Abstract

In Corneille’s Horace the hero is brought to trial for having defended Rome’s integrity by killing his own sister. The fifth act of the play is devoted to this trial, but should also be read like an allegorical re-enactment of the Querelle du Cid, during which Corneille himself was put to a kind of a ‘’trial’’ by colleagues and critics scandalized by the moral and ideological audacity of this first play dedicated to a criminal hero. Our paper tries to point out in detail the analogies that authorize such a reading.