‘Didon se sacrifiant’ d’Étienne Jodelle ed. by Charlotte Bonnet, et al. (review)

This scholarly collection, compiled for the 2014 Agrégation de lettres, ranges from poetics and hermeneutics to psychoanalysis. The lists of works cited facilitate the consultation of single articles, while a bibliographical note signals the latest print and online publications (2013–15). Emmanuel Buron remains unrivalled as a Jodelle scholar, and confirms his pre-eminence using an eclectic hermeneutic approach. By re-interpreting Dido’s suicide as transgressive sacrifice, Buron contends, Jodelle aesthetically and ideologically corrects the Virgilian perspective (Aeneid 4). Figurative parallels (Hercules and Christ) bolster the underlying scenario of ritual sacrifice. Aeneas is cast in a darker light and his piety is questioned, since the Carthaginian perspective prevails. Sacrifice ultimately points to confessional debates on the mass, exposed in humanist tragedies while Protestant tragedies occult it. The ethical theme of (un)truthfulness and (un)faithfulness, foy versus feinte, is analysed by John Nassichuk. Aeneas is affected negatively, as are the gods, whose dubious dealings seal the fate of mortals. Moral ambiguity undermines the Virgilian narrative. Gilles Polizzi singles out the notion of envy as enacted in Roman tragedy and theorized by Melanie Klein, who connects it to a negative maternal figure and a torn subject. The protagonists are surrounded by envious ‘doubles’ (Achates and Ann). Aeneas acts as the ungrateful child towards Dido, who is in turn portrayed as a bad mother figure. Both victim and perpetrator, the sacrificed queen is a Girardian scapegoat. According to Polizzi, envy drives the tragic world in its ever-inexplicable misery. Sylvain Garnier’s rigorous comparative analysis of the function of the chorus between Cléopâtre captive and Didon se sacrifiant then follows. According to Garnier, Jodelle makes deft dramaturgical use of Horatian prescriptions on the lyrical, dramatic, and moral roles of the chorus, which becomes a character in its own right, as the division between the male Trojan and the female Phoenician choruses illustrates. Jodelle also meaningfully exploits scenographic techniques inherited from medieval theatre, especially the mansions, the spatial ‘homes’ of characters on stage. Between his two tragedies, Jodelle decreases the lyrical and increases the moral function of the chorus. In Didon se sacrifiant, he conveys a paradoxical philosophy through contrastive dramatic voices freed from echoing the doxa. Combining intertextuality and genericity, Mathilde Lamy-Houdry concentrates on the figure of Aeneas. As an epic founder, Aeneas is unfit for the tragic world. He expresses fear and doubt as a lover but ultimately follows reason and his destiny over passion and humanity. Although Dido fell victim to the hero’s epic calling, her suicide symbolizes the death of the epic as the noblest genre. A more substantial Introduction could perhaps have sketched out a broader context for students, or reviewed critical literature for experts. Dramaturgical innovations such as the dual chorus are nonetheless effectively examined, and the questioning of heroism is raised in several contributions, as is the treatment of generic exchanges between the epic, the lyric, and tragedy. The complexity of the authorial stance, stemming from characterization, typological figuration, historical and philosophical allusion, and rhetorical amplification, stands out as the most promising area for future enquiry into Jodelle’s works and French humanist tragedy.