University of Wisconsin scholar Philip Butler studied the constantly shifting perception of playwright Jean Racine and his works. In Classicism and the Baroque in the Work of Racine, Philip Butler writes,

There is in Racine a sort of intellectual Puritanism-or Jansenism-‘Which, in the same way as moral Puritanism, distrusts everything that can cause us too much pleasure and regards a priori as suspect any proposition that flatters and suits us. … The fine gallantry, the noble fictions, and the becoming poses that have taken the place of the battle between man and woman, these he casts aside. He is unwearying in his efforts to undermine the idea of a paternal and reassuring providence, placed like a stage setting in front of the dead forces which govern the universe and the state of man. All the hallowed prejudices of the baroque, all its comforting illusions, all the themes of its resounding eloquence appear in his plays, only to be brilliantly disposed of.