ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the two obscure texts which commentators has traditionally explained in terms of their ultimate intention, which is confessional or predicatory, neglecting the mythical background. Beneath the web of the Jacob cycle it can thus identify the structure of an initiatory narrative, and the Bible story can therefore be regarded as the dramatic transposition of a universal archetype, a fantasy, and so belongs among myths. Even so, the English playwright does not reduce wrestling with the angel to a commonplace struggle, stripped of its religious elements: for him the voice of the moral conscience is in fact the voice of God as Rousseau expressed it. The chapter talks about Jacob, who is generally seen as symbolizing man struggling with something beyond him, Nature or the Ideal. As well as the mediaeval mystery plays, the passage devoted to Jacob's struggle in Moyse sauve by Saint-Amant belongs in this category.
