In the Wake of Medea: Neoclassical Theater and the Arts of Destruction by Juliette Cherbuliez

Abstract

Reviewed by: In the Wake of Medea: Neoclassical Theater and the Arts of Destruction by Juliette Cherbuliez Cara Bailey Cherbuliez, Juliette. In the Wake of Medea: Neoclassical Theater and the Arts of Destruction. Fordham UP, 2020. ISBN 978-0-8232-8783-3. Pp. 256. Much has been made of the ideological and political value of the figure of Antigone, but how might the political implications of Medea, with her status as a violent, disruptive, and murderous force change our understanding of literature's relationship with violence? Juliette Cherbuliez, author of The Place of Exile: Leisure [End Page 277] Literature and the Limits of Absolutism (2005), interrogates violence in French neoclassical theater and the representations in terms of what she views as the Medean principle of violence. It is networked and relational, unassimilable and exceptional, untimely and nonredemptive (19–20). The value of examining violence through the prism of such a character is what Cherbuliez puts forth in the manifesto that precedes the body of the analysis: "Medea forces us to acknowledge that violence is constitutive of how we protest, resist, gain power, but also love and save ourselves" (52). Consciously not a study of the character of Medea, this work treats Medea as "an avatar of a practice of violence" and its paradoxical role in artistic expression (8). To begin its examination of the paradoxical value of violence in literature, the book first revisits the traditional notions of Corneille's Médée (1634) by reading its depiction of violence in light of notions which Corneille himself espouses in his 1639 "Épître" and his essay "Examen" preceding his collected works, this play presents its titular character as a nexus of collective moral culpability (55). Nowhere is this more evident than in the metaphorical uses of Medea's gown. Tellingly, Cherbuliez also contends that Médée's infanticide is not the climax of the play but is in fact its denouement. The central pattern of violence in the play, of "cleaving to and from," means that the infanticide is the natural outcome of the various destructive acts that define the play (92). The play's most valuable element is its demonstration of "literature's power to disrupt the moral lesson" (93). This study of Corneille's Médée functions as the "cornerstone chapter" with which each subsequent section's examination of the Medean pattern of violence engages (32). Rather than limiting the discussion to one genre or historical moment, Medean violence is explored in: Pasolini's film Medea (1969) as it relates to the poetics in both Corneille's Médée and Medea's adventures in Ovid's Metamorphoses; Jean Rotrou's Hercule mourant (first staged alongside Corneille's work in 1634–35); La conquête de la Toison d'or, with its spectacular staging techniques in dialogue with the ambiguous nature of the future within the premodern era (147); and Racine's 1691 Athalie. This book does not limit itself to reexamining the role of violence in French neo-classical theater, but also presents a fascinating means through which to examine the patterns of Medean violence in diverse art forms. Violence, she argues, serves a plurality of functions which all resist a uniformly moralistic purpose. Scholars of other disciplines such as performance studies, film studies, and gender studies will also benefit from the multidisciplinary and trans-historical study engaged here. Cara Bailey Vanderbilt University (TN) Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French