Les Bacchantes d’Euripide et Macbeth de Shakespeare : « Not Born of Woman » ou la perversion de la figure maternelle

Abstract

The victimisation of femininity and overvalued status of masculinity are predominant features of the social environment both of ancient Greece and Elizabethan England. Euripides' Bacchae and Shakespeare’s Macbeth explore this process of antagonism between the sexes as well as the dynamics of inversion : the virilisation of women, the feminising of men, the blurring of mother-son, wife-husband relationships. The punishment of Agave by father-born Dionysos, and the defeat of womanish Macbeth at the hands of «Not of woman born» Macduff illustrate the social transcendence of masculinity and hold up the ideal of an all-male society unpolluted by any feminine, obnoxious contact.