Script or Scripture? The Ritualization of Discourse in Marthe Cosnard’s Les Chastes Martirs

Abstract

Abstract Although it has been acknowledged in recent years that Marthe Cosnard’s Les Chastes Martirs (1650) is a sophisticated example of martyr tragedy, the play has received little critical attention. This article investigates Cosnard’s treatment of the martyrological subject with a focus on the relationship between subjectivity and discourse. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s 1982 essay ‘The Subject and Power’, which emphasizes the key role that discourses of power hold in the production of subjectivity, this article examines the construction of character by means of various ‘external’ discourses, most prominently that of the Christian faith. With its Christian subject, Les Chastes Martirs invokes a ritualization of discourse to the extent that martyr figures become fully defined through their adherence to a scriptural narrative. Simultaneously, the tragic theatrical function is reliant upon the specific martyrological discourse for its realization. This interdependency of Christian identity and tragic function embodied by the martyr figure recalls the traditional status of theatre as a site of ritual, alluding to the contemporary critical polemic surrounding the separation of Church and stage. Cosnard’s play can consequently be recognized as a significant and underappreciated contribution to the debate surrounding martyr tragedy’s rebuttal of the seventeenth-century secularization of the theatre.