Louis Auchincloss - La gloire: the Roman Empire of Corneille and Racine
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La gloire: the Roman Empire of Corneille and Racine
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La Gloire : The Roman Empire of Corneille and Racine
author
:
Auchincloss, Louis.
publisher
:
University of South Carolina Press
isbn10 | asin
:
1570031223
print isbn13
:
9781570031229
ebook isbn13
:
9780585334073
language
:
English
subject
Corneille, Pierre,--1606-1684--Criticism and interpretation, Racine, Jean,--1639-1699--Criticism and interpretation, Rome--In literature.
publication date
:
1996
lcc
:
PQ1772.A95 1996eb
ddc
:
842/.4093237
subject
:
Corneille, Pierre,--1606-1684--Criticism and interpretation, Racine, Jean,--1639-1699--Criticism and interpretation, Rome--In literature.
Page iii
La Gloire
The Roman Empire of Corneille and Racine
Louis Auchincloss
Page iv
Copyright 1996 University of South Carolina
Published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
00 99 98 97 96 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Auchincloss, Louis. La gloire : the Roman Empire of Corneille and Racine / Louis Auchincloss. p. cm. ISBN 1570031223 1. Corneille, Pierre, 16061684Criticism and interpretation. 2. Racine, Jean, 16391699Criticism and interpretation. 3. RomeIn literature. I. Title. PQ1772.A95 1996 842'.4093237dc20 9638634
Page v
For Martha Rusk Sutphen, than whom Adele and I had no dearer friend.
Page vii
Contents
Introduction
1
Horace
7
Sophonisbe
13
Nicomde
19
Sertorius
25
Mithridate
31
La Mort de Pompe
37
Cinna
43
Britannicus
49
Othon
53
Tite et Brnice
61
Polyeucte
67
Thodore and Pulchrie
73
Attila
81
Surna
87
Page 1
Introduction
In modern times, though perhaps starting as far back as the historian Edward Gibbon (17371794), there is a tendency to think of the Roman Empire as a political entity in a condition of constant decline, a decadent slave state, always overrun by barbarians it was too effete to resist, with a population whose principal diversion was watching gladiatorial combats and Christians fed to the lions.
Yet to intellectuals of the seventeenth century the Roman Empire represented a culture and a civilization superior to any in their contemporary Europe. The statue of James II outside the National Gallery in London was clad in a toga; Latin was the language of scholars and diplomats, and Ceasar was the title of the Holy Roman Emperor who still claimed to rule the world. Roman law stood for order and justice, and Roman virtue was the ideal of the warrior.
France was then the great power of Europe. Louis XIV was more like Augustus than like any Hapsburg in Vienna, and the advance of the Roman legions to the mists of Scotland and the deserts of Parthia seemed a foreshadowing of the aggressive military policies of Richelieu and the Sun King. The millennium of Roman history from Romulus to Romulus Augustulus (753 B.C. to 476 A.D.) provided a rich source of themes for the classic tragedians of the day, replete as it was with glorious victories and triumphal marches. And it was equally well stocked with murders
Page 2
and treacheries and usurpations. And love, too, of course, so necessary for the dramatist, though Venus was not apt to be a friendly goddess to those who found themselves in her talons.
The form of the French classic tragedy has always been a bit of a poser to non-Gallic audiences. Why must the action be limited to a single chamber, usually a room in a palace, and why must it all take place in twenty-four hours, all too ludicrously few, in most cases, for the events crammed into them? Why can there be no violence on the scene, no horseplay, no relieving comedy? Why must the language be limited to noble words? Do we really care about alternating masculine and feminine rhymes? It takes some time and considerable adaptation before the reader who has been (justly) raised to think Shakespeare the peerless playwright can adapt to the methods of Corneille and Racine. But when he or she has done so, the rewards are great indeed. For the limitations of a French tragedian enabled the playwright to cast a brilliant and remorseless beam of light on the crux of the problem to which he addressed himself and hold it there until understanding and catharsis were complete. This can give the reader or audience a unique aesthetic experience; it is poetry at its most intense.
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