IZKT-Project "Theatre/Nations – France and Italy"

The innovative approach to the classicist tragedy consists above all in linking the French and Italian contexts. Only by using this approach is it possible to make the configurations visible that the tragedy, with its political and cultural implications as a genre, passes through. Both the Racine tragedy and the Alfierian Passion for Tragedy are national educational projects, albeit with different political signs. While Racine, with his Aristotelian Rules of Tragedy, is considered THE guarantor of French classicism and thus also of the absolutist system, one hundred years later, Alfieri writes, on the one hand, under the completely changed conditions of the French Revolution, and, on the other, under the political conditions of an Italy that has not yet been nationally united. Up to his second edition of tragedies which is published by Didot, a Paris publisher who had published a complete edition of the Racine tragedies a few years earlier, Alfieri develops his virtuous-republican tragedy in terms of and in contrast to the French model. On the one hand, the tragedies thus figure at the edition-technical level as literature staged and immortalized for the reader in written characters. On the other, they are staged as national educational projects using contemporary theatre technology. Both techniques of staging when viewed in terms of publication and theatre history are to be subjected in the seminar to questions of reception and production aesthetics. In this way, the seminar not only provides the opportunity for an in-depth introduction into the genre history of tragedy with its staging and theatre technology, but also conveys a cultural-historical perspective which is translated by the students into an exhibition concept. With the Institut Français as the exhibition venue, the results of the project seminar will be presented to a broad and interested audience. Following the exhibition, the posters will be published online on the Romance Studies homepage.