Pallas (Dec 2018)
Le retour des Érinyes : le chœur des Euménides dans Les Mouches de Jean-Paul Sartre et La Ville parjure d’Hélène Cixous
Abstract
This paper investigates how the Chorus of Aeschylus’ Eumenides has been revived on the stage to address modern socio-political issues. First, I focus on Sartre’s The Flies, created in Paris in 1943 during the German occupation. I argue that although Sartre draws heavily on Aeschylus, his play entails a complete reversal of the Eumenides. By depicting the Erinyes as a swarm of malevolent flies, he not only curtails the moral principles they upheld in Aeschylus, but also maintains that they should be excluded from the city, as an embodiment of the political apathy which plagues Argos (as well as Nazi-occupied Paris). I then proceed to analyse Hélène Cixous’ The Perjured City, in which the Erinyes urge revenge for the victims of the “Bad Blood Scandal” that broke in France in the late 1980s. I suggest that Cixous’ play, insofar as it delegates a legitimate claim for justice to the ancient goddesses of retribution, provides a very different perspective on the role the Erinyes – or, more generally, ghosts and textual revenants of the past – may still play in modern society.
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