Phèdre

Summary

Dominique Pagani gives Racine's Phèdre a close reading. He makes her a figure of desire that seeks the impossible: in Hippolytus, Phèdre loves the young Theseus she never knew, a past she lives in the present as a hallucination12. He describes her confession to Œnone as a triple crime and shows that her confessions set the rhythm of the tragedy3. In the scene where she approaches Hippolytus to settle the succession, he points to the double-meaning sentences through which the unconscious makes its way, and to the image of the labyrinth. He links the character to the question of memory and amnesia: by trying to forget, Phèdre returns to the collective primal scene. For him, she is the most innocent character in the play4, a claim a correspondent disputes. He also notes that Racine refuses to have a princess utter the slander and gives it to Œnone instead5. Elsewhere, he sees her dream of the forest as a figure of hubris.

1. 1#2.6 Between crisis and war: philosophising?1 Aug 2017 · 1:14:22
2. 2D for Desire17 Dec 2014 · 6:54
3. 3#2.5 Between crisis and war: philosophising?1 Aug 2017 · 26:23
4. 4#9 Benefits and harms of amnesia…17 Dec 2020 · 1:34:30
5. 5#5.1 bis Questions (Facebook Live)2 Nov 2018 · 43:12

Summary produced automatically from 28 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.