Original scientific paper
THE DOUBLE IN JEAN DE ROTROU’S SOSIES AND MOLIÈRE’S AMPHITRYON
Mirna Sindičić Sabljo
orcid.org/0000-0002-3778-158X
; Sveučilište u Zadru - Odjel za francuske i iberoromanske studije
Abstract
Ever since Antiquity the story of Amphitryon and his wife Alcmene has been drawing attention of
writers belonging to different periods of literary history, among others, Plautus, John Dryden,
Heinrich von Kleist, Jean Giraudoux, Luis de Camões, Georg Kaiser, Peter Hacks and Ignacio
Padilla. Amphitryon and Sosies’s destinies were the topics of Jean de Rotrou’s (Sosies, 1636) and
Molière’s (Amphitryon, 1668) comedies. This paper focuses on the analysis of the double in these
two texts, Sosies and Amphitryon. The paper, in its introductory part, analyses intertextual
relations between Rotrou’s and Molière’s texts, as well as their relationship with Plautus’s
template. The comic potential of these texts resides in the appearance of physical doubles that
steal the main character’s identities. The analysis is based on Jacques Lacan’s concept of a Mirror
stage. The motif of the double in Rotrou’s and Molière’s comedies is related to the anxiety
provoked by the 17th century epistemological rupture.
Keywords
Amphytrion; baroque; double; French theatre; identity; the self; Jean de Rotrou; Molière
Hrčak ID:
124917
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2014.
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