Innocence, Origin, and Sin in Phaedra, Blake, and Melville
This essay examines the intertwined themes of origin, innocence, and sin across three seemingly disparate literary works: Racine's Phaedra, William Blake's "The Lamb," and Herman Melville's Billy Budd. The paper traces how each work treats the question of supernatural origin—from Blake's theologically pure child-lamb to Phaedra's divine but tormented lineage—and how innocence is destroyed by forces of passion, jealousy, and rigid law. Drawing on textual evidence and secondary scholarship, the essay argues that Phaedra is the most complex of the three, embodying contradictions of guilt and victimhood, while Hippolytus and Billy Budd emerge as parallel figures of unjust suffering.
- Introduction: Connecting Three Works Through Theme: Three works linked by origin, innocence, sin
- Origin and the Question of Supernatural Lineage: Divine ancestry in Blake and Racine compared
- Innocence Destroyed: Hippolytus and Billy Budd: Parallel innocent figures undone by others' evil
- The Law, Authority, and Tragic Punishment: Vere and Theseus enforce law over conscience
- Phaedra's Inner Conflict: Passion, Guilt, and Darkness: Phaedra's passion, guilt, and self-awareness
- Blake's Lamb as Pure Innocence and the Incarnation: Blake's lamb as theological emblem of purity
- Conclusion: Sin, Suffering, and the Complexity of Phaedra: Phaedra most complex figure across all three works
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay builds a coherent thematic framework—origin, innocence, and sin—and consistently applies it across three very different literary works, giving the comparison intellectual discipline.
- It uses close textual quotation from all three primary sources, grounding interpretive claims in specific language from each work rather than relying on plot summary alone.
- The paper acknowledges translation difficulties with Racine, demonstrating scholarly self-awareness and adding nuance to the analysis of a non-English primary text.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The essay demonstrates comparative literary analysis: it identifies a shared thematic cluster across works from different languages, centuries, and genres, then reads each text against the others to illuminate contrasts and parallels. This technique—using one work as a lens to sharpen understanding of another—is particularly well executed in the parallel drawn between Hippolytus and Billy Budd as innocent figures condemned by authority.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an orienting claim and road map, then moves through the theme of origin (Blake's poem, Phaedra's divine ancestry), shifts to innocence and its destruction (Hippolytus and Billy Budd), examines the role of law and authority, explores Phaedra's internal conflict, returns to Blake for the purest expression of innocence, and closes with a synthesizing conclusion that elevates Phaedra as the most thematically complex figure.
Introduction: Connecting Three Works Through Theme
As Bernard Grebanier states, Racine's Phaedra speaks "with the violence of life itself" (xiv). If one were to compare the French playwright's most famous female lead to the English-speaking world's most famous male lead—as Grebanier does—it would have to be to Hamlet, whose passionate assessment of life is likewise problematic. Indeed, Phaedra raises many themes, including the importance of origin, innocence, and sin—themes that may be found in such seemingly disparate works as William Blake's "The Lamb" and Herman Melville's Billy Budd.
While Racine's Phaedra is the tale of a woman torn by a passion that possesses her so cruelly that it destroys not only her own life but the lives of those around her—including the innocent man who is her obsession, Hippolytus—Blake's poem deals with the triple theme of origin, innocence, and sin from the perspective of the Christian God, and Melville deals with the same triple theme from the heavy perspective of the law, followed to the letter rather than to the spirit. This essay analyzes Phaedra and the triple theme of origin, innocence, and sin, and shows how it compares to Blake's poem and Melville's novella.
Works Cited
Blake, William. "The Lamb." Songs of Innocence and Experience. Oxford University Press, 1992. Print.
Grebanier, Bernard. Phaedra: An English Acting Version. Barron's Educational Series, 1958. Print.
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd. Penguin, 1986. Print.
New Testament. Confraternity of the Precious Blood, 1948. Print.
Racine, Jean-Baptiste. Phaedra. Bartleby. Web. 23 Apr. 2012.
Ricks, Christopher. "Racine's 'Phèdre': Lowell's 'Phaedra.'" Arion, vol. 1, no. 2, 1991, pp. 44–59. Print.
Sisson, C. H. "Introduction." Phaedra. Oxford University Press, 1987. Print.
Swinden, Patrick. "Translating Racine." Comparative Literature, vol. 49, no. 3, 1997, pp. 209–226. Print.
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