Racine à l'école de Molière: Britannicus

Abstract Racine is often viewed in literary history as a fledgling artist who betrayed Molière personally and distanced himself progressively from his former associate in the course of his career as an author for the Hôtel de Bourgogne troupe. As acrimonious as relationships may have become between the two dramatists, a study of key texts, especially Britannicus, shows that the literary relationship was far more complex, as Racine strove to emulate and in some ways to outdo Molière by adapting elements of the great comic author's œuvre into his own works. The strategic relationship of Britannnicus to Racine's only comedy, Les Plaideurs, adds insight to this process of adaptation. Racine shows familiarity with many of Molière's recurring types of scenes and the most prominent among these is the stylized lovers' quarrel named after the play that first featured it, Dépit amoureux. In crafting the amorous relationship between Nero's half-brother Britannicus and the captive noblewoman Junie, Racine refashions the symmetrical dépit amoureux in order to take tragic advantage of its alternate movements of repulsion and reattraction, based on such emotional factors as pride, uncertainty, and vulnerability raised to a heightened pitch. An important ingredient in this adaptation is the role of Néron as an ironic voyeur and manipulator, attempting to control the conversations remotely for his own amusement and self-interest.