Mythopoe(t)ic Dramatic Figuration of Jacobite Dissenters by François Édouard Joachim Coppée ; or the Art of Dissenting
Résumé
Bonnie Prince Charlie and his followers, whether French or Scottish, symbolise dissention through their rebelling against the English power and legitimacy they fully denied. In his mythopoe(t)ic drama Les Jacobites, François Coppée focuses on his returning from his French exile to Scotland, his gathering troops in the Highlands, his marching to Edinburgh, as well as on the Culloden disaster (a dramatic ellipsis in the play, the event being off stage), and finally on his attempt at sailing back to France. The episode is circular, from exile to exile. The loop is looped as a parenthesis embedded in French, Scottish and British history.
Considering its concepts and their treatment, its transtextuality and intersemioticity, and the alluded to ‘classic’ Celtic historical patrimony, we could defend the hypothesis that the genre of Les Jacobites is a form of Romantic Neoclassicism. Whatever the answer to this proposal, Coppée’s tragic history is the mythopoe(t)ic dramatic figuration of Jacobite dissenters led by Bonny Prince Charlie.