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Of all the playwrights from the age of Louis XIV, only Moliere's
work is still regularly performed in France and beyond. This book
analyses certain elements of the plays that may explain Moliere's
longevity: a plausible chain of events peppered with shocks and
surprises; tensions between opposites; intellectual concerns that
had not previously been the province of comedy; and plots founded
on situations that are anything but comic. These hallmarks added up
to an intense type of comic theatre, meaningful in ways that gave
the genre a new dimension. The author of this study does not treat
Moliere's plays as variations on a single prototype, but brings a
fresh approach to each. The book's witty, learned and penetrating
readings examine critical issues such as the ambiguous
anti-feminism of Les Femmes savantes, Moliere's revisions of the
myth of Don Juan, 'conversion' as the theological starting point of
Le Tartuffe, contrariety as the basis of comedies such as George
Dandin and Le Misanthrope, and coded satire in the comedie-ballets.
Each play is revealed to have a seamless comic design, while at the
same time speaking to the wider world. Moliere's works are shown to
be entirely and immediately involved in human society, in the
social dimension of the human condition.
The essays in this 1987 volume are concerned with ideas of
contrarity and other kinds of polar opposition in French literature
of the eighteenth century. Originally these ideas were merely part
of an impulse to undermine the establishment, but as the century
progressed the desire to invert social values and question accepted
norms merged with the main groundswell of the age to form part of
the movement of Revolution. Professor Rex considers some of the
major writers of the period: Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, and
Beaumarchais. He also explores minor genres such as operas
comiques, theatrical parodies, and erotic or pornographic pieces;
these have been largely forgotten, but in their time they imbued
the creative life of the era with vitality. In treating the
literature in relation to the other arts, especially painting and
music, these essays will be of interest to scholars of all aspects
of eighteenth-century French culture.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series,
previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth
Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes
since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of
Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the
Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth
century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political
theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are
published in English or French.
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