Sturen en gestuurd worden : de hartstochten en de goddelijke voorzienigheid in drie vroegmoderne Medeatragedies (1648-1667)

Abstract

This article investigates the navigation of the passions in regard to divine providence in three Dutch theatre plays about the mythical sorceress Medea: Jan Six’s Aristotelian tragedy Medea (1648), Jan Vos’s revenge tragedy Medea (1667), and Lodewijk Meyer’s spectacle play Ghulde Vlies (1667). In order to demonstrate that the Medea plays participate in the early modern discursive force field of the navigation (both human and divine) of the passions, I situate them in a dialogical framework of early modern doctrines of the passions, notably those of Lipsius, Descartes and Spinoza, whose presuppositions the plays borrow and elaborate upon. In the plays, the navigation of Medea’s passions is revealed as the complex product of an incessant interplay between active human (rational) control on the one hand, and resigned acceptance of divine necessity on the other. The plays’ crucial bone of contention, it is shown, is the exact scope for rational navigation of the passions in the face of necessity.