Bailliet, Lucette Claude

Gossip, Christopher

Nicholls, James

2009

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/9244

fr

Le Théâtre Aristocratique de Molière: Analyse néo-traditionnelle d'un corpus méconnu suivant les canons de la régularité, des bienséances et de la préciosité

Thesis Doctoral

Publication

This thesis examines Molière's aristocratic theatre (an often misjudged corpus) through a neo-traditional analysis according to the canons of regularity, the proprieties and preciosity. After more than three centuries, Molière's theatre is well known or so we think. However, parts of his work are largely ignored or disparaged by the critics. This is largely because they do not know how to deal with the farces written at the beginning of his Paris career or the court theatre created during royal festivities. The first group of plays is said to be insignificant and derived mainly from the 'commedia dell'arte', while the second is simply dismissed as having been nothing more than court entrainment prepared for special occasions at the request of the King. It is on this second group that we have focused our attention. Current views are that this theatre is of second-rate and does not need any further recognition. Considering the French seventeenth-century predilection for cultural excellence, it is difficult to accept this opinion. In view of Molière's avowed desire to please the aristocratic public, we have identified elements that we believe would have been pleasing to this audience and have selected a number of plays, which reflect these parameters. Then we have applied to this discrete group of eleven plays the rules of verisimilitude and propriety established by theorists of the seventeenth-century theatre and have examined how this 'aristocratic' theatre measured up.