The latest volume of the Yale French Studies Series reexamines the vexed relationship between the theater and contemporary conceptions of morality in seventeenth-century France

Although the Catholic Church condemned the power of plays to stir up compelling and irresistible passions, theater flourished in seventeenth-century France, making it the era’s archetypal guilty pleasure. Bringing together specialists on theater and early modern culture from the United States, Britain, and France, the editors approach the intersections of morality, theater, guilt, and pleasure from a variety of perspectives. Individually and collectively, the articles in this volume juxtapose theoretical debates with case studies of actual dramatic practice.