Molière’s «The Affected Ladies»: A Farce against Women?
Piotr Olkusz
piotr.olkusz@uni.lodz.plUniversity of Lodz (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7618-7014
Abstract
Molière’s Les précieuses ridicules (The Affected Ladies), his first great success, is regarded today as one of his most controversial works, as its main comic characters are women aspiring to independence. The interpretative tradition concerning this play has taught us to see it as a satire on the milieu of Madeleine de Scudéry, now considered as one of the most progressive women of the seventeenth century (and, for some, as a forerunner of feminism). The readers’ response to The Affected Ladies thus seems to be a barometer of their attitude towards women’s empowerment. The author posits that this dispute over The Affected Ladies is not so much about Molière’s comedy itself as about its simplifying, traditional interpretation. He discusses the origins of the work in order to highlight genre-related aspects: The Affected Ladies is a farcical comedy written primarily as a response to a specific theatrical situation, so focusing the interpretation on its questionable satirical potential seems to be going too far. An important interpretative context is also provided by recent observations of historians of 17th-century French literature, who have questioned the existence of the world of the affected ladies (and the whole préciosité movement), suggesting that Molière invented this milieu, which therefore belongs to the order of representation rather than reality.
Keywords:
Molière, 1600–1700 theater, « Les Précieuses ridicules », farcical comedy, préciosité, reception of MolièreReferences
Bénichou, Paul. Morales du grand siècle. Paris: Gallimard, 1998.
Google Scholar
Bourqui, Claude. „Molière auteur galant – an inconvenient truth: Conditions d’émergence d’une «vérité qui dérange»”. In Littéraire. T. 1: Pour Alain Viala, sous la direction de Marine Roussillon et al., 193–202. Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2018. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.apu.18047.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.apu.18047
Google Scholar
Bray, René. „Répertoire de la troupe de Molière (1658–1673)”. In Mélanges d’histoire littéraire: Offerts à Daniel Mornet par ses anciens collègues et ses disciples français. Paris: Nizet, 1951.
Google Scholar
DeJean, Joan. „Un Grand siècle pour les femmes auteurs”. In Femmes et littérature: Une histoire culturelle, sous la direction de Martine Reid, t. 1: Moyen Âge–XVIIIe siècle, 485–687. Paris: Gallimard, 2020.
Google Scholar
DeJean, Joan. „The Politics of Genre: Madeleine de Scudéry and the Rise of the French Novel”. L’Esprit Créateur 29, no. 3 (1989): 43–51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26285888.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/esp.1989.0033
Google Scholar
Duchêne, Roger. „De Molière à Sorel, ou la rhétorique des précieuses”. In Le Langage littéraire au XVIIe siècle: De la rhétorique à la littérature, éditeur scientifique Christian Wentzlaff-Eggebert, 135–145. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1991.
Google Scholar
Duchêne, Roger. Molière. Paris: Fayard, 1998.
Google Scholar
Forestier, Georges. Molière. Paris: Gallimard, 2018.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14375/NP.9782072827921
Google Scholar
Fumaroli, Marc. „L’Empire des femmes, ou l’esprit de joie”. In La Diplomatie de l’esprit: De Montaigne à La Fontaine, 321–339. Paris: Hermann, 1998.
Google Scholar
Gaines, James F., ed. The Molière Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Google Scholar
Grayburn Moore, Will. Molière: A New Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1949.
Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Paul. La Femme dans la pensée des lumières. Paris: Ophrys, 1977.
Google Scholar
Lebègue, Raymond. „Molière et la farce”. Cahiers de l’AIEF, no. 16 (1964): 183–201. https://doi.org/10.3406/caief.1964.2470.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/caief.1964.2470
Google Scholar
Legrave, Henri. Le Théâtre et le public à Paris de 1715 à 1756. Paris: Klincksieck, 1972.
Google Scholar
Lotterie, Florence. Le Genre des Lumières: Femmes et philosophe au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013.
Google Scholar
Mosconi, Nicole. „La Femme savante: Figure de l’idéologie sexiste dans l’histoire de l’éducation”. Revue française de pédagogie 93 (1990): 27–39. https://www.persee.fr/doc/rfp_0556-7807_1990_num_93_1_1371.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/rfp.1990.1371
Google Scholar
Pelous, Jean-Michel. Amour précieux, amour galant (1654–1675): Essai sur la représentation de l’amour dans la littérature et la société mondaines. Paris: Klincksieck, 1980.
Google Scholar
Rey-Flaud, Bernadette. Molière et la farce. Genève: Droz, 1996.
Google Scholar
Riffaud, Alain, et Georges Forestier, „Les Précieuses ridicules – notice”. In Molière, Œuvres complètes, sous la direction de Georges Forestier et Claude Bourqui, t. 2. Paris: Gallimard, 2010.
Google Scholar
Viala, Alain. La France galante: Essai historique sur une catégorie culturelle, de ses origines jusqu’à la Révolution. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008. https://doi.org/10.3917/puf.vial.2008.01.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/puf.vial.2008.01
Google Scholar
Authors
Piotr Olkuszpiotr.olkusz@uni.lodz.pl
University of Lodz Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7618-7014
Piotr Olkusz - Assistant Professor of theater and cultural studies at the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the University of Lodz, editor of "Dialog", reviewer of the portal teatralny.pl. He is primarily interested in French theater, the institutional determinants of theatrical aesthetics, the development of the idea of popular theater, as well as the 18th century in theater and the birth of modernity.
Statistics
Abstract views: 175PDF downloads: 130
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Piotr Olkusz
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author grants a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Pamiętnik Teatralny should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). By submitting an article the author agrees to make it available under CC BY 4.0 license.
From issue 1/2018 to 3/2022 all articles were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Piotr Olkusz, The Paradox of Convention: «Critical reflections» by Jean-Baptiste Dubos , Pamiętnik Teatralny: Vol. 69 No. 1 (2020)
- Piotr Olkusz, Théâtres de Société in France: A Salon Experiment and Laboratory of New Rules , Pamiętnik Teatralny: Vol. 67 No. 4 (2018)
- Piotr Olkusz, From the Company to the Theatre Enterprise: The Official Stages of 18th-century Paris: Development and Scrutiny , Pamiętnik Teatralny: Vol. 67 No. 1/2 (2018)
- Piotr Olkusz, Marivaux’s Archipelago: «L’Île des Esclaves», «L’Île de la Raison», and «Colonie» , Pamiętnik Teatralny: Vol. 66 No. 3 (2017)
