Subjects of Affection: Rights of Resistance on the Early Modern French Stage. By Anna Rosensweig.

Extract:

Anna Rosensweig has packed a remarkable number of ideas and analyses into the pages of Subjects of Affection. Drawing on theories from the history of emotions and affect theory, Rosensweig’s general argument is that we can see how the theses in Huguenot resistance treaties (such as the Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579), Francogallia (1573), and Du droit des magistrats sur leurs subjets (1574)) made their way into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French tragedy. She chooses the genre of tragedy because it represents a flurry of characters from traditional forms of popular representation, like nobles, magistrates, and so forth, alongside ‘potential alternatives’ such as foreign princes and liberators (p. 54). Indeed, Rosensweig argues that tragedy allows spectators and readers not only to see these examples, but also to feel the emotions attached to them, and that this in turn influences their political subjectivity. This is an interesting example of French tragedy’s emotional impact that could be explored by other scholars in more detail. For her part, Rosensweig shows that these tragedies — which include both canonical and lesser-known examples — continue and rework these theories about public authority and liberty of conscience throughout the seventeenth century. This also impacts on traditional gendered readings of plays. For example, using resistance theory and affective evidence, Rosensweig recasts readings of Robert Garnier’s Cornélie and La Mort de Pompée to show how Cornelia can join with the Roman people to oppose Caesar (Chapter 2). Rosensweig likewise frames Antigone as a public representative, as she explores how ruling characters in the dramatic renditions of Oedipus and Antigone are swayed by affective influence. Indeed, emotion and gender are at the heart of Chapter 5, which focuses on Esther and Athalie. Across the book, Rosensweig draws on her analyses from the big narratives to close literary analysis, engaging well with major and more minor secondary material throughout. In so doing, her arguments offer not only a fresh and original light on seventeenth-century drama — particularly around the affective and political role of the chorus and people — but feed into today’s increasing academic challenge to absolutism. This is a thought-provoking monograph, and as such there are a few places where the reader could benefit from more information. The Introduction packs a punch, for example, but there are several passages that could have been explained further for the benefit of the reader or developed to make a theoretical first half of the study and an analytical second half focusing on tragedy. Secondly, Rosensweig dedicates her Conclusion — ‘The Subject of Rights’ — to extending her theory of resistance to the modern-day world, an idea she plants in the Introduction. To do so, she focuses primarily on the US and, whilst this is interesting, it needs more than five and a half pages to be developed. Likewise, some engagement with works such as Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton, 2007) would also help tie this section into analyses of the evolution of rights over centuries. Notwithstanding these comments, Rosensweig’s approach is refreshing.