Garnier's La Troade Between Homeric Fiction and French History: The Question of Moral Authority (Robert Garnier) (Critical Essay‪)‬

SUCH faithful reworkings of classical themes and ancient sources as Robert Garnier's La Troade--which borrows in some parts from Euripides' Trojan Women, and quite heavily from Seneca's Troades--immediately pose the question of their raison d'etre. Is the Troade yet another example of slavish Renaissance imitatio? The fact that the play was published in 1579, during some of the worst years of the Wars of Religion in France, invites consideration of the play's historical context. Indeed, in his preface to the Archbishop of Bourges, Renaud de Beaune, Garnier begins by apologizing for this least agreeable of poems that "ne represente que les malheurs lamentables des princes, avec les saccagemens des peuples." He then goes on to say: les passions de tels sujets nous sont ja si ordinaires, que les exemples anciens nous devront doresnavant servir de consolation en nos particuliers et domestiques encombres. (p. 41) (1)