A ''héroïde'' is a term in French literature for a letter in verse, written under the name of a hero or famous author, derived from the ''

Heroides The ''Heroides'' (''The Heroines''), or ''Epistulae Heroidum'' (''Letters of Heroines''), is a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroin ...

'' by

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

. It was invented by

Charles-Pierre Colardeau Charles-Pierre Colardeau (12 October 1732 in Janville – 7 April 1776 in Paris) was a French poet. His most notable works are an imitation of '' Eloisa to Abelard'' by Alexander Pope and a translation of the first two sections of '' Night-Tho ...

. The ''héroïde'' is a form of

tragedy A tragedy is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a tragic hero, main character or cast of characters. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsi ...

under the form of

epistle An epistle (; ) is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as part of the scribal-school writing curriculum. The ...

as it is not mandatory that the ''héroïde'' be written under the name of a famous character, and it is not enough either that the epistle is either to be defined under the term. What the ''héroïde'' consists of is more that the nature of the subject needs to be serious, sad and belong to

epic poetry In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard t ...

and the

elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

. The dramatic action is psychological, the story replaces the dialogue and the reader's imagination must be taken sufficiently to make it able to reconstitute the evolution of the drama to which it is only given the view of one of the characters. According to Marmontel: " The poet is both the decorator and engineer, not only must he trace back in his verses the location of the stage, but also reconstitute the action, the movement, in one word everything that would be missed if the poem was dramatic." Making one of the characters of the drama speak, the author must choose the most important of them, and make it express all the feelings related to it, summarize in the character all the importance and consequences of the action. The number of ''héroïdes'' in French literature is limited. The letters of Heloise and Abelard supplied Beauchamps, Colardeau and Dorat material for several ''héroïdes''. ''Gabrielle d’Estrées à Henri IV'' composed in 1767 by

Antoine-Alexandre-Henri Poinsinet Antoine-Alexandre-Henri Poinsinet, nicknamed "le jeune", (17 November 1735 in Fontainebleau – 7 June 1769, drowned in the Guadalquivir, in Córdoba) was an 18th-century French playwright and librettist. Born in a family long attached to the s ...

, Barthe produced one in his 'Lettre de l’abbé de Rancé'. The epistle of

Dido Dido ( ; , ), also known as Elissa ( , ), was the legendary founder and first queen of the Phoenician city-state of Carthage (located in Tunisia), in 814 BC. In most accounts, she was the queen of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre (located ...

Aeneas In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas ( , ; from ) was a Troy, Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite (equivalent to the Roman Venus (mythology), Venus). His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy ...

by Gilbert can also be referred to. The ''héroïde'' is a style long abandoned. Modern writers, freeing themselves from the constraints enforced on poetry by earlier

poetics Poetics is the study or theory of poetry, specifically the study or theory of device, structure, form, type, and effect with regards to poetry, though usage of the term can also refer to literature broadly. Poetics is distinguished from hermeneu ...

, also abandoned old didactic modes, such as the elegy, the

ode An ode (from ) is a type of lyric poetry, with its origins in Ancient Greece. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structu ...

, the

dithyramb The dithyramb (; , ''dithyrambos'') was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god. Plato, in '' The Laws'', while discussing various kinds of music m ...

the

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian ''stanza'', ; ) is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have either. ...

and the ''héroïde'', letting them fuse in either the meditation or the complaint, only forms under which the poet seems to want to express his thoughts.

Sources

* Artaud de Montor, ''Encyclopédie des gens du monde'', v. 13, Paris, Treuttel et Würtz Treuttel et Würtz, 1840, p. 762-3. French poetry Ovid {{poetry-stub