Moliére's anticlerical comedyTartuffeis the unique prism through which Sheryl Kroen views postrevolutionary France in the years of the Restoration. Following the lead of the French men and women who ...turned to this play in the 1820s to make sense of their world, Kroen exposes the crisis of legitimacy defining the regime in these years and demonstrates how the people of the time made steps toward a democratic resolution to this crisis. Moving from the town squares, where state and ecclesiastical officials orchestrated their public spectacles in favor of the monarchy, to the theaters, where the French used Tartuffe to mock the restored monarch and the church, this cultural history of the Restoration offers a rich and colorful portrait of a period in which critical legacies of the revolutionary period were played out and cemented. While most historians have characterized the Restoration as a period of reaction and reversal, Kroen offers convincing evidence that the Restoration was a critical bridge between the emerging practices of the Old Regime, the Revolution, and the post-1830 politics of protest. She re-creates the atmosphere of Restoration France and at the same time brings major nineteenth-century themes into focus: memory and commemoration, public and private spheres, politics and religion, anticlericalism, and the formation of democratic ideologies and practices.
The Theatres of Moliere McCarthy, Gerry; Mccarthy, Gerry
2002, 20050629, 2002-04-25, 2005-06-29
eBook
Moliere's plays are the cornerstone of the French Classical dramatic repertoire. Adapted and exploited in his day by dramatists of the English Restoration, they are now again growing in popularity. ...In this detailed and fascinating volume, Gerry McCarthy examines the practice and method of possibly the greatest actor-dramatist. From the rough farces of Moliere's days on the road to the creation of the diverse and spectacular court entertainments on his return to Paris, McCarthy sheds new light on the dramatic intelligence and theatrical understanding of Moliere's writing for the actor. Drawing on Moliere's own brief discussions of performance and the contemporary evidence of his practice, this is a crucial addition to the debate on style and method in classical acting and on the staging of classical plays on the contemporary stage.
Gerry McCarthy is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Ulster. He has taught and directed in Canada, France and the UK, and his previous publication include Edward Albee (1987)
Molière, often considered the ‘godfather of Arab theatre’, was first introduced to the Arab world in 1847 by Marun Naqqaš and his adaptation of The Miser. Since then, Molière has never ceased to ...influence Arab dramaturgy. Discussing a series of plays by authors from Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, this study aims at defining Molière’s role in the development of a national Arab theatre.
From 1680 until the French Revolution, when legislation abolished restrictions on theatrical enterprise, a single theatre held sole proprietorship of Molière's works. After 1791, his plays were ...performed in new theatres all over Paris by new actors, before audiences new to his works. Both his plays and his image took on new dimensions. InMolière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife, Mechele Leon convincingly demonstrates how revolutionaries challenged the ties that bound this preeminent seventeenth-century comic playwright to the Old Regime and provided him with a place of honor in the nation's new cultural memory.Leon begins by analyzing the performance of Molière's plays during the Revolution, showing how his privileged position as royal servant was disrupted by the practical conditions of the revolutionary theatre. Next she explores Molière's relationship to Louis XIV,Tartuffe, and the social function of his comedy, using Rousseau's famous critique of Molière as well as appropriations ofGeorge Dandinin revolutionary iconography to discuss how Moliérean laughter was retooled to serve republican interests. After examining the profusion of plays dealing with his life in the latter years of the Revolution, she looks at the exhumation of his remains and their reentombment as the tangible manifestation of his passage from Ancien Régime favorite to new national icon.The great Molière is appreciated by theatre artists and audiences worldwide, but for the French people it is no exaggeration to say that the Father of French Comedy is part of their national soul. By showing how he was represented, reborn, and reburied in the new France-how the revolutionaries asserted his relevance for their tumultuous time in ways that were audacious, irreverent, imaginative, and extreme-Leon clarifies the important role of theatrical figures in preserving and portraying a nation's history.
A unique collection of Moliere's four greatest verse comedies in new translation: The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, The School for Wives and The Clever Women, plus two short plays, The School for Wives ...Criticized and The Impromptu at Versailles.
Though much beloved and widely produced, Molière's satirical comedies pose a problem for those reading or staging his works today: how can a genre associated with biting caricature and castigation ...deliver engaging theater? Instead of simply dismissing social satire as a foundation for Molière's theater, as many have done, Larry F. Norman takes seriously Molière's claim that his satires are first and foremost effective theater.Pairing close readings of Molière's comedies with insightful accounts of French social history and aesthetics, Norman shows how Molière conceived of satire as a "public mirror" provoking dynamic exchange and conflict with audience members obsessed with their own images. Drawing on these tensions, Molière portrays characters satirizing one another on stage, with their reactions providing dramatic conflict and propelling comic dialogue. By laying bare his society's system of imagining itself, Molière's satires both enthralled and enraged his original audience and provide us with a crucial key to the classical culture of representation.
This book is the first full-length study to examine Molière’s evolving (and at times contradictory) authorial strategies, as evidenced both by his portrayal of authors and publication within the ...plays and by his own interactions with the seventeenth-century Parisian publishing industry. Historians of the book have described the time period that coincides with Molière’s theatrical activity as centrally important to the development of authors’ rights and to the professionalization of the literary field. A seventeenth-century author, however, was not so much born as negotiated through often acrimonious relations in a world of new and dizzying possibilities.The learning curve was at times steep and unpleasant, as Molière discovered when his first Parisian play was stolen by a rogue publisher. Nevertheless, the dramatist proved to be a quick learner; from his first published play in 1660 until his death in 1673, Molière changed from a reluctant and victimized author to an innovator (or, according to his enemies, even a swindler) who aggressively secured the rights to his plays, stealing them back when necessary. Through such shrewdness, he acquired for himself publication privileges and conditions relatively unknown in an era before copyright.As Molière himself wrote, making people laugh was “une étrange entreprise" (La Critique de L’École des femmes, 1663). To an even greater degree, comedic authorship for the playwright was a constant work in progress, and in this sense, “Molière," the stage name that became a pen name, represents the most carefully elaborated of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin’s invented characters.
