De l'or de Virgile aux ors de Versailles: métamorphoses de l'épopée dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle en France (review)

This is a study of the reception of Virgil's Aeneid under Louis XIV. It embraces a wealth of textual material in French and Latin. Goupillaud approaches this 'énorme masse textuelle' from three angles: 'les héritiers', 'les fils prodigues' and 'les affranchis'. Within this tripartite structure, the author forges her own methodology, distinguishing herself from earlier studies which either confine themselves to the French seventeenth-century epic genre, or trace the reception of individual classical authors such as Homer, Lucretius, Ovid, Horace and Lucan. Goupillaud's first section examines translators of Virgil such as Marolles, Perrin and Segrais, and themes such as the Virgilian sublime. A key text is found in act iii of Racine's Andromaque. Goupillaud compares Virgil and Racine describing the massacre of the Trojans, and finds the sublime migrating from the expansiveness of epic into the concision of tragedy. This is one illustration of the or de Virgile metamorphosed into the ors de Versailles. In the second section Goupillaud revisits the epic in French: Chapelain's La Pucelle, Le Moyne's Saint Louis, Desmarets's Clovis and Scudery's Alaric, together with the associated prefaces and dissertations on the poème héroïque. In keeping with her theme, Goupillaud focusses on how these works dealt with specifically Virgilian issues. Is Aeneas a suitable model as an epic hero? Is Louis XIV a second Aeneas? Continuing the theme of 'fils prodigues', Goupillaud finds a common pedagogic thread linking the Père La Rue's edition of the Aeneid ad usum Delphini with Fénelon's Télémaque. In spite of obvious differences between their works, both authors see Virgil as a spiritual guide for the French monarchy. They resurrect the concept of Virgil as vates, divinely inspired, yetalso close to the seat of political power. The final section on 'les affranchis' deals with Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Perrault's enthusiastic celebration of the superiority of the Moderns shows ambivalence towards Virgil, whose Aeneid had clearly not been eclipsed by any French epics of the period. Faced with this problem, Perrault argues ingeniously that Virgil had the prescience to anticipate the aesthetics of the Grand Siècle. He also predicts that when, with the lapse of time, the Modernes have become the Anciens, posterity will finally recognize the merits of seventeenth-century French epic. The prediction still awaits fulfilment. Virgil emerges from this wide-ranging study as a protean figure, assuming many guises in the cultural life of the age of Louis XIV, above all in writings of the period, though Poussin's Virgilian aspirations in the realm of painting receive some attention. The work is copiously documented with extensive extracts from French and Latin texts. Goupillaud warns her readers not to be surprised to find 'à côté des grands auteurs comme Racine ou Fénelon, une foule de minores, d'obscurs ou de bizarres' (p. 14). The minores, however, do not figure in the index, which is extremely meagre and ill serves a book of this nature.