SOURCE: “Disappearing Acts: Style, Seduction, and Performance in Dom Juan,” in Modern Language Notes, Vol. 106, No. 5, December, 1991, pp. 1030-47.

In the following essay, Schlossman evaluates Molière's approach to portraying Dom Juan indirectly through other character interpretations of him.

Quel diable de style! Ceci est bien pis que le reste.

(Molière, Dom Juan, V, iv)

Molière's Dom Juan ou le festin de pierre begins after Dom Juan's disappearing act. His absence in the first scene allows other characters to allude to his flight, and to present a ‘disembodied’ version of his rhetoric of seduction. Molière subtracts the initial seduction scenes from the Spanish and Italian theatres of Don Juan's desire. He suspends the lover's intrigues and presents Dom Juan indirectly, through Sganarelle's representation of him. Sganarelle offers an oblique representation of Dom Juan's fictions, his beautiful rhetoric, and his stylistic effects.

sganarelle

Under the comic...