The Representation of Power and the Power of Representation

Abstract

CORNEILLE'S THEATER IS A POLITICAL THEATER, or rather, it is a theater of the political. By this I mean that his theater is not so much in the service of politics, nor the expression of political ideas, as much as it is the staging of a thinking about the political. Corneille is a political thinker, no doubt the most important political thinker of the seventeenth century. He is constantly raising questions about the nature of power, the foundations of its legitimacy, about the relationships between ethics and politics, about the legitimacy of force, or about state interests (raison d'6tat), in short, taking up all of Machiavelli's questions. From the point of view of political thought, Corneille's theater articulates an often critical dialogue with Machiavelli's writings. But what is interesting is that this political thought, this response to Machiavelli, is not enunciated in the form of a theoretical treatise, but rather in a theatrical form. For if there is unquestionably a political theory in Corneille's writings, a reflection on the state of power, Corneille himself is not a political theoretician, nor a philosopher, but rather a poet, a dramatic author. His thought is expressed through theater, within a genre that imposes its own demands and whose first rule, to which all others are subordinate, is to please the spectator. Corneille states as much in the beginning of his first Discours sur le pokme dramatique. For not only is Corneille a masterful political thinker, he also developed important reflections about the theater in his prefaces, his examinations (examens), and especially in his three Discours sur le podme dramatique published in 1644 with his examens, in the beginning of the first complete edition of his works. While Corneille's political theory is expressed in a theatrical form, Corneille's reflections on the dramatic arts, on the other hand, take a theoretical form. Taken together, these prefaces, examens and discourses constitute what could truly be called a poetics, where Corneille takes up all of the questions raised by Aristotle, in order to discuss them point by point. If Corneille's theater is a response to Machiavelli within the political realm, Corneille's poetics is a response to Aristotle. But, as Corneille himself states, contrary to all of the