Les théâtres de l’après-catastrophe (XVIe-XVIIe siècle)

Abstract

At the end of the 16th century and early 17th century, France emerges from thirty years of extreme violence and a series of massacres. During these Religious wars, both sides, using the literal religious meaning of the word, referred to the notion of holocaust: if Protestants tend to practice this biblical reference from the point of view of the victims, the Catholics, particularly the members of the catholic League, have rather used it in the sense of a (necessary) Holocaust against the Protestants. Anyway, the two sides are mutually bleeding themselves white: they imposed on the whole people, involved or not, an incredible horror, and unforgettable for all the individuals who lived after this period. Therefore, during the period of relative peace which followed Henry IV’s accession to the throne (1593-1594), and even if the Edict of Nantes forbids to recall it, the collective consciousness of a just passed disaster remains, especially in theatre and in the tragedies. This disaster is seen as a radical event for the world, as an absolute worst the humanity can generate in terms of inhumanity. Do people must forget this disaster or do they have to look back on it to think and judge what occured some years before?

Keywords

• tragedy
• theatre
• Edict of Nantes
• Edict of pacification
• memory
• holocaust