In this volume N. seeks to do for opsis what T. Cave did for anagnorisis (Recognitions [1988]), M. Lurje for hamartia (‘Das höllische Weben: Die “alten” und “neuen” Deutungen der Hamartia und die Handlungstheorie des Aristoteles’, in: Die Suche nach der Schuld [2004]) and T. Chevrolet for catharsis (‘“Che cosa è questo purgare?”: La catharsis tragique d'Aristote chez les poéticiens italiens de la Renaissance’, Etudes Epistémè 13 [2008]). This monograph matches these scholars’ work in erudition and articulates the history of the concept of opsis in philology, philosophy and literature studies with its reception on stage. The rich study is also very timely. It contributes to the recent focus on senses in Classics by adding to the research that has been conducted on emotions (D. Cairns and D. Nelis [edd.], Emotions in the Classical World [2017]), on sight and blindness (M. Ward, Blindness and Spectatorship in Ancient and Modern Theatres [2023]) and on sound (S.A. Gurd, Dissonance [2016]). N.'s research highlights the complex and paradoxical relationship of opsis to Western theatre and thus is related to contemporary debates about the nature of theatre and the boundaries of drama as a discipline.
The volume positions itself in reception studies by choosing a starting point in the recent past, which also indicates the relevance of this study to contemporary performance practices. It begins with a new querelle des anciens et des modernes that occurred at the Avignon Festival in 2005, and which is also the starting point of F. Dupont's book: Aristote ou le vampire du théâtre occidental (2007). The debate arose from spectators, theatre-makers and theatre-scholars’ reactions to the Festival programming, which included many performances that were not text-based or text-centred. Theatre director O. Py, who argued in defence of speech in performance, was then made into the representative of the ‘ancients’ against a new generation of artists developing performances aligned with the idea of the postdramatic (H.-T. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre [2006]) and defended by G. Banu and B. Tackels (Le cas Avignon [2005]) in the 2005 debate. N. demonstrates that this opposition between a ‘theatre of text’ and a ‘theatre of images’ at a major Festival in Europe not only mirrors debates about theatre as an academic discipline (drama as well as theatre and performance departments now belonging more often to creative arts than to literature schools), but is also rooted in a long intellectual and scholarly history.
The first part of the book demonstrates that Aristotle did not expurgate opsis from theatre, but rather that the concept has been constructed by both neo-Aristotelians and anti-Aristotelians who ‘ne divergent que sur leur appréciation d'une telle expurgation, puisque les uns l'estiment pertinente, tandis que les autres la jugent (à bon droit sans doute) délirante’ (p. 147). In fact, both anti-Aristotelians, who believe that Aristotle rejects opsis and who focus on the performative aspects of theatre – such as F. Dupont (Aristote ou le vampire du théâtre occidental [2007]) and O. Taplin (The Stagecraft of Aeschylus [1977]) in Classics and H.-T. Lehman (Postdramatic Theatre [2006]) in theatre studies –, as well as neo-Aristotelians, who privilege the word in theatre-making are led by a misreading of Chapter 6 of the Poetics, as N. demonstrates.
The volume engages with a detailed analysis of the concept of opsis in the Poetics and its commentaries and persuasively argues that, even if opsis is not the centre of the poet's art, Aristotle does not privilege the reading of tragedy over its performance. ‘Aristote ne saurait ici procéder à une évacuation de l’opsis: bien au contraire, il reconnaît sa fonction primordiale dans l'appréhension de ce qu'est le drame, en tant à la fois qu'objet phénoménal et qu'objet d'une définition philosophique’ (p. 48).
