- 著者
-
中谷 彩一郎
- 出版者
- 日本西洋古典学会
- 雑誌
- 西洋古典学研究 (ISSN:04479114)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.56, pp.89-101, 2008
This paper examines the reception of Achilles Tatius' Greek romance, Leucippe & Clitophon in Paris in the first half of the seventeenth century, when France took the lead in the vogue for Greek romances in Europe. In section 1, I investigate the readership. Abraham Bosse's engraving representing the stall of Augustin Courbe shows that Leucippe & Clitophon was then regarded as fashionable literature. Achilles Tatius flourished and became popular among intellectuals in Paris. It was translated, discussed, and even provided the nicknames of the salon. Section 2 summarises the literary influence. In the history of French literature, the first half of the seventeenth century is called the baroque age. The baroque refers to a cultural taste, which seeks change and movement, and departs from regulations. Achilles Tatius appealed strongly to this baroque sensibility and acted as a good source for literature. In prose, Nicolas de Montreux, Martin Fumee, Francois de Gerzan, and Honore d' Urfe, to a greater or a lesser degree, imitated scenes from Achilles Tatius, while Jean Herembert's Pandion et Yonice (1599) was solely dependent on Leucippe & Clitophon. In drama, Pierre du Ryer and probably Alexandre Hardy dramatised Achilles Tatius round 1629, and du Ryer's Alcimedon (1632) also has some allusion to the Greek author. Section 3 focuses on du Ryer's play, Clitophon: tragi-comedie. The description of the mise-en-scene by Laurent Mahelot illustrates how the play is spectacular. The plot is filled with varied incidents, adventures of the hero and the heroine over three cities: elopement, shipwreck, pirates, war, sacrifice, the court etc, as of course is the Greek novel. Section 4 treats Abraham Ravaud's romance, L'Angelique, which reflects his own view of Leucippe & Clitophon as a French translator. The opening scene is a pastiche of events specifically derived from Achilles Tatius (the shipwreck, the Scheintod, the attempt to die beside the lover's tomb, the appearance of two barbarians, and the conversation in a locus amoenus) embellished with the in medias res structure from Heliodorus' Aethiopica. It is surprising to find so many events combined in the opening scene, but it is the author's strategy to captivate readers right from the start and keep them in suspense. The final section presents an overview of the theory of prose fiction. In the preface to his edition of Achilles Tatius (1640), Claudius Salmasius traced a history of fiction from the Persian amatoria, the Asian Milesian tales through Arabic narrative to Spain, from which France acquired the romance. In 1641, George de Scudery was the first to call the ancient novel a Roman in the sense of prose fiction, and cleary propounded several rules of romance. And Huet's Lettre a M. de Segrais sur l'origine des romans (1670) not only systematised and developed their ideas, but was also the high-point of appreciation of the ancient novel. It is ironic that his treatise was attached to Zayde by Madame de La Fayette because her La princesse de Cleves (1678) would soon dramatically change the essence of prose fiction.