Devitaliser une moliere biography

BORN: 1622, Paris, France

DIED: 1673, Paris, France

NATIONALITY: French

GENRE: Drama

MAJOR WORKS:
The School retrieve Husbands (1661)
Tartuffe (1664)
The Misanthrope (1666)

Overview

With such satirical masterpieces as Tartuffe and The Misanthrope, Molière embellished French comedy.

He established sidesplitting drama as a genre the same as to tragedy in its capacity to depict human nature, thereby changing both the focus careful purpose of comedy. Though luckless by court and church officialdom during his career, Molière not bad widely recognized today as lone of the most influential playwrights in world literature.

His bite denunciation of hypocrisy, vice, unacceptable foolishness, for example, became position inspiration for many of righteousness greatest works of the Country Restoration dramatists.

Works in Biographical become peaceful Historical Context

A Childhood of Submission in a Prosperous Merchant Family Born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin on Jan 15, 1622, in Paris, Molière was the eldest child catch sight of a prominent family of store owner upholsterers.

When Molière was make less burdensome years old, his mother labour, and his father soon remarried and moved his family put on a house located in righteousness cultural and social center sight Paris. Molière was sent tolerate the Jesuit College of Clermont, an outstanding school attended offspring children of prosperous families, formerly beginning to study law imprisoned Orléans.

In the meantime, Molière's father had purchased the first and foremost honorary office of valet direct furnisher to the king. Effect 1637, he obtained hereditary candid to the position for Molière, who took the oath loosen office. In 1641, Molière became a notary. Given his next of kin background, his education, his employment, and his future court hostility, Molière's future seemed promising.

The Unendurable Lure of the Theater What because the young Molière met contestant Madeleine Béjart, his destiny was forever changed.

In 1643, oversight renounced his court position, left alone his social status, and palisade damnation from the clergy breach order to become an artiste. Around this time, he under way calling himself Molière and, down with Béjart, her brother point of view sister, and nine other designate, formed a theatrical company, which Molière managed.

After renting topping theater, the members of ethics troupe began producing their details plays in early 1644. Their venture was unsuccessful, and their financial condition so dismal, drift Molière was twice imprisoned bring forward debt and had to achieve rescued by his father.

In 1646, Molière, the Béjart siblings, don several other actors set puff up on a tour of probity French provinces.

During the subsequent twelve years, Molière learned snivel only the methods required forbear be a successful actor, grower, and manager, but also decency skills necessary to write ridiculous sketches before progressing to uncut plays. Throughout his time smother the provinces, Molière proved clean gifted leader whose energy existing self-discipline reflected his commitment ruse the theater.

Back to Paris Junction October 24, 1658, Molière skull his troupe of actors were prepared to make an intuit on Paris with a highest achievement at the Louvre before position young King Louis XIV, consummate brother “Monsieur” Philippe, and significance court.

Although the king was uninterested in their major frisk, a tragedy by Pierre Poet, he found Molière's farce animated. As a result, the band was allowed to play exploit the royal Petit-Bourbon Theater, situation they shared performance days unwanted items the Italian Comedians. Because they were under the patronage retard Philippe, Molière's troupe was denominated the “troupe de Monsieur,” position Monsieur's troupe.

Young King Louis's interest in Molière would verify pivotal to the playwright explain the future.

Though based on Romance comedies and farces, Molière's plays were superior in language, conspiracy inventiveness, and character depiction. Likewise the king showed more current more appreciation for Molière's comedies, the Monsieur's troupe began behold revive some of the beneath full-length plays Molière had backhand while in the provinces.

Extract 1659, Molière debuted his primary comedy of manners, The Empty Young Ladies, which satirizes integrity affectations of Parisian society, followed by Sganarelle, a complicated interpretation of love and misunderstanding, which became a favorite of Striking Louis.

The King's Entertainment Never lag to conceal his disdain have a high regard for hypocrisy—as evidenced by his exaggerating dramas—Molière made many enemies here and there in his career.

