SOURCE: Jay, Bruce Louis. “Anti-History and the Method of Salammbô.” Romantic Review 63, no. 1 (February 1972): 20-33.

In the following essay, Jay maintains that Salammbô, employs little of the typical mechanics of historical fiction and that it presents exoticism and ritual action instead of theme, motivation, or historical veracity.

Salammbô tends to be a highly satisfying and at the same time rather distracting book. That is, perplexed as to the consequences of its subject matter, the reader, in this pendent, indecisive state of mind, is overcome with the novel's opulence and exotica. But the flamboyant spectacle of Salammbô that overwhelms the senses and makes the mind boggle arises from a firm basis of assiduously gathered historical facts. And it is the shackling of this erotic luxuriance with the results of detailed historical research that makes the book both unique and puzzling, engrossing and yet perhaps a little unsubstantial: after all...