Athalie

Athalie is a 1691 play, the final tragedy of Jean Racine, and has been described as the masterpiece of "one of the greatest literary artists known" and the "ripest work" of Racine's genius.Voltaire considered the play the greatest triumph of the human mind, while Flaubert referred to it in Madame Bovary as the masterpiece of the French stage, and Sainte-Beuve deemed it comparable to Oedipus Rex in beauty, with "the true God added."August Wilhelm Schlegel thought Athalie to be "animated by divine breath"; other critics have regarded the poetics of drama in the play to be superior to those of Aristotle.

After the success of Esther, Racine published Athalie in 1691, another play drawn from the Bible, which he expected would have the same success.

Athalie, widow of the king of Judah, rules the country and believes she has eliminated all the rest of the royal family. She has abandoned the Jewish religion for the worship of Baal. However, the late king's grandson Joash was rescued by the wife of the high priest.

Athalie was the victim of opposition from moralists at its creation. Represented on the public scene after the death of Madame de Maintenon, it was never part of the most popular plays of Racine, though Voltaire saw it as "perhaps the masterpiece of mankind" and Flaubert as the most "immortal masterpiece of the French stage".

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