Abstract
In the 17th century, " Andromaque " was used to describe a widow. This meaning, fixed in later texts and in the collective imagination, prevents us from seeing how an author like Racine was able to turn the figure of Andromaque, against the image of the grieving widow, into a singular heroine : a woman who activates the memory of trauma, refuses to forget the past and awakens the pain that people want to silence.
Wasn't it against the arbitrary fixation of a work's meaning that Proust invited us, in his essay Sur la lecture (On reading), to go beyond reading selected pieces ? The impregnation of reading," he explained, "pushes us to focus on certain details that make us forget the text. By returning to the text and considering it in its entirety, another meaning can emerge, freeing the imagination from the meaning fixed by tradition. In the case of Andromache, against the image of the weeping woman, a heroine who refuses to forget, activating memory, can appear on rereading.
