Content of the Form. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987.

Zimmerman, Eléonore. La Liberté et le destin dans le théâtre de Jean Racine. Saratoga, CA: Amna Libri & Co., 1982.