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‘No Exit’ in Racine’s Phèdre: The Making of the Anti-Hero
- The French Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 88, Number 1, October 2014
- pp. 165-178
- 10.1353/tfr.2014.0114
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
I argue that Sartre used Phèdre as an early prototype when he defined what an anti-hero looked like in Huis clos (No Exit).My study focuses on the conditions that contribute to Sartre’s understanding of what constitutes an anti-hero, and the environment from which he (or she in this case) emerges in Racine’s Phèdre. Sartre suggests that his twentieth-century society, caught up in values he sees as “bourgeois,” is similar to the oppressive court society from which Racine’s anti-hero emerges. I employ both historical and comparative approaches to explore these similar contexts.