SOURCE: "Paradox, Plot, and Outcome," in Molière as Ironic Contemplator, Mouton & Co., N. V., Publishers, 1973, pp. 61-99.

Eustis is an American critic, translator, and educator. In the following excerpt, he discusses the structure of Molière's plays and suggests that an ironic situation or paradox is at the center of each of the comedies.

Erich Auerbach on Molière's portrayal of seventeenth-century French society:

One can see in Molière's art the greatest measure of realism which could still please in the fully developed classical literature of the France of Louis XIV. Molière staked out the limits of what was possible at the time. He did not conform completely to the prevailing trend toward psychological types; yet with him too the peculiar and characteristic is always ridiculous and extravagant. He did not avoid the farcical and the grotesque, yet with him too any real representation of...