Doubleness, duplicity, and ambiguity: Moliere's "Tartuffe" and the evolution to the Revolution.
Item
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Title
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Doubleness, duplicity, and ambiguity: Moliere's "Tartuffe" and the evolution to the Revolution.
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Identifier
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AAI9029975
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identifier
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9029975
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Creator
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Rosenblum, Shari Lynn.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Alex Szogyi
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Date
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1990
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Romance | Language, General | Theater
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Abstract
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Using the Revolution as point of departure, this study retraces the evolution to the Revolution from the apogee of absolutism to the storming of the Bastille as it is reflected in the contemporary theater, focusing primarily on Moliere's Tartuffe, and profiting from the interdisciplinary and intertextual perspective of the polykathresis.;Proceeding from the premise that history, politics, literature, and language are interdependent, this study affirms that doubleness, duplicity and ambiguity are the means by which the playwrights incorporate political insights into the subtexts of their works, and that linguistic analysis is the means to divulge them.;Placing the moment in context, the myths of the classical era are disputed, and Moliere the actor is shown to have provided a front for Moliere the author, allowing him to bring "articulation"--language as meaning--to French comic theater.;Tartuffe is then examined for the use of doubling and ambiguity in its title, setting, character, storyline, and resolution, and for the functions of language within the text--names, speech and the games of conversation.;The political implications of the analysis are then confirmed by a summary evaluation of Moliere's own Dom Juan, Racine's Andromaque, Marivaux's Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard, and Beaumarchais' Le Mariage de Figaro, demonstrating that a subtext of revolutionary awareness and change is manifested by a progression in five basic theatrical details: (1) an assumption of voice by the underclasses; (2) a humanization of the overclasses; (3) an increased intellectual awareness of the audience; (4) a passage from the primacy of the spectacle to the ascendance of the work; and (5) a full and avowed realization by the playwright of the power of his artistic gift.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
