Books by Gordon Pocock

Corneille and Racine may seem like marble monuments of an unchanging typical classicism. Mr Pocock is concerned to show that each of these great dramatists was a living writer, struggling to create developing forms and that the rules of neo-classical decorum were a strait-jacket to them.

Boileau has traditionally been regarded as the spokesman of French neo-classicism but some elements of scholarship have discounted the importance of neo-classical doctrine in general and of Boileau's particular contribution to it. Pocock examines Boileau's commitment to French neo-classicism and his embodiment of it in his work.