SOURCE: Busst, A. J. L. “On the Structure of Salammbô.” French Studies: A Quarterly Review 44, no. 3 (July 1990): 289-98.

In the following essay, Busst studies symmetry and parallelism in the four meetings between Salammbô and Mâtho, within the context of the novel's overall structural opposition of male and female principles.

Few modern critics would endorse Sainte-Beuve's judgement that Salammbô, showing no signs of an architect, is without unity and structure.¹ Although regret was expressed not so long ago at the novel's disjointedness² and its lack of ‘architectonic order’,³ there is nowadays general agreement that the unity of the novel is assured by the subordination of apparently disparate elements to a single vast conflict between the male and female principles, represented respectively by the sun, Moloch, Mâtho and the Barbarians, and by the moon, Tanit, Salammbô and Carthage. In fact, the identification and association of elements within each...