History Incarnate: Genus and Genre in French Historical Drama

This dissertation studies the rediscovery of Greek and Roman styled tragedy in 16th and 17th century France and its notable interest for two historical female figures from Roman history, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC) and the Carthaginian noblewomen and Numidian queen Sophonisba (dead 203 BC). From being subordinary characters in the accounts of Roman and Greek historians such as Livy, Appian of Alexandria, Cassius Dio and Plutarch, Cleopatra and Sophonisba became the two most popular tragic heroines. Their popularity continued well into the 17th century until new dramatic expectations questioned their presence on stage.

The dissertation analyzes the significance of these two female figures a prismatic cases for dramatic reflections on history. It aims to contribute to the often noticed but unexplored question in modern scholarship of an interest in female victims in French early modern drama. The underlying argument is that the popularity of Cleopatra and Sophonisba is due to the period’s concept of tragedy as a genre not only on history but about history. By this distinction is meant how this period’s drama not only takes history, in the present case Roman history, as a source of inspiration but presents Cleopatra and Sophonisba as embodied historical reflection on historicity and historiography.

Part 1 puts forth the dissertation's aim, theoretical approach, mixed methods, main results, and perspectives. Part 2 consists of five articles which together offer a fresh look at what is often labeled humanist tragedy by combining distant reading, computational assisted social network analysis, comparative and literary text analysis. Thus, article 1 “Introduction: Rediscovering Sophonisba in Early Modern Literature” (Nordic Journal of Renaissance Studies, vol. 20, 2023) offers a discussion of the Sophonisba figure in French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Cretan, German and English drama and poetry from c.1400-1700. It uses the insights gained from other specialized articles to outline three main reasons for Sophonisba’s transnational importance in the early modern period. 

Article 2 “The tragedy of being a historical creature” (Orbis Litterarum, vol. 78, no. 1, 2023) analyzes one of the neglected French Sophonisba plays, La Sophonisba (unknown performance, published 1601) by humanist and soldier Nicolas de Montreux. By engaging Walter Benjamin’s notion of the chaste martyr and her affinities with history in the German mourning play as well as Montreux’ deviations from his dramatic predecessors, the article analyzes how the Sophonisba story is used to discuss different notions of history as either unpredictable or divinely ordained.

Article 3 “What is a protagonist?” (Orbis Litterarum, vol. 78, no. 5, 2023) studies the importance of Cleopatra and Sophonisba in 13 French tragedies from the sixteenth and seventeenth century by using computationally assisted social network analysis. By defining importance quantitatively based on four centrality measurements, the article qualifies recent scholarship's highlighting of this period’s interest in female figures and questions traditional scholarly notions of protagonism.

Articles 4 “Tragisk hjältinna eller skurkaktig rollfigur? [Tragic heroine or villainous character]” (forthcoming on Appell Förlag, 2024) and 5 “Ghosting the past” (Arrêt sur scène/ Scene Focus, vol. 11, 2022) turn their attention to Cleopatra in a comparative and contextual perspective respectively. Thus, article 4 pinpoints differences in eight French tragedies from the sixteenth and seventeenth century and how these differences are connected to changing dramatic notions of morality and historical fidelity. 

Article 5 once again turns to Benjamin to analyze how the ghost figure of Mark Antony in the prologue of Étienne Jodelle’s Cléopâtre captive(performed 1553, published posthumously 1574) engages audiences in a reflection on history as caught between divine intent and vicissitude. Besides Benjamin, the article also re-examines Jodelle’s merging of the protatic ghost found in Seneca’s Thyestes and Agamemnon and the ghostly dream vision from Pseudo-Seneca’s Octavia, as well as draws parallels to contemporaneous history writing by Louis Le Roy’s De la Vicissitude ou la variété des choses en l’Univers (published 15725).