Notre procès

In 2017, a poem by André Chénier was put on the syllabus for the agrégation de lettres. Apparently, a pastoral, classic, quaint, impeccably rhymed. A shepherd lusts after a shepherdess. She refuses. He insists. She finally gives in. The candidates are stunned to read not a love scene, but a rape scene. Where does the game of desire and seduction end? Where does sexual violence begin? And what is to be done, two centuries later, with this literary object that has become an embarrassment? Bérénice Hamidi and Gaëlle Marti bring the "Chénier Affair" to the stage. Around the plaintiff and the poet, who has returned from the dead to defend himself, they summon magistrates, lawyers, experts in sexual and gender-based violence and literary specialists. But it's up to the public to judge. For this trial is, ultimately, our trial.