The art of pleasure:
  passion in Molière's comedies.

Molière	Francetoile	Thesis	Passion	Commedia	Research Interests

In my thesis I establish a link between passion and comedy, particularly that of Molière.   Critics of seventeenth-century French literature have already shown the extensive influence of contemporary notions of passion on the novel and on tragic theatre in particular, yet little work has been done that relates passion to comedy.

In the first part of my thesis I examine the more influential French writers to discuss passion in the seventeenth century and from a diversity of texts I shall formulate an overview of passion that will be readily applicable to literary research.  There are a number of area particularly worthy of investigation:   causes of passion; the dynamism of passionate emotion that distinguishes it from static humour; classification and enumeration of individual passions; implications of passionate emotion on ideas of the self.

The second part of my thesis concerns the correlation of passion and comedy in four main areas:   verisimilitude, notions of the ridiculous, plot structure, and comic catharsis.   I demonstrate how the dominant ideology of passion that influenced so many other areas of seventeenth-century French thought also left its mark on the comic stage, inmpinging in particular on contemporary understanding of character.   Moreover, the need for verisimilitude was implicit to comic acting, where a semiology of passionate gesture derived from physiological studies of passion.

I counter Bergson's assertion that Molière's monomaniacal characters are ridiculous because of a machine-like (and therefore non-human) quality, arguing that it is precisely their humanity that makes these characters ridiculous.  With reference to contemporary philosophers such as Descartes, as well as to later critics like Freud and Jung, I show how the idea of a passionate comic character resolves the apparent disparity, often debated, between the plausible and the risible.   I go on to examine structural parallels between comic plot and the various stages of passion.   Passion is frequently the prime mover in Molière's comedy, and comic plot frequently mimics contemporary understanding of passionate response.   The resolution, or indeed non-resolution of passion in comedy is also relevant, and will lead to a discussion of theories of comic catharsis.

The main body of my thesis, however, comprises a textual analysis of Molière's comedies, examining where, and how explicitly, the passions are depicted.   I consider the evolution of Molière's comedy, from farce to comédie de caractère, discussing what this evolution may owe to contemporary understanding of emotion.   Rather than examining each play in turn, I concentrate on a number of themes:   causes of passion and its revelation; attempts to restrain passion; betrayal of passion; and passionate performance, based on contemporary accounts of stagings by Molière's troop.

My goal in this thesis is to show how passion does influence comedy, particularly that of Molière.   I aim to add to our current understanding of what constituted passion in seventeenth-century France and I hope to shed some light on the attitudes of Molière's public towards both passion and comedy.

Philippe Parker (1999)
Please send all comments to philippe@tokolos.demon.co.uk