| Summary: | This essay is based on a reading of French classicism as a heroic cathartic response to the attractions of melancholy. Proceeding from the work of Marc Fumaroli, it applies the European perspective that underlies his project to a history of pastoral, and shows how the issue of melancholy informs aspects of poetics and style and not only of morality. This paper lays the stress, in particular, on dramatic forms, first in England, then in Italy and in France. The Shakespearean pastoral, mainly As You Like It, allows the critic to raise the question of the melancholy style, and to question the various ways in which the disease of melancholy and the pastoral code of representation interact, in genres which are not predefined as pastoral. Returning to the cathartic perspectives which Guarini had offered in Il Pastor Fido, it will be shown that in late sixteenth-century Italy, the question of the cure of melancholy finds its way into the theory of tragi-comedy itself. Finally, the author turns to analysing the developments of the Guarinian project in France in the years 1620-1640, and underlines the linguistic reasons that account for the rejection of a poetic of melancholy catharsis perceived as « Italian ».
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