Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Phaedra's Labyrinth as the Paradigm of Passion: Racine's Aesthetic Formulation of Mimetic Desire Jacques-Jude Lépine Haverford College The actual model of Racine's Phaedra is no more the one that he claims to follow in his preface than one ofthose which his critics have sought in vain to find in the works of his immediate predecessors.1 Indeed, the comparative reading ofRacine's last profane tragedy against his sources shows that Seneca and Euripides only provided a very general framework, one might say a traditional theme, which Racine completely recasts on the level of the plot, structure, characters, poetic esthetics, and theatrical performance. On the other hand, the myth of Phaedra's involuntary passion for her stepson Hippolytus, the hunter who was supposed to be atavistically insensitive to erotic seduction, could very well have been reorganized on the basis of another mythological episode which precedes it, the killing of the Minotaur by Theseus in the Labyrinth. There are many explicit references to this episode throughout Racine's Phaedra. There are even more than a rich but strictly thematic critic has been able to detect (see Racine), underscoring the fundamental point of my essay that the intensely poetic character of the Labyrinth, and particularly its function as a fantastic spatial frame, is not simply of a decorative nature. In Racine's work, as in any other genuine literary masterpiece, there is a unity ofcontent and form. The many references to the Labyrinth are determinant for the very subject ofPhaedra, which is the representation of passion, the only subject of interest for Racine. In fact, I intend to demonstrate that Racine used the unique topography of the Labyrinth as a paradigm of the logic of the relationships between his ' These works are Garnier's "Hippolyte" (1573) and Quinault's "Bellérophon" (1671). 48Jacques-Jude Lépine characters because of its capacity for fully expressing the mimetic origin of passion, a decisive discovery the gradual stages towards which may be traced in all his previous works. The Monster Hunt as a Metaphor of the Dramatic Action In order to demonstrate this point, I will start from the textual data, even though it will be necessary to go beyond a simple inventory of the themes explicitly connected to the Labyrinth. The first of these themes is obviously the one of monstrosity. At some point in the play, all the main characters accuse themselves, or are accused, of being a monster (Barthes 115). The relationship between this moral monstrosity (expressed in ambiguous statements suggesting a physical sign) and the return of Theseus, whose numerous monster hunts Hippolytus recalls in the opening scene,2 is easy to see. As has been already noted, the theme of the monster hunt is present from beginning to end of the play, where the fight between Hippolytus and the sea monster occurs (see Jasenas). But the monsterpar excellence is the Minotaur, whose death at the hands of Theseus Phaedra recalls in a famous speech which serves to reveal her passion to Hippolytus through a series of substitutions in the original cast of characters: Oh, why were you too young top have embarked Within the ship that brought him [Theseus] to our shores? You would have been the monster's killer then, In spite of all the windings of his maze. To find your way in that uncertain dark, My sister would have armed you with the thread. But no! In this design I would have been Ahead of her, my sister! Me, not her, It would have been whom love at first inspired; And I it would have been, Prince, I, whose aid Had taught you all the Labyrinth's crooked ways. A single thread would not have been enough To satisfy your lover's fears for you. I would myself have wished to lead the way, And share the perils you were bound to face. Phaedra, into the Labyrinth, with you Would have descended, and with you returned, To safety, or with you have perished. (647-62) 2 See verses 73-90. References to Margaret Rawlings's translation of Phaedra will be given parenthetically in the text. The verse numbers refer to the French edition...