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Klaas Tindemans, "The King's Travesty", International Journal for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique Vol. X no.29 (1997), 115-139: Aristotle's Poetica, as a normative account of tragedy, reveals a remarkable affinity with the process of 'juridification', as guaranteed by legal dogmatics. This shift from tragedy to theory (philosophy) is confronted with the political issues at stake in the hypothetical practice of performance of Attic tragedy in the 5th century B.C., in Athens. After a small case-study of Euripides' Bacchanals - hence the title of this paper - the essay analyzes tragedy as a public experience: its institutional context, the position of the players, and the gaze of the audience. Through this analysis performed tragedy is revealed as a representational political discourse, which problematizes the rupture between the polis (political society) and the cult devoted to the 'real order', i.e. the world of divinities. Aristotle's shift of paradigm provides an answer to the crisis of legitimacy of the polis by introducing theory and dogmatics as the specific 'texture' of legal-political legitimation. In a final paragraph this theme is exemplified with possible analogies in Shakespeare's history plays and in the French 'tragédie classique'. e-mail: k.tindemans@kub.nl

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