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Abstract
This dissertation seeks to examine the importance of the concept of sovereignty in seventeenth-century Baroque and Classical theatre through an analysis of six representations of the passionate king in the tragedies of Thophile de Viau, Tristan LHermite, Pierre Corneille, and Jean Racine. The literary analyses are preceded by critical summaries of four theoretical texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to establish a politically relevant definition of sovereignty during the French absolutist monarchy. These treatises imply that a king possesses a double body: physical and political. The physical body is mortal, imperfect, and subject to passions, whereas the political body is synonymous with the law and thus cannot die. In order to reign as a true sovereign, an absolute monarch must reject the passions of his physical body and act in accordance with his political body. The theory of the sovereigns double body provides the foundation for the subsequent literary study of tragic drama, and specifically of king-characters who fail to fulfill their responsibilities as sovereigns by submitting to their human passions. This juxtaposition of political theory with dramatic literature demonstrates how the king-characters transgressions against his political body contribute to the tragic aspect of the plays, and thereby to the development of seventeenth-century tragedy during the Baroque and Classical periods.