Classical tragedy

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches classical tragedy mainly through Racine's Phèdre. Following Barthes, he reads it as a tragedy of confession, in which the characters discover, through conflict, the opposite of what they believed themselves to be: the unconscious is expressed there before Freud theorised it1. He makes Théramène a psychoanalyst who takes Hippolyte's reasons apart one by one, while Hippolyte "castrates" the memory of his father. He also points out an "arithmetic" in the text: Theseus has been missing for six months, and Hippolyte has loved Aricie for six months2. He connects the unity of place to the circle of the city, outside which all who cross it die. He also applies Marxist categories to the play: Phèdre's speech leads back to the slaying of the Minotaur, a collective and political primal scene, and the individual unconscious is part of the historico-social "unconscious of the unconscious"3. Elsewhere, he contrasts the hubris of the tragic hero with Corneillian honour, which the confidants recall. He describes classicism as a self that gains unity by giving up totality1.

1. 1#2.5 Between crisis and war: philosophising?1 Aug 2017
2. 2#9 Benefits and harms of amnesia…17 Dec 2020
3. 3Wagner and his interpreters, approaching Clouscard, Marx = Theseus?31 Mar 2021

Introduction produced automatically from the 6 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.