Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and Prose Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 L'Astrée and androgyny
- 2 The grateful dead: Corneille's tragedy and the subject of history
- 3 Passion play: Jeanne des Anges, devils, hysteria and the incorporation of the classical subject
- 4 Rodogune: sons and lovers
- 5 Molière's Tartuffe and the scandal of insight
- 6 Racine's children
- 7 “Visions are seldom all they seem”: La Princesse de Clèves and the end of Classical illusions
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
4 - Rodogune: sons and lovers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 L'Astrée and androgyny
- 2 The grateful dead: Corneille's tragedy and the subject of history
- 3 Passion play: Jeanne des Anges, devils, hysteria and the incorporation of the classical subject
- 4 Rodogune: sons and lovers
- 5 Molière's Tartuffe and the scandal of insight
- 6 Racine's children
- 7 “Visions are seldom all they seem”: La Princesse de Clèves and the end of Classical illusions
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
Summary
Nous n'avons point de cœur pour aimer ni haïr
Toutes nos passions ne savent qu'obéir.
(III, iii, 869–870)Traditionally Rodogune has been seen to mark a turning point in the Cornelian canon. It incorporates the lessons of the past while already indicating a new path to follow. This new direction turns out to be a detour, a sexual deviation. From here on the women become the standard bearers of the “will to power,” of the renunciation and singleness of purpose that, up until Rodogune, had been the lot of Corneille's heroes. The men are mired in metaphysical dilemmas which gradually reduce them to positions of indecision, passivity and ultimately impotence.
Rodogune stands at the crossroads of two worlds, and at this nexus of ambivalence men are unsexed and women are virilized. The essential traits defining sexual difference, the separation of the Cornelian world into the well-ordered camps of masculinity and femininity, are blurred. It is from the blurring of these “natural” positions, from their perversion, that the monstrous – of which Rodogune is perhaps the best example – is born and triumphs.
Curiously, this monstrous play is, Corneille tells us, his favorite:
On m'a souvent fait une question à la cour: quel était celui de mes poèmes que j'estimais le plus; et j'ai trouvé tous ceux qui me l'ont faite si prévenus en faveur de Cinna ou du Cid, que je n'ai jamais osé déclarer toute la tendresse que j'ai toujours eue pour celui-ci, à qui j'aurais volontiers donné mon suffrage, si je n'avais craint de manquer, en quelque sorte, au respect que je devais à ceux que je voyais pencher d'un autre côté.
(Examen, p. 350)- Type
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- Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and ProseThe Family Romance of French Classicism, pp. 87 - 112Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992