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Coriolanus (Shakespeare)
Commentaire de document - Anglais - 14 pages - Format Microsoft Word
Coriolanus, Act I, scene 1, lines 93 to 160 (Shakespeare).
It is therefore not surprising that the reader is introduced with the genuine notion of it all –with greater emphasis, as we shall see, on the concept of the body politic– from the very first scene of The Tragedy of Coriolanus. The beginning of a play is like a charm: it must work. The play under study here does not escape the rule, since Shakespeare plunges us into the heart of a crisis of which we know almost nothing –in this respect, the play is certainly given one of the most sudden and fast moving starts of the whole Shakespearian canon. The author’s choice of opening his play more particularly with Menenius’ fable –which is the focus of our scrutiny here– literally sets the stage: an evolving society in disarray, the organs –or citizens– of which not playing their role any more, the Senate no longer feeding the plebeians... Indeed, the political debate at stake throughout the play is already at its apex in the course of this major passage. Menenius, in an attempt to calm down the angry, hungry plebeians, rioting over the price of food, indulges in a witty, humorous, sensible, yet erroneous parable, a well-known “pretty tale”, which stands for another analogy of the body politic –“Tout est peaulitique”, Gérarg Genette would say.
Plan du document :
I. The belly fable: a parable…
1. Intertextuality
2. A social body “back to flesh”
3. The physiological metaphor
II. … a comic tale…
1. A play within the play
2. An entertaining fable
3. First contrast Menenius / Coriolanus
III. … hiding a sensible rationale…
1. Menenius’ aims
2. Menenius’ art of storytelling
3. Second contrast Menenius / Coriolanus
IV. … that proves to be erroneous and limited.
1. The belly fable is inaccurate and fallacious
2. A possible justification for the rebellion.
3. Paradox
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