Hippolyte's Coursiers oisifs: Poussin, Racine and Animals Untamed

Abstract

Abstract In this article, the interaction between animals and humans in two works by Poussin and Racine, Poussin's 'Paysage avec un homme tué par un serpent' (1648) and Racine's Phèdre (1677), are considered. The focus of enquiry is firstly on the unsettling effect that untamed animals have on the ordered human world as depicted in the seventeenth century, drawn from anthropologist Tim Ingold's distinction between two kinds of animality (domain and condition). It is secondly upon the way in which both painter and play-wright force us to view such destabilising spectacles through the multi-layered response of others. Included in the analysis are readings of Poussin by various commentators, most prominently T. J. Clark, and an examination of the loss of control of Hippolyte (whose name after all means 'horse liberator/loosener') over his horses. My final argument will hinge on the idea that the perilous interplay between man and beast reveals a world of ambiguity and uncertainty.