Lire Euripide au XVIe siècle: étude sur la réception savante d'Euripide dans les éditions et traductions latines de ses tragédies (1495-1605)

The subject of this thesis is the reception of Euripides in his editions, translations and paratexts in Latin in XVIth century Europe. This heterogeneous corpus was written in Latin (the language of scholarly communication at the time) and was left scattered across the various libraries of Europe, for a long time receiving only marginal attention by critics. Yet these writings, essential for studying the reception of Euripides, are also a pillar of European literary history. Indeed, at a time when literary theory was not yet a discipline in its own right, it was in those paratexts where the key debates of the literary and artistic world were held. The margins of the texts of Euripides were the place where theoretical discourses about the act of translation and its practise, as well as the reflections about the genre of tragedy which later shaped the classical theatre of the XVIIth century, were developed. But the impact of these works goes well beyond the field of literature. The authors of this corpus were thinkers positioned closely to political and religious power. In their hands, Euripides’ tragedies became a pedagogical, religious and political instrument. The current research project consists of two steps: Firstly, to make an unknown literary heritage accessible, and secondly, to shed light on a forgotten part of literary history. It illustrates the different ways in which the humanists interpreted Euripides. Those interpretations constitute a crucial stage in the construction of modern theatre. Their reception of Euripides mirrors the moral, political and literary concerns of the time. As a result, the ideas that were formed about the poet in a lasting way constituted a heritage that transformed theatre in the following centuries.