An Analysis of Pierre Corneille's Drama Nicomède

10.6094/helden.heroes.heros./2014/QM/05 24 Jakob Willis Emotions and Affects of the Heroic – An Analysis of Pierre Corneille’s Drama Nicomède (1651) 1. Approaching Heroism has recently been applied in the fi elds of cultural and literary theory by scholars such as Jean- A hero or heroine is an exceptional fi gure char- Marie Apostolidès,4 Bernhard Giesen5 and Eva acterised by virtues and qualities such as ac- Horn.6 Within the context of these approaches tivity, courage, strength, power, greatness and and the general framework of SFB 948 (see sacrifi ce. Regardless of those distinguishing fea- von den Hoff et al. 8), I intend to analyze the tures, heroes would not be heroes without com- emotions and affects of the heroic in relation to munities declaring them as such. The attribution Pierre Corneille’s drama Nicomède (published in of hero status depends on a community’s strat- 1651), pursuing two major goals: On a broader egies of medial representation and appropria- theoretical level, this essay deals with different tion, and heroes are rarely conceived as being understandings of the terms feelings, passions, apathetic, nor do they leave anyone indifferent. emotions and affects, which are still seldom con- Quite on the contrary: it is widely acknowledged ceptualised with suffi cient clarity, and proposes that heroes live personally through emotions an analytical perspective on heroism which com- and affects1 such as pride, anger and compas- bines approaches from the history of emotions sion, and that they arouse a range of strong and from the theorisation of affect. On a her- emotions and affects among the groups who ad- meneutical level of literary analysis, I will then mire, love, follow, envy, fear or hate them. More explain the emotional and affective dimensions precisely, persons conceived and fi gures con- in Corneille’s literary construction of his hero structed as heroes, such as Joan of Arc, Louis Nicomède within the historical context of social II de Bourbon-Condé, Georges Jacques Danton, norms concerning emotionality and affectivity as Napoléon Bonaparte, Jean Moulin and Charles well as theories on the emotional and affective de Gaulle, are considered as personalities “en- impact of theatre in France during Corneille’s dowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at lifetime. least specifi cally exceptional powers or qualities” (Weber 2432), and so are often depicted In one of the paratexts to Nicomède, Corneille as charismatic leaders having a strong emotion- made a paradoxical assertion: “Voici une pièce al or affective impact on their entourage. As for d’une constitution assez extraordinaire”, he Napoleon, both on the level of factual historical wrote in the letter to the reader preceding the testimony and on the level of fi ctitious artistic im- play: “La tendresse et les passions, qui doivent agination, artists from Stendhal and Victor Hugo être l’âme des tragédies, n’ont aucune part en to Abel Gance as well as historiographers and celle-ci ; la grandeur de courage y règne seule” biographers3 repeatedly place emphasis on the (Corneille, Œuvres II 639). The heroic fi gure at hero’s charismatic authority and the emotions or the centre of the play, Nicomède, is said to be affects involved in the interpersonal relations be- “un prince intrépide, qui voit sa perte assurée tween himself and his enthusiastic admirers and sans s’ébranler”. He fi ghts courageously against followers. his enemies and never struggles with his tragic destiny, nor does he try to arouse pity: “[I]l ne The idea of a close link between heroes, charis- cherche point à faire pitié”. For this reason he ma and emotions or affects goes back to Max even “sort un peu des règles de la tragédie” Weber’s and Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological work and is one of those rare impassive yet triumph- on charisma and charismatic authority ( Weber ant heroes who “n’excite que de l’admiration 241–250 and 1111–1155; Bourdieu 7–29) and dans l’âme du spectateur” (ibid. 641). By thus helden. heroes. héros. Jakob Willis – Emotions and Affects in Nicomède 25 emphasising a poetics of admiration – one of the nication and try to understand the aesthetic form strongest passions in the general understanding and the social meaning of the emotional mes- of Corneille’s time7 – the playwright not only con- sage. We will never know what somebody really tradicts the dominant Aristotelian model of eleos felt, but we can try to understand why he or she and phobos, of pity and fear, but also seems to displayed a specifi c emotion in a specifi c context contradict his own claim to have written a play in of social communication. which love and passion play no part. In The Navigation of Feeling, Reddy defi nes Besides the general interest in outlining a the- his concept of “emotional regimes” as “a set of oretical approach for analysing