Etudes Epistémè (Nov 2024)
Introduction générale
Abstract
King Herod’s infamous passion for his wife Mariam became a popular subject on European stages from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards: some sixteen plays were produced between 1552 and 1694 in German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, English and French. These plays developed an explicit reflection on theatre and the tragic form on the European stage, with Mariam establishing herself as a figure of heroic virtue against the king’s tyrannical jealousy. In France, these plays were part of the debate on the essence of classical tragedy, with Alexandre Hardy et Tristan L’Hermite in particular, while in England, the ancient story was adapted both on the stage of commercial and popular theaters and as a Seneca-inspired closet drama with Elizabeth Cary’s play The Tragedy of Mariam, published in 1613. In this introduction, the editors recall the historical background and the importance of the sources and their translations which contributed to making this episode of ancient history better known. Adopting a transnational perspective, they examine the reasons for this European fascination with the story of Mariam and Herod and highlight points of convergence; finally, they underline the importance of Mariam in the construction of a specifically female tragedy, highlighted in particular in Cary’s play. The final section presents the issue’s eleven articles, which take a comparative approach to analyzing the aesthetic and political stakes of Queen Mariam in the literary circles of early modern Europe.
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