Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered and Pierre Le Moyne’s Saint Louis Imitation and the poetics of deviation

The French heroic poems of the 1650s have long been deemed poor pastiches of the great epic models. A comparison of Pierre Le Moyne’s Saint Louis with Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered highlights a clear parallel between these two crusade epics. But the originality of Saint Louis becomes apparent as soon as one takes into account the deviations of varying import that it constantly produces in relation to this model and its value system.