Lyrische Deutungshoheit im Neunjährigen Krieg

A hitherto neglected battle of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes was fought out in two lyrical poems celebrating the feats of Louis XIV. Boileau’s ode on the successful siege of Namur in 1692 calls upon the spirit of Pindar to stage the city’s capture in such a sublime way that the poem looses sight of the sun king. Perrault responds a year later with a rhetorically regularized ode that deploys a Horatian model in order to reassert royal authority as a continual triumph of victory and peace. Thus, the ancien chooses the subversive Pindar while the moderne prefers the (ostensibly) more imperial Horace. When William III retakes Namur in 1695 another, now British, response to Boileau conjures up both ancient odists. First Congreve lets his sovereign drown in the triumphant battlecries of soldiers that he amplifies in his ‘Pindarick’ verse and then, by means of a Horatian recusatio, rejects all responsibility for this drowning.