Molire Le Tartuffe 1669 Defining France week 14

Molière, Le Tartuffe, 1669 Defining France, week 14

Tartuffe • Name = hypocrisy • ‘type character’ – the ‘dévot’, the ‘faux dévot’ • Not a priest so he can marry

Orgon • Bourgeois • Desire to believe • Insecure • Long history of being religious, a good Christian like many in the audience

Cléante and Elmire • Cléante: • Voice of reason • ‘Sans cesse vous prêchez des maximes de vivre’ I, 1 • Not comic • Elmire: • Orgon’s 2 nd wife • Serious character • Object of Tartuffe’s desire

The Younger Generation • Damis: • Exiled • Importance of family honour • Mariane: • ‘inefficace? ’ • Threat of her marriage • Valère • Mariane’s lover

Other characters • Dorine: • Voice of reason along with Cléante • ‘suivante’ • Subversive but acts in the family interest • From outside the household: • Monsieur Loyal • L’Exempt

Major Themes • Religion • Hypocrisy • Household • Masks • Theatricality

Religion • ‘To enjoy Tartuffe it is important to know that to Molière’s contemporaries every aspect of religion was an absorbing topic, but that one did not write about it in a comedy. ’ • Gaston Hall, Molière: Tartuffe (Southampton: The Camelot Press, 1977), p. 7 • French Wars of Religion, 1562 -1598 • Dragonnades • Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685

Religion • Jesuits and Jansenists • Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement • • • Survey of nation’s morals ‘directeurs de conscience’ Richelieu and Mazarin Banned 1660 Role in Tartuffe’s censorship in 1664? Charpy de Sainte-Croix and Bendinelli

Religion • How to practice religion: • Religion is serious • Hair shirt, his scrounge, the whip • ‘Que vous alliez vêtue ainsi qu’une princesse’, I, 1 • Actors excommunicated • Pascal – hair shirt and belt with inward iron spikes

Religion and Hypocrisy • ‘Voulez-vous qu’il y coure à vos heures précises, | Comme ceux qui n’y vont que pour être apercus? ’ II, 2 • Religion vs. façade of religion • Use of religious language – gallant, poetic and religious language for seduction, III, 3 • Hypocrisy a mortal sin

Satire • ‘Gros et gras, le teint frais, et la bouche vermeille. ’ I, 4 • Hyperbole and satire • Tradition continued today

Household • Orgon 358 lines, Dorine 339 • Father as head of household • ‘Faites que votre fils se taise ou se retire’, V, 4 • Jacques Guicharnaud ‘Orgon’s entourage reacts to him rather like subjects would toward a king [devoted]… to a bad minister. ’ • Cited in Gaston Hall, Comedy in Context: Essays on Molière (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1984), p. 145

Masks and Theatricality • Elmire’s second encounter with Tartuffe • ‘En mettant le théâtre sur le théâtre, Molière peut, par un procédé d’ironie dramatique, démontrer le mécanisme même de l’illusion : l’apparence se révèle comme le seul moyen de montrer la vérité. C’est toute la force du théâtre qui, se donnant pour illusoire, ne ment pas et dit le vrai. ’ • Jean Serroy, ‘Préface’, in Molière, Le Tartuffe (Paris: Gallimard, 2014), pp. 730 (pp. 24 -5).

Masks and Theatricality • Hypocrite to impostor • L’Exempt • Deus ex machina/Rex ex machina

Molière and ‘Classicism’ • Central tenets: unities, alexandrine, acts and scenes, vraisemblance, biensénace • Alexandrine: • Verse to imitate real life • 5 acts to ennoble the play? • Hint of tragic?

Molière and ‘Classicism’ • Unity of place: • household • Unity of time: • ‘trois heures’, mentions of time throughout the play • Unity of action: • around the character Tartuffe

Molière and ‘Classicism’ • Vraisemblance • Then vs. now – careful in our perceptions • Bienséance • Declaration, 16 April 1641, forbade ‘actions malhonnêtes’, ‘paroles lascives ou à double entente qui puissant blesser l’honnêteté publique’. • Tartuffe’s seduction of Elmire as shocking • Obedience to the rules vs. their expansion

Comedy • The comedy of gesture • The comedy of the language • The comedy of characters • The comedy of the situation • The comedy of manners or ‘la comédie de mœurs’

Comedy of Gesture • ‘(Mariane se recule avec surprise)’ II, 1 • ‘il fait mime de grande résistance’ II, 4 • ‘(Elle recule sa chaise, et Tartuffe rapproche la sienne)’ III, 3

Comedy of Gesture • Damis in the cupboard III, 4 • Orgon under the table as Tartuffe attempts to seduce Elmire, IV, 5

Comedy of Language • Language: what it says vs. what it means, III, 4 • Henri Bergson, Le Rire. Essai sur la signification du comique (1900) • Repetition: ‘Et Tartuffe? ’, ‘Le pauvre homme!’ I, 4

Comedy of Character • Conflict: • Orgon vs. Dorine • Orgon vs. Cléante • Tartuffe: those for and against him • Exaggeration: • Orgon’s readiness to believe • Reflexion on our own weaknesses

Comedy of Situation • Reversal of situations • Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (1941) • ‘Carnevalesque’

Comedy of Manners • Comédie de mœurs • Characteristic traits of social class, stock characters • Satire: parody, burlesque, exaggeration, irony • ‘Comédie’ vs. comedy