L'Orient désert: Bérénice and Antony and Cleopatra
1975; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3138/utq.44.2.96
ISSN1712-5278
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Literary Analyses
ResumoIn the conventionalized Mediterranean world in which Racine sets Bérénice, Rome is the very embodiment of order, energy, and virtue, while the Orient stands for formlessness, passivity, and emptiness. The Orient, like Africa or the newly-discovered Americas, is merely a particular case of what we call the 'exotic,' or that which is not us. The structures of the exotic world being incomprehensible to us, it is for our purposes structureless. The absence of apparent form can be exhilarating or terrifying; it is sometimes our daydreams and sometimes our anxieties that we project onto the exotic, for our own relief or illumination. For the exotic is a sort of blank cheque, to be filled out as the vision and temperament of the individual dictate.
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