Abstract
Gabriel Legouvé, the only son of a Parisian barrister, wrote often—even insistently—about fratricide and civil war. His first success was his 1792 The Death of Abel, a setting of the tale from Genesis.3 During the 1790s, Legouvé’s writings confronted the most momentous form of fraternal strife, civil war. He returned repeatedly to Lucan’s epic on the conflicts between Caesar and Pompey that destroyed the Roman Republic. While Legouvé never published a complete translation of Lucan’s Civil War, a work of staggering complexity and bloodshed, he struggled with it throughout the Revolution, presenting several public readings of his efforts.4 In 1799 Étéocle, an examination of the murderous brothers in ancient Thebes, and the focus of this chapter, appeared. It was an adaptation of Racine’s Thébaïde (1664) as well as tragedies by Aeschylus and Euripides.5 It traced the rivalry between Oedipus’ sons that left a brother’s dead body to dogs and birds of prey outside the walls of Thebes. Legouvé’s decision to extend the final scenes as the two brothers sank their swords into each other stunned the audience; some thought it a ‘monstrosity’.6 He justified the theme, explaining that ‘the hatred between two brothers is more furious than between other men’. Why be ‘surprised that [the hatred] of Eteocles and Polynices surpasses common horrors’.7
The title of brother is a bond so sacred that in daring to break it, one insults heaven, a brother is a friend given by nature.2
Fellowships from the Emory University Center for Humanistic Inquiry and the Newberry Library made this research possible. The article has benefited comments from T. J. A. Le Goff, the Newberry Library Fellows’ Seminar and the Emory Ancient Mediterranean Studies Seminar, especially Cynthia A. Bouton, Cynthia Burchell Patterson and Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr.
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Notes
Legouvé dedicated Quintus Fabius to Ducis, ‘a friend as much as a model’. ‘Au citoyen Ducis’, in OC, vol. 1, 176. See also Mark Ledbury, ‘Visions of Tragedy: Jean-François Ducis and Jacques-Louis David’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 37 (2004): 553–580.
Among others, Jacqueline de Romilly, La Grèce antique contre la violence (Paris, 2000); Danièle Cohn, ‘La compassion d’Iphigénie comme formule du pathos des Lumières’, Images Re-vues hors-série 1 (2008): 2–12
Stuart Lawrence, ‘Eteocles’ Moral Awareness in Aeschylus’ Seven’, Classical World 100 (2007): 335–353.
Emma Gilby, ‘“Émotions” and the Ethics of Response in Seventeenth-Century French Dramatic Theory’, Modern Philology 107 (2009): 52–71.
Éric Méchoulan, ‘Revenge and Poetic Justice in Classical France’, SubStance 35 (2006);20–51
Eric Heinze, ‘“This Power Isn’t Power If It’s Shared”: Law and Violence in Jean Racine’s “La Thébaïde”’, Law & Literature 22 (2010): 76–109.
Robert A. Nye, ‘Western Masculinities in War and Peace’, American Historical Review 112 (April 2007): 417–438.
John A. Lynn, ‘Toward an Army of Honor: The Moral Evolution of the French Army, 1789–1815’, French Historical Studies 16 (1989): 159–161
Wolfgang Kruse, ‘La formation du discours militariste sous le directoire’, AHRF 360 (2010): 77–102.
Military funerals soon would present the ideal of national unity around the figure of Bonaparte. See especially Bernard Gainot, ‘Les mots et les cendres’, AHRF 324 (2001): 127–138
Annie Jourdan, ‘Bonaparte et Desaix, une amitié inscrite dans la pierre des monuments?’ AHRF 324 (2001): 139–150.
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© 2013 Judith A. Miller
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Miller, J.A. (2013). Fratricide: Tragic Brothers, Masculine Violence, and the Republic on the French Stage, 1799. In: Serna, P., De Francesco, A., Miller, J.A. (eds) Republics at War, 1776–1840. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137328823_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137328823_10
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