Molière Critical Essay | Critical Essay by David Hartley

Critical Essay by David Hartley

SOURCE: “Language and Authority in Molière,” in Voices in the Air: French Dramatists and the Resource of Language, University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1992, pp. 29-41.

In this essay, Hartley argues that in Molière's plays a character's use of language reveals the reliability of his or her authority, and that Molière satirizes those who value language as a marker of status.

In recent years, Molière criticism has tended to concentrate on the theatrical, rather than the literary side to his plays. Attention has focused on such topics as his debt to the commedia dell'arte, with whose performers he shared for some months the Petit-Bourbon,¹ the nature of the seventeenth-century theatre and the demands and tastes of the audiences of the time,² the importance of his role as theatre-manager.³ The change in approach brought about largely through the pioneering work of Moore, Bray, Jouvet and others⁴ has borne fruit....
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