‘Enter Antonio, with a book’ : la tragédie de vengeance anglaise, une maladie sans remède
This article proposes to explore one of the conventions of English revenge tragedies: the use of stoicism either as a dramatic prop (when the revenger enters the stage with a book in his hand) or as a series of quotations. Stoicism often appears as a sort of physic supposed to appease the revenger’s...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Institut du Monde Anglophone
2008-06-01
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| Series: | Etudes Epistémè |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/897 |
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| Summary: | This article proposes to explore one of the conventions of English revenge tragedies: the use of stoicism either as a dramatic prop (when the revenger enters the stage with a book in his hand) or as a series of quotations. Stoicism often appears as a sort of physic supposed to appease the revenger’s melancholy but it is a paradoxical therapy, since as it cures melancholy, it also provokes passionate discourse and action that lead to the final revenge. This is how it appears in the first English revenge play, Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (1585-90). The reference to the written word in revenge plays seems to be a way of moralizing the violence they contain, but Stoic therapy appears as a failure and it is not only the revenger who is sick, but the whole dramatic world of the plays. |
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| ISSN: | 1634-0450 |