Performance and Historicity in Racine's Mithridate: On the Dynamics of Temporal Order in the Seventeenth Century
| Autor: | Sylvaine Guyot |
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| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Early Modern French Studies. 38:132-147 |
| ISSN: | 2056-3043 2056-3035 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/20563035.2016.1235370 |
| Popis: | This essay considers afresh the seventeenth-century ‘regime of historicity’ and thereby challenges a long critical tradition that has both identified in Racine's drama a systematically repetitive temporality and classified the so-called Grand Siecle as a century of stasis immobilised in a fantasy of eternity. The conflicting representations of time that subtend the dramaturgy of Racine's Mithridate enable a reflection on the historical nature of heroic models and political institutions. By closing with the spectacle of a bloody king dying amidst the admiration and tears of his relatives, Racine's play suggests that there is no better lieu de memoire than a tragic performance. Dynastic transition becomes a ‘liminal’ turning point that combines the perpetuation of past practices with the incorporation of new affective qualities. Mithridate exemplifies the way in which theatre as a stage performing art complicates the theory of the king's two bodies, by temporalizing the frozen time of absolutist discourses.... |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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