the literary di- normative emotions and the offi cial rituals, prac- mension of the emotions and the affects of the tices and emotives that express and inculcate heroic, the obvious incoherence of Corneille’s them” (129; see also his “Against Construction- assertions concerning his tragedy Nicomède ism”, 332–351). Unlike “emotional styles”, emo- serve as a reason for further investigation on the tional regimes with their norms and penalties topic. seek conformity and are existentially defi ning for groups and individuals. In a given historical situation, every community, whether on a small and private or a large and public scale, enforces 2. Emotions and Affects of the Heroic a specifi c emotional regime according to which its members have to feel or, more precisely, dis- I will now briefl y defi ne the terms I am working play what they feel. A hero’s display of emotions, with and situate them in the current debate in be it the legendary wrath of Achilles or, quite at the humanities on emotions and affects. As I will the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, the argue, one term with its related theories cannot not less legendary mercy and pacifi sm of fi gures be used to the exclusion of the other. How ever, such as Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi and they have to be carefully distinguished from each Nelson Mandela, can never be fully understood other in order to be made functional for different without regard to the dominant emotional re- levels of the analysis. gimes of the cultural confi gurations in which they lived. Literature and other arts play an important First of all, I understand emotion, contrary to role in stabilising and destabilising emotional re- its colloquial usage, as the social display of gimes: They can demonstrate their normativity, what one might call a feeling, an affect, or – in and they can provide “emotional refuge” – an- Corneille’s terms – a passion. An emotional ex- other term coined by Reddy – for deviant emo- pression is, as one of the leading theorists on the tional discourses and practices. Within this the- history of emotions, William Reddy, puts it, “an oretical framework I assume that it is possible to attempt to call up the emotion that is expressed, identify a specifi c heroic sub-regime within the an attempt to feel what one says one feels.”8 In broader emotional regime of a given historical this sense, emotions do not necessarily reveal community or even an entire society. As we will what one really feels; instead they have to be see, this sub-regime of the heroic has implica- interpreted in social contexts of communication, tions for the display of emotions of both heroes such as literature. If we follow a related defi nition and their social entourage – in actuality as well from Eric Shouse, who also places the empha- as in literature. More than any other genre of lit- sis on the social and communicative character of erature, the textual and performative dramatic art emotions, “[w]e broadcast emotion to the world; both portrays and constitutes a social context of sometimes that broadcast is an expression of emotional communication, confronting the dom- our internal state and other times it is contrived inating emotional regime of a specifi c historical in order to fulfi ll social expectations” (n.p.). Re- situation with deviant forms of emotional refuge. gardless of whether or not an expressed and communicated emotion is triggered by an ac- While an emotion is to be seen as a phenome- tual personal feeling (which would be better in- non of communication, language and discourse, vestigated in the fi elds of cognitive psychology an affect is a “non-conscious experience of in- and neuroscience), it must be understood as a tensity”, a “passage from one experiential state special form of social interaction which can be of the body to another” (Shouse n.p.). Derived analysed by various disciplines of the humani- from Spinoza’s theory of the affectus, which ties, such as history, anthropology and cultural focuses on the interaction of bodies, scholars studies. In this perspective, I do not seek to re- such as Brian Massumi, Nigel Thrift, Eve Kosof- construct the ephemeral experience of a “real” sky Sedgwick and Eric Shouse have developed emotion but rather take it as a means of commu- theories on a pre-rational, pre-intentional and helden. heroes. héros. Jakob Willis – Emotions and Affects in Nicomède 26 pre-conscious mode of interpersonal relations. human beings, symbols and works of art. Even Most of these leading affect theorists suggest, though an affect as a bodily reaction is prior to as Ruth Ley puts it, that the “affects must be human understanding, meaning and sense, I viewed as independent of, and in an important seek to analyse it by rather traditional means sense prior to, ideology – that is, prior to inten- of hermeneutical work.

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