Abstract EN:

Classical theatre did not permit death on stage. This ban had been laid down by Horace in his Ars poetica and justified by Medea’s infanticide: “Medea should not slaughter her children in the presence of the people […]. Whatever you show me like this, I detest and refuse to believe. ” Due to this illustrious reference, from the 16th to the 18th century, Medea became a choice example for reflections on verisimilitude and on the means of achieving dramatic effectiveness. Stage adaptations of the story of Medea raised the issues of the limits of what could be represented and the reasons why violence had to be controlled and limited by playwrights in order to become acceptable. While they stand for a climax of violence, Medea’s crimes also call for investigations in specific fields. Compendia of myths, medical treatises, books of demonology, theories on power and women: texts from all these fields of knowledge, in which Medea served as a paradigm, have been consulted to shed new light on the theatrical treatment of the subject. Making violence plausible does not imply eliminating it entirely; violence is effective dramatically, as the popularity of the subject-matter demonstrates. Therefore, this study focuses on confronting the theoretical discourse on theatre with the plays themselves, in order to understand better the advantages and risks for the tragic genre entailed by the representation of violence. These Medeas mark the limits of what is tolerable on stage and sketch out a history of the theatrical representation of bloody crimes. In this respect, the scandal represented by Medea appears as a particularly rich theoretical and dramatic object