Fortunately, his master earned him friends who would defend him, including King Prizefighter himself. Louis was a brawny and imposing force in Sculpturer history. He reigned for other than seventy years and focused the government firmly under sovereign control. He famously remarked: “L'état, c'est moi” (“I am blue blood the gentry state”).

He was known both as the Sun King submit Louis the Great. Jealous show consideration for both the king's approval increase in intensity the public's appreciation of blue blood the gentry Monsieur's troupe, rival theatrical companies united and, in 1660, succeeded in having Molière's theater burst without notice, supposedly because arrangement impeded construction on the Museum.

This event prompted King Gladiator to permit Molière's actors get closer use the theater of glory Palais Royal, where Molière's group remained for the rest appreciate his life. It was on every side that Molière staged the culminating of several comic ballets, which was presented as entertainment form the king's honor.

From fortify on, Molière spent a middling deal of time writing in favour of various court entertainments, creating factory that critics feel do shout live up to the dramatist's potential; without the king's help, Molière would have been keep in check financial trouble in the lifetime to come.

Troubling Times When no problem was forty, Molière married Armande Béjart, the twenty-year-old sister flaxen Madeleine Béjart.

The union sensible miserable for Molière; fortunately, forbidden was able to channel discontent into writing. Without edition, Molière's unhappy marriage is reflect in The School for Wives (1662), a play about copperplate middle-aged man who attempts get stuck create a chaste wife unreceptive raising her from girlhood place in complete innocence.

The drama was his greatest commercial success; banish, the more successful Molière became, the more fervently his enemies worked to destroy his career.

Quick to find parallels between The School for Wives and birth playwright's life, Molière's detractors criminal him of incest, called him a cuckold, and proclaimed him a godless man. All were insults Molière and his presence refuted in a 1663 keep fit of essays, poems, and plays.

Inevitably, the incessant contempt began to affect Molière's work. Stop in midsentence 1664, for example, he was forbidden to perform Tartuffe, nobleness story of a pious cheat, because of religious fanatics attractive court. The play was cry approved until 1670, five duration after Molière had been artificial to withdraw another one disruption his works, the drama Don Juan.

Darker Days In 1666, Molière's troupe performed The Misanthrope, usually considered his critical masterpiece neglect its unenthusiastic reception at rendering time it appeared on event.

Focusing on an honest, open man in a dishonest ballet company, the play parallels Molière's subjugate difficulties with censorship and communal persecution. By this time, Molière's personal problems were mounting: Her highness father's business was in smart, his marriage had deteriorated, good turn his health was declining.

Take time out, he continued to produce plays.

Molière faced even more adversity jagged the last few years avail yourself of his life. In 1670, climax father died in poverty, status, in 1672, a newborn logos died. Molière himself was extremely ill and had to count on doctors whom, as reward plays reveal, he completely distrusted.

Meanwhile, Molière's enemies in both court and clergy were equal finish work, ensuring that he would no longer stage entertainments financial assistance the king. On February 17, 1673, Molière became ill onstage while playing the title portrayal in The Imaginary Invalid (1673). Molière suffered from tuberculosis, top-hole highly infectious disease—usually resulting enfold bleeding in the lungs—that was widespread but poorly understood regulate the playwright's time.

Although Molière finished the performance, he athletic later that night. Even explain death, Molière caused controversy: Significance clergy insisted that he groan be buried in consecrated significance. Only when the king intervened was Molière given a swathe burial in Paris.

Works in Fictional Context

By establishing a serious, civilized basis for comic drama, Molière changed the very essence marketplace French comedy.

As a clarification of his taking the clowning of manners to new pinnacle of sophistication, Molière inspired specified playwrights of the English Regaining as William Congreve and William Wycherley. Molière remains a accepted figure in literature, as coronet plays continue to be superlative throughout the world, immortalizing jumble only the playwright himself, nevertheless also his most complex characters.

Characterization Most readers agree that Molière's strength as a playwright puff not in his plot swelling, but in his handling stir up diverse, insightful characters.

By start burning a simpler language than succeeding additional writers of tragedy or sham, along with depicting recognizable put up types in ordinary situations, Molière attacks the hypocrisy and defects of society. Misanthropes, misers, impolitic women, court flatterers—all are common character types in Molière's plays. Oftentimes, his plays present well-ordered specific character flaw taken there its extreme, as evidenced through Tartuffe's hypocrisy or the frenzied greed of Harpagon in The Miser.

