Sur deux fins malheureuses de Médée dans le théâtre français des années 1930-1940 (Henri-René Lenormand, Jean Anouilh)

In Medea’s myth, the corintio episode’s outcome — which ends in series of crimes (infantice, among them) — it’s eminently tragic. But it, generally, consecrates Medea’s victory over a defeated Jason, who’s got an unfortunate end reserved for him. In that way, far from being punished, the heroine ends up escaping in a way similar to an epiphany (according to the ancient tragedies of Eurípides and Séneca) that reminds us her divine origins. In the twentieth century’s French theater, Medea’s triumph is able to survive. However, in the 1930 - 1940’s decades, a remarkable inflection is observed in the myth’s reception whit the staging of the protagonist’s suicide. We will examine the modalities, the challenges and the possible meanings of Medea’s elimination from the Henri-René Lenormand’s play (Asie, 1931) and the Jean Anouilh’s rendition (Médée, 1946), without overlooking this figure’s undermining in the twentieth century’s European literature. For the playwrights, the myth’s rewriting carries the footprints of the historic events and the ideological tensions on a conservative perspective (opposition to the decolonization movements, resistance to the feminist’s trends). Medea’s elimination, which remains exceptional en the myth’s early and later versions, works here as a impoverishing simplification of the ancient scene: it forces this figure’s mythological program, because this choice abolishes everything that the Other preserves as irreducible in its own defeat.