N. then justifies the opposition between his interpretation of Chapter 6 and the anti-Aristotelian one by exploring the history of the manuscripts and their reception that he describes as a series of misunderstandings. We learn that V. Maggi (In Aristotelis librum de Poetica communes Explanationes [1550]) is the inventor of the Aristotle that would then be rejected by Nietzsche and Dupont and remain authoritative until the 1970s. In the context of the reformation Maggi was led to dematerialise tragedy, which fed intellectualist approaches willing to expurgate sensuous experience from art. Christian and Neoplatonist readings of the Poetics reduced tragedy to a poem and were then turned into aesthetical principles by French Classicism and German Idealism. These principles would later be questioned by new dramaturgical approaches (A. Artaud, Le théâtre et son double [1938]). Maggi's misreading of Chapter 6 therefore feeds the debate for both anti-Aristotelians and neo-Aristotelians into the twentieth century. It not only fuels discussions about the nature and boundaries of theatre-making, but also turns the Poetics into a proto-narratologist treatise – particularly in G. Genette's work (‘Quarante ans de Poétique’, LhT 10 [2012]).
The originality of N.'s approach sits in his constant consideration of theatre practices now and then. He situates the reception of Aristotle's Poetics within the history of drama and of the performance of ancient theatre, particularly within Italian, German, French and English traditions. Because it uses the history of opsis to reflect on the history of performance – see, for example, N.'s analysis of the argument opposing E.G. Craig (On the Art of the Theatre [1911]) and F.L. Lucas (Tragedy [1927]) –, the volume can be illuminating for theatre and performance scholars as well as for contemporary theatre-makers.
After acknowledging the fact that the most convincing way to look at the Poetics is to consider it as a philosophical text (with F. Robortello, In librum Aristotelis de arte poetica explicationes [1548], V. Goldschmidt, Temps physique et temps tragique chez Aristote [1982] and D. Guastini, Aristotele: Poetica [2010]), in the second part of the monograph, N. challenges Aristotle's theory by taking Oedipus Tyrannus, whose exodos relies on opsis, as a case study. Relying on a close dramaturgical analysis of this exodos, N. argues that ‘teratophany’, as an effect embedded in the muthos itself, is part of the structure of tragedy: ‘l'interprétation aristotélicienne d’Œdipe Roi comme mécanique rationnelle ne rend donc pas compte de l'ensemble des effets produits par la pièce de Sophocle à la représentation – et même à la simple lecture’ (p. 239). N. then demonstrates how Oedipus Tyrannus has nonetheless become the epitome of the Aristotelian theory and of the tragedy of fate (with Seneca's version as a very important intertext), offering close readings of early modern versions of Sophocles’ play – notably by G. Dell'Anguillara (Edippo [1565]) and A. Dacier (L’Œdipe et l’Électre de Sophocle [1692]) and of the adaptations by P. Corneille (1659) and Voltaire (1719). However, the play by J. Dryden and N. Lee (1678) and a couple of performances in Colleges in France in the seventeenth century, as counterexamples, were particularly spectacular and relied on opsis. As N. indicates, Oedipus Tyrannus was also used as an argument to loosen the limitations of French classicism, but the monstrosity of the exodos only fully made its way back to national stages in the twentieth century. The argument of the second part of the volume is driven by adaptation and performance histories, and N. manages brilliantly to show how practice and theory are interconnected.
Voir le théâtre is a deeply scholarly monograph, using classical reception to investigate the history of the misreadings of Aristotle's concept of opsis and their consequences for theatre practices. This study is relevant to Classics as well as theatre and performance studies. The book is, however, focused on a Western approach to theatre, and there could have been room for further comment on non-European traditions that have been and still are used as references by Western scholars and theatre-makers (E.G. Craig, On the Art of the Theatre [1911]; A. Artaud, Le théâtre et son double [1938]; R. Schechner, Performance Theory [1988]) to resolve or do away with the debate opposing muthos and opsis. However, N. ends the monograph dismissing this opposition and stating that drama is precisely the art of articulating images and speech and that is why the exodos of Oedipus Tyrannus is, according to him, more relevant than the Poetics for thinking about the theory and practice of theatre and performance.