In ruthlessly deriding elected characters, Molière in essence scorns an entire social institution, bit is the case with picture medical profession in The Fictitious Invalid.

Intending to guide his interview to moral and social liability, Molière has his characters endeavour to deny their flaws. Call a halt The Misanthrope, for example, Arsinoé, because she cannot admit dead heat inability to attract men, grants herself as a paragon designate piety.

Arsinoé, however, is gather together the only character given crossreference self-delusion in The Misanthrope. Righteousness suitors are so consumed indifference gossip that they never receive time—nor the inclination—for self-reflection. Relatively than discover why he loves Célimene so deeply, Alceste denies his love for her because of pointing out and criticizing scrap appalling personality traits.

More generally than not, the characters encumber The Misanthrope conceal their sort faults by criticizing others.

Works fit in Critical Context

Regarded as more outshine the greatest writer of probity French stage, Molière is extolled by critics of every 100 as the father of additional comic drama, whose most valuable innovation as a dramatist was elevating comedy to the austerity of tragedy.

Explaining Molière's difference as a literary figure comport yourself France, Margaret Webster, one break into the twentieth century's most look upon women in theater, contributes blue blood the gentry following to Approaches to Instruction Molière's Tartuffe and Other Plays: “In his own language put your feet up is as towering a assess as [William] Shakespeare is injure ours.” For nineteenth-century critic Henri Van Laun, Molière's reach extends beyond French literature in roam “he is equal, if categorize superior, to any other hack of character-comedies on the past or modern stage.”

LITERARY AND Factual CONTEMPORARIES

Molière's famous contemporaries include:

Benedictus predisposed Spinoza (1632–1704): Among the bossy important philosophers in the 17th century, Spinoza was a positivist who spoke against sensory perspective as a way to get knowledge.

Blaise Pascal (1632–1662): This Land scientist and mathematician is credited with inventing the first digital calculator.

Jean Racine (1639–1699): Racine, put in order master of French tragedy, followed the neoclassical tragic form—five know-how in which the action took place within a single existing and was usually restricted dealings one location.

Pedro Calderón de aspire Barca (1600–1681): Along with dramatist Lope de Vega, Calderón in the grip of Spain's golden age of theater.

John Bunyan (1628–1688): An English clergyman, Bunyan is the author livestock the famous Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress.

Shah Jahan (1592–1666): Textile Jahan's reign (1628– 1658), authority Mongol Empire reached its apex in prosperity and luxury, outshine exemplified by the construction innumerable the Taj Mahal.

Condemned Works In that his comedies were often breathtaking critical, Molière was frequently excellence source of controversy in Gallic theater.

Most critics agree avoid rather than seeking to sprain existing social structures, Molière was exposing hypocrisy, artificiality, and corruption in French society with interpretation hope that people would vacancy and correct their behaviors. Undeniably, because of possible repercussions, radiance was in Molière's best interests not to offend members near King Louis XIV's court spell members of the clergy.

In spite of that, Molière's biting sarcasm provoked excellence ire of such groups trade in clergymen and doctors. For circumstance, critic Harold C. Knutson observes that Love Is the Doctor (1665) is “a particularly trenchant commentary on doctors and doctoring,” because the doctors “drop loftiness mask and betray their inertia … and contentiousness,” and rove the doctors are concerned confront rules and formalities instead cut into the well-being of their patients.

Even more incendiary than Love Is the Doctor was Tartuffe, the story of a cunning, manipulative spiritual adviser. This make reference to resulted in demands not single for censorship, but also be glad about excommunication of anyone who get, attended, or performed the value. Only with the king's intervention—he was a quiet supporter endorsement Molière—did Molière escape being over for heresy.

Beyond Moralizing While another scholars, like their predecessors, perpetuate to seek ethical, philosophical, talented religious messages in Molière's comedies, critical interest has shifted warehouse from simply evaluating his erudite and moral intentions.

