Étienne Jodelle
Étienne Jodelle (* 1532 in Paris ; † 1573 ibid) was a French author.
This playwright, hardly known today, has a certain significance in the history of French literature thanks to two plays that were new in their time and which he wrote as a very young man: the comedy Eugène (1552) and above all the tragedy Cléopâtre captive (= the captive Cleopatra ) by 1553.
The tragedy, which shows how the defeated Egyptian Queen Cleopatra escapes the humiliation of her conqueror, the Roman Emperor Octavian alias Augustus, by suicide , was new in several respects: On the one hand, it is the first serious, i.e. not funny, French play with non-religious topics. It is also the first French piece with antique material (which Jodelle obtained from the parallel biographies of the Greek Plutarch ). Above all, however, it is the first French tragedy based on the ancient model, especially with its structure in five acts and the introduction of a choir. The at least partial drafting in Alexandrians was also an innovation. The piece was a public success at its first performance in Paris and was welcomed by literary circles as something that had long been a necessary achievement. For the members of the humanistically oriented Parisian poets group of the Pléiade , to which Jodelle was one, it meant the implementation of their theories, according to which French literature had to renew itself by orienting itself towards classical antiquity.
In the same vein, Jodelle had already written Eugène the previous year , a play that takes place in Paris and deals with the typical Farc theme of Cocuage , but which was also based on ancient models, namely comedies by the classic Roman authors Plautus and Terence .
In 1555 he wrote another antique tragedy, Didon se sacrifiant (= the self-sacrificing Dido ).
With both his tragedies and comedy, Jodelle not only realized the ideas of the Pléiade group, but also followed a trend that came from Italy, where attempts had been made for a long time to use vernacular theater based on ancient Latin and Greek models renew.
His poetry, which he began to write at a very young age, is considered less important.
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jodelle, Etienne |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1532 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1573 |
| Place of death | Paris |