ABSTRACT
The vogue of romanesque tragedy - T. Corneille’s career and dramatic work as a whole: borrowings and adaptations - Timocrate - other identity plays - Comma. The taste was for romanesque tragedy, whose principal features were that it derived from contemporary or near-contemporary novels or, when ostensibly based on other sources, as it frequently was, observed the ethos and attitudes found in the novels. The heroic abnegation of course collapses with the knowledge that Timocrate and Cleomene are the same, and with it goes the whole image of virtuous love as a serious concept. Cleomene’s knightly boast in the same scene that he will conquer Timocrate in battle, since that is Eriphile’s wish, goes the same way, since the combat is impossible and the danger illusory. The contrived situation thus leads to a dilemma which deserves the name of tragic and can be resolved only by death. Such dilemmas are extremely rare in romanesque tragedy.
