Pierre Corneille Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Ian McFarlane

Critical Essay by Ian McFarlane

SOURCE: McFarlane, Ian. “A Reading of La Veuve.” In The Equilibrium of Wit: Essays for Odette de Mourgues, edited by Peter Bayley and Dorothy Gabe Coleman, pp. 135-49. Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1982.

In the following essay, McFarlane explores stylistic aspects of The Widow, particularly Corneille's use of language, action, and characterization.

In the Letter-preface to La Suivante, Corneille quotes from Montaigne (I, 37): “Qu'on me donne l'action la plus excellente et pure, je m'en vais y fournir vraisemblablement cinquante vicieuses intentions.” This points to a persistent fascination with the relations between state of mind and outer gesture and with the difficulties that face us when we try to find out what people are really about: one of the factors in play is language, curiously inadequate as a vehicle of communication, concealing as much as it reveals, and working according to some strange principle of refraction. Corneille no doubt found...
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