A Study Of Racine’s Tragedy From The Perspective Of Literary Ethical Criticism

Jean Racine is the representative of French classical drama in the 17 th century,which pushed French classical literature to the peak.Racine’s tragic works contain very rich ethical thoughts.He makes those conflicting ethical norms appear in front of the readers as a whole,so as to promote the characters to make their own ethical choices,and the final tragic outcome returns to the ethical subject of man,which shocks people’s mind.Although there are national interests,the principle of honor,women’s ethics and other things that belong to the category of rationality,Racine attaches great importance to the great dominant power of free will.On the basis of inheriting the artistic aesthetics of ancient Greece,Racine raised the discussion of "man" ’s own emotional will and the realization of self-worth to the core position of drama,so as to realize the variation from "other salvation" to "self salvation".Racine’s tragic works not only show that ethics is a complex of contradictions,but also realize that it is the contradiction of ethics itself that leads to the self denial of ethical norms.Finally,ethical norms develop with contradiction as the driving force.Therefore,from the perspective of literary ethical criticism,this paper attempts to take Racine’s tragic works as the specific analysis object,and deeply explore the rich ethical thoughts contained in it on the basis of text interpretation and in the real historical context.The introduction mainly introduces the research status of domestic and foreign scholars on Racine’s dramatic works,as well as the definition of relevant concepts,that is,a theoretical overview of the origin of tragedy and the method of literary ethical criticism,and explains the feasibility and important significance of literary ethical criticism of Racine’s tragedy.Based on the real historical context,the first chapter analyzes the origin of Racine’s ethical thought from three aspects: the background of the times,educational experience and religious belief.When we examine the ethical thought in Racine’s tragedy from the perspective of Literary Ethics,we must first use the method of historicism to investigate the historical origin of this consciousness.Only in this way can we help us understand the authenticity of Racine’s tragedy more deeply.The second chapter deeply analyzes the three dimensions from low to high that promote the characters to make ethical choices in Racine’s tragedy,that is,the free will at the physical level,the social law at the spiritual level and the religious will at the belief level.When we use literary ethical criticism to interpret the text,we can not purely use the inherent thinking set of the binary opposition between good and evil of "non good and evil",but should consider the internal collision and richness of this ethical model.The third chapter is devoted to analyzing the three treatment methods of fraud,madness and suicide set by Racine in solving the ethical conflict."Death or madness" seems to be the only choice of the main characters.The inevitable tragic result makes people begin to reflect on the rationality of the ethical system itself in that period,which also makes the ethical conflict rise to the highest point of reflection.The fourth chapter comprehensively discusses the value and limitations of Racine’s Ethical Thought on the basis of the previous text.The real value of literature is not only to provide a kind of entertainment and recreation,but to convey a certain educational significance to readers through aesthetic or entertainment.On the one hand,Racine’s tragic creation is the continuation of the aesthetics of ancient Greek dramatic art,on the other hand,it realizes the variation from "self rescue" to "other rescue".But there are also inevitable ideological limitations,which can not escape the haze of fatalism.The conclusion part summarizes that the ethical thought in Racine’s tragic works is actually based on the internal contradiction of people’s own development.From the root,the crux of the ethical conflict lies in the restraint of people’s free will caused by the development of ethical norms,which leads to the thinking of the ethical norms of his era.