Rodogune and Athalie: a comparison

1. Rodogune and Athalie: a comparison

2. Lecture plan • Your thoughts… • Corneille and theatrical conventions • The unities • Racine and theatrical conventions • The unities • The role of God / the gods • Bienséance, morality and the understanding of order • From regency to absolutism

3. The règles • Unities • Bienséance • Vraisemblance • Tragedy morally improving • Characterisation – from Aristotle • Pity and fear; catharsis • Flawed hero(ine) (hamartia)

4. Corneille and the règles • Struggled against the confines of conventions, esp in pre 1650 plays: • Unities • Vraisemblance: «le beau sujet» • Characterisation; flawed hero not vital (Polyeucte; Rodogune)

5. The character of Cléopâtre • ‘Cléopâtre, dans Rodogune, est très méchante ; il n’y a point de parricide qui lui fasse horreur, pourvu qu’il la puisse conserver sur un trône qu’elle préfère à toutes choses, tant son attachement à la domination est violent ; mais tous ses crimes sont accompagnés d’une grandeur d’âme qui a quelque chose de si haut, qu’en même temps qu’on déteste ses actions, on admire la source dont elles partent.’ Corneille, Discours I, in Writings on theTheatre, ed. by T. H. Barnwell (Oxford University Press, 1965), p.14.

6. Rodogunedoes adhere to the unities • «L’action y est une, grande, complète, sa dureté ne va point, ou fort peu, au-delà de la représentation, le jour en est le plus illustre qu’on puisse imaginer, et l’unité de lieu s’y rencontre en la manière que j’explique dans le troisième de ce discours…» Examen, p. 49. • See also the Discours des trois unités

7. Paternal affection for the play (Greenberg) «Cette préference [for Rodogune] est peut-être en moi un effet de ces inclinations aveugles, qu’ont beaucoup de pères pour quelques-uns de leurs enfants, plus que pour d’autres …», Examen, p. 49.

8. Unity of time in Rodogune • Indeterminate • Could be played out in real time? • How does past and future time relate to the present of the play?

9. Unity of place in Rodogune Play set in Seleucie, in the ‘palais royal’.

10. Racine: unity of time ‘The present becomes one single moment, cut off from the web of duration’ Odette de Mourgues, Racine, or ,The triumph of relevance (London : Cambridge U.P, 1967).

11. Unity of action • Play offers the possibility of a final catharsis because it works both at the level of tragedy and at the level of salvation history. See Erica Harth, ‘The Tragic Moment in Athalie’, Modern Language Quarterly, 33 (1972), 385 – 95.

12. Unity of place Play set in Jerusalem, in the ‘vestibule de l’appartement du grand prêtre’.

13. Unity of place ‘The tragic status that Athalie has acquired as the play ends is thus mitigated by the fact that the space within which it is most powerfully articulated does not represent a neutral space; and if the words spoken by Joas sound weak, they are reinforced by the building in which they are spoken’. Richard Parish, Racine: the limits of tragedy, Biblio 17 74 (1993) p. 40.

14. The role of the gods ‘the gods are assimilated to the destructive passions within the heart of man.’ (O de M, 113); ‘the gods are thus in Racine the accomplices in the destruction of man by his passions.’ (ibid, 116)

15. Role of God in Athalie? ‘Comme les personnages ne sont que les marionnettes de Dieu, que l’intérêt se porte moins vers eux que vers la main qui les agite, leur psychologie est dominée par quelques traits fort simples, ce qui ne donne pas une grande profondeur à leur caractère’ (Raymond Picard, Introduction to Athalie, 1951, quoted in Racine, Athalie (Paris: Larousse, 1970, p.173)).

16. Bienséance, morality and order Tragic world (esp in Racinian tragedy) = a ‘kingdom of disorder’. See John D Lyons, Kindgom of Disorder: the theory of tragedy in Classical France (West Lafayette, Purdue University Press, 1999)

17. Bienséance, morality and order • Cartharsis ‘aesthetic’ (Odette de Mourgues)…? • Yahweh’s actions arbitrary: used to ‘increase the intensity of the dramatic emotion.’ (121) • Athalie brought down also via submission to passion (love for child) • Struggle for power and self-preservation aesthetically pleasing

18. Bienséance, morality and order • Catharsis also religious • Message ambivalent? Joas NOT a better ruler? • Play set in sacred space • Christian salvation = end of story

19. The politics of absolutism Rodogune: combines personal and political success? Rodogune ‘loves the king that makes her queen’. Greenberg, ‘Rodogune: Sons and Lovers’, in Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and Prose: The Family Romance of French Classicism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 87 - 113.

20. Greenberg ‘in a world of Sovereignty the child, because always double, always the product of two, represents what is most inimical in a world that desires itself absolute. And, of course, what is particularly tragic for this drive to absolutism is that we are all children. The duality of being, which is always a becoming, inheres in all of us, secretly undermining any ideology of the One. It is, therefore, a particularly aggressive counterattack by patriarchy on its descendents that Racine’s theater plays out.’ (Subjectivity and Subjugation, p. 169)

21. Child sacrifice: patriarchy craves unity • Joas / Abner / Joad • Story of Abraham and Isaac (Joad) • Athalie’s grandchildren • Cléopâtre’s children • Rodogune

22. Gender, parenthood and absolutism • Cléopâtre • ‘male / paternal’ in pursuit of power • Athalie • ‘male’ politically • ‘female’ emotionally • Joad • Aggressive in cause of God • Nurturing of Joas • Josabet • Nurturing but weak • Infantile?