Sainte-Beuve deemed Athalie comparable to an Athenian tragedy by who?
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.
Odysseus Acanthoplex Odysseus Acanthoplex (Ancient Greek: Ὀδυσσεὺς ἀκανθοπλήξ , "Odysseus Akanthoplēx", "Odysseus wounded by a spine"; also known as "Odysseus Wounded", "Odysseus Spine-struck" and "Odysseus Wounded by the Spine") is a lost play by the Athenian dramatist Sophocles. Several fragments are extant. The plot told of Odysseus' death, accidentally killed by his son Telegonus. Some scholars believe that another Sophocles' title, Niptra (Νιπτρα, "The Footwashing", "The Washing"), is the same play as "Odysseus Acanthoplex". Dana Sutton, however, disputes this, suggesting that "Niptra" was a separate play dealing with Odysseus' return to Ithaca but not with his death.