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 Nathan Bowman In the Wake of Medea: Neoclassical Theater and the Arts of Destruction. By Juliette Cherbuliez. Fordham University Press, 2020. 249 pages. Cloth: $110.00, Paper: $32.00. 19 illustrations. French tragedy is often defined by a rigid adherence to rules of form and decorum that, among other characteristics, espoused a strict moral code for what could, and could not, be staged. Within the study of theatre history, the perceived rigidity of its structures finds French tragedy portrayed as mundane and passionless. And yet, one cannot deny the impact that French tragic theory has had on subsequent interpretations of tragedy in all its iterations. A significant effect of the neoclassical era has been the popularization of the idea that violence was rejected in all forms in tragedy. This supposed rejection of violence is said to be rooted in the audience's distaste for such things onstage. In In the Wake of Medea, Juliette Cherbuliez challenges this traditional portrait of French tragedy. Far from rejecting it, Cherbuliez argues that questions of violence are central to one's understanding of the genre and its role in the politics of seventeenth-century French society. Using the play Médée by Pierre Corneille as its starting point, the book explores the literary strategies implemented in the works of French tragedy that allowed both playwrights and audiences to interrogate the role of violence both on stage and in society. For Cherbuliez, the figure of Medea is exemplary of the persistence of violence in the arts and its "destructive powers" (22). The story of Medea highlights a specific mode of violence that Cherbuliez argues is at the heart of French tragedy. This Medean presence within art is characterized by an Otherness that is both lingering and disruptive within Western literature. In the Wake of Medea is organized into five chapters with a preceding introduction and manifesto. Each chapter gives an in-depth literary analysis of a specific work of tragedy that Cherbuliez argues can be characterized by this violent Medean presence. However, the theoretical framework for this project—the question of "what is Medean violence?"—is largely covered in the book's introduction. In the introduction, Cherbuliez defines Medean violence as having five primary features. Medean violence is: (1) "relational," (2) "unassimilable," (3) "exceptional," (4) "untimely," and (5) "nonredemptive" (19–20). Diverging from the empathetic interpretations of Medea prominent since the late twentieth century, Cherbuliez argues that the Medean presence is characterized chiefly by its foreignness—that is, society's inability to comprehend this force not only on a social level, but an epistemological one. Medea's is not a presence that elicits understanding; it is utterly disruptive. After laying this theoretical groundwork, Cherbuliez offers a brief manifesto that depicts the figure Antigone as an ethical paradigm of Western philosophy in order to then juxtapose this figure with Medea. Cherbuliez states, however, that the "cornerstone of this book, against which all the other chapters can be read," is the first chapter, that which explores the Médée of Corneille (32). This sets up [End Page 89] the expectation that the first chapter will explore each of the five characteristics of Medean violence within the framework of Médée, and therefore, provide a theoretical model for understanding each subsequent chapter. Yet, this chapter focuses narrowly on the concept of relationships within Corneille's tragedy, and even more narrowly on Corneille's use of Medea's gown as a symbol of self and skin that defines her relationships throughout the play. As such, chapter 1 seems only to expand upon Cherbuliez's first feature of Medean violence—the relational. Each of the following chapters takes up a different poetic work and makes little reference to Corneille's Médée. Chapter 2 is primarily concerned with the works of Ovid and their impact on the development of the figure of Medea within the Western canon. Though it makes slight reference to Ovid's influence on Corneille, the chapter itself drifts away from a discussion of French tragedy altogether. Chapter 3 returns the reader to French tragedy, but...