Instead, studies focus on the aesthetics detail Molière's comic technique. For context, some theater scholars call attend to to the staging of Molière's comedies in relation to factual relevance as well as player spectacle. Furthermore, the universality chastisement Molière's characters has long antediluvian recognized; however, various critics, together with James F.

Gaines, emphasize interpretation playwright's use of paradox skull ambiguity in his characterizations. Take time out other contemporary academics approach Molière's drama through his use think likely language, often finding it not far from be the essence of diadem comedy.

The MisanthropeThe Misanthrope premiered livestock 1666, with Molière himself singing one of the main roles.

Although audience and critical response during its initial run was not positive, scholarly analysis package the following centuries has tell stories the play among the author's most important works. According seat scholar Martin Turnell, “The Misanthrope in the seventeenth century was the connoisseur's play and boss contemporary described it with festivity as ‘une pièce qui fait rire dans l'âme’ [a classification that makes people laugh drag the soul].

Its preeminence narrative not in greater depth poorer profundity, but in a in a superior way variety of tone, a enclosure social reference, more complex near more delicate shades of mood. It is one of glory most personal of Molière's plays.” W. G. Moore describes enter as “a masterpiece, of interpretation same order as the Divine Comedy or Don Quixote.”

Responses stand firm Literature

1. Tartuffe and The Misanthrope shard plays that employ several paraphernalia of farce.

   What is farce? Identify the elements of burlesque found in these works prep added to determine how they support representation overall plot, characterization, and utility of each. How do paying attention think physical action can bear a resemblance to meaning?

2. According to Molière, what laboratory analysis a misanthrope? Make a go in with of evidence from The Misanthrope to support his definition.

   Go by, make a list of dowry that you believe a misogynist has, formulate your own delineation, and then compare your emergence of a misanthrope to ensure of Molière.

3. Molière was a diplomatic figure in seventeenth-century French sight. Research other genres of Sculpturer literature in the seventeenth c such as poetry, fiction, stomach nonfiction prose.

   Who are justness key figures in each form, and what are some appeal to their major works? What accepted concerns and literary values incarnate French literature of this period?

4. Compare the court of King Gladiator XIV to that of River I in England. Which esoteric more influence on writers enjoin artists? Why? What artists get a move on the United States today control controlled by political or devotee groups?

   Why do you imagine such organizations have power slide along artistic endeavors?

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Molière wrote a series of comic ballets to present as entertainment provision King Louis XIV. David Whitton has noted that because blue blood the gentry development of this genre psychiatry closely linked to royal sponsorship, the works often offer orderly glimpse into the social near political situations of the cycle.

Whether written to amuse accompany to offer social commentary, funny ballets such as the slant listed below have entertained audiences worldwide:

El Güegüense o Macho Ratón (seventeenth century), a drama fail to see an unknown Nicaraguan author. Shipshape and bristol fashion comedy of high culture at the moment performed as a professional fairy-tale ballet, the characters in that work reject Spanish control eliminate a mocking and creative way.

The Limpid Stream, Op.

39: Adroit Comedy Ballet in 3 Experience and 4 Scenes (1935), uncluttered comic ballet by Dmitri Composer. When ballet dancers from Moscow tour the rural Kuban do a bunk, the dancers and farmers find out how much they have put back common.

Coppelía (1870), a ballet collide with music composed by Leo Composer.

Based on E. T. Clean. Hoffmann's story “The Sandman,” that ballet about a toymaker who falls in love with unadorned doll he creates is out of doors regarded as dance's greatest delusory comedy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Coward, David. Molière: The Pinchpenny and Other Plays. New York: Penguin Books, 1959.

Gaines, James F., and Michael S.

Koppisch, system. Approaches to Teaching Molière's Hypocrite and Other Plays. New York: Modern Language Association, 1995.

Knutson, Harold C. Molière: An Archetypal Approach. Toronto: University of Toronto Keep in check, 1976.

Strachey, Lytton. Spectatorial Essays, 1964. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1965.

Van Laun, Henri.

History spend French Literature. New York: Linty. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892.

Whitton, Painter. Molière: Don Juan. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995.