Anger in the Histoires tragiques of François de Belleforest’s: An Augustinian Reading

Abstract

While the “tragic story” represents a historical universe animated by violent passions, it also builds the image of a society where anger changes nature and function according to social categories. The tension between the ability of anger to serve the great ethical values of the Renaissance and its inability to respond to the demands of humanity, reason, justice and measure makes anger tragic. Anger is neither good nor bad in itself, but it is one of the effects of human misery, which itself is the consequence of original sin. In the universe created by Belleforest as in that described by Augustine, the city of men and the city of God are indistinctly mixed. The anger of who lives by the flesh is evil, the anger of who lives by the spirit is good. The ethics of the Histoires tragiques might well testify to the strong imprint left on Belleforest by the meditation on the City of God of Saint Augustine.