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La Mort de Pompée: Roman History and Tasso's Theory of Christian Epic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

A. Donald Sellstrom
A. Donald Sellstrom*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Abstract

Corneille's La Mort de Pompée represents a contamination of sources—the one Latin and avowed (Lucan's epic poem, the Pharsalia), the other modern and unavowed (the theory of the Christian epic as found in the Discorsi of Tasso). Into the historical, Lucan framework dealing with Roman civil strife the playwright inserts a Tassoan interlude during which the Romans band together against a non-Roman enemy and Cesar adumbrates an ideal policy whereby Rome would accept what amounts to Cléopatre's conversion to Romanness. The tensions between the Lucan and the Tassoan elements in the play are not resolved, nor could they be, and critical readings that try to remove the play's ambiguities only partially sift the evidence. The absence of clear-cut resolution in Pompée may or may not be intentional; in any event, it is central to the structure and meaning of the play. (ADS)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 97 , Issue 5 , October 1982 , pp. 830 - 843
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1952

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