Ecouter Cassandre ? Etude d'une figure scénique paradoxale dans la tragédie grecque (Ve s. av. J.-C.) et ses traductions et réécritures à la Renaissance (XVIe s.)

This work proposes a study of Cassandra in relation to the tragic genre in which she acquires her full status of character. The corpus in which she is given birth, the two attic tragedies which are the Agamemnon by Aeschylus and the Trojan Women by Euripides profoundly shapes her identity of a seeress doomed to prophesy their destiny to the others who don’t understand her. In order to better grasp the potentialities of this character, the present analysis considers the other founding moment for the tragedy, the XVIth century. The study of the reception requires to deal with heterogeneous sources, so much so that the multiplication of the textual genres (translations, rewritings, adaptations) and languages (latin, french and italian) lighten the ways in which Cassandra was understood by the authors at the time, and, doing so, to better put in perspective her particular appearances. In fact, she presents all the assets to let us observe, through her, the dynamics during the redefinition of the tragic genre by authors in balance between two tendencies: the explanation of the Antiquity and its adaptation to the modern conceptions (christianism for instance). Thus, the paradoxes inherent to Cassandra, authentic incarnation of tragedy, serve as a prism to scholars and playwrights to question their times as much as their medium of expression which is the theater.