The History of Tragedy in Neo-Latin Verse. No U.S. copies.

Marsy, Francisco Maria [François-Marie de Marsy]. Templum tragoediae. Carmen. Paris: apud Marcum Bordelet, 1734. 12 mo. [16.3 x 9.8 cm], [3] ff. (half-title, title, dedication), 18 pp. With [2] engraved headpieces (the first with the arms of the dedicatee), woodcut initial. Disbound from composite volume, red edges. A few manuscript corrections to typographical/grammatical errors, presumably authorial, a few very minor stains. 
 
 
Very rare first edition (no U.S. copies) of this unusual Neo-Latin poem tracing the origin and development of tragedy from ancient Greece through tragedy’s modern perfection in the great 17th-century French dramatists Corneille, Molière and Racine. Composed by the 20-year-old Jesuit François-Marie de Marsy (1714-63) to open the 1734 school year at the collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris, the Templum tragoediae quickly, “caught the attention of enthusiasts” (De Backer & Sommervogel, vol. 2. Col. 1110, no. 1), receiving a positive review in the Journal de Sçavans (May 1735, pp. 134-9). The work was anthologized in the first volume of Poëmata Didascalica (1749), and examples of the original publication soon became difficult to find. Marsy’s Templum tragoediae was recently the subject of a monograph that secures its place in literary history (C. Barbafieri and J.-M. Civardi, trans. and ed., Templum tragoediae, 1734: la fabrique d’une tragédie [Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009]).
 
The conceit of the poem sees the narrator led by the goddess of Tragedy, Melpomene, into her temple, where he views a wall painting depicting the history of the tragic genre. The images inspire ekphrastic verses in dactylic hexameter on Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles (Phaedra, Philoctetes, Agamemnon, Pyrrhus, Orestes, // Oedipus, Andromache, variis famosa Theatris // nomina), on ancient Roman tragedy, on Neo-Latin tragedy, 17th-century Spanish, Italian, English, and French tragic drama (verses on Scipio Maffei, the especially violent theater of Britain, etc.), and, more extensively, Corneille, Molière and Racine. There follow lines on tragic theory (generally Aristotelian), touching on miseratio, terror, denouement, the passions raised by tragedy, etc.
 
The pamphlet is decorated with 2 engraved head-pieces, the first of which depicts the arms of its dedicatee, Jérôme d’Argouges (1710-1762), nobleman, occasional pamphleteer, and holder of various government positions in the City of Paris.
 
Marcy followed the success of his Templum tragoediae with Pictura Carmen (1736), which extended the concept to painting (also very rare today). He is also remembered for his Histoire de Marie Stuart, reine d’Ecosse et de France (1742), Dictionaire abregé de peinture et d’architecture (1746), and Histoire moderne des Chinois, des Japonnois, des Indiens, des Persans, des Turcs, des Russiens, &c. (1754).
 
OCLC locates no U.S. examples of the Templum tragoediae, which is also rare in European census (British Library, BnF, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and Koninklijke Bibliotheek).
 
*C. Barbafieri and J.-M. Civardi trans. and ed., Templum tragoediae, 1734: la fabrique d’une tragédie; P. M. Conlon, Le siècle des lumières bibliographie chronologique, vol. 3, 34.587.