Les mots et les maux politiques dans Britannicus de Racine

Abstract

Racine's tragedy, Britannicus, is part of a dynamic of critical reflection on ethical and moral values in politics. The question of political legitimacy appears implicitly as a major preoccupation of a theatrical poetics, which promotes the denunciation of tyranny and social injustice. However, the ritual of violence, which shines through the treatment of the theme of power, rather reflects a sort of lasting reality of political actions; and this for the simple reason that political power corrupts and makes the tyrant the image of a carnivorous beast enthroned over a species of jungle. The present study, which calls on the analysis of discourse as an investigative tool, intends to make this diagnosis based on verbal interactions and ideological postures adopted by the act ants; to finally understand that beyond appearances, words in politics are rippling and marred by so many evils.