Hypocrisy In Tartuffe

In Tartuffe, Moliere's use's plot to defend and oppose characters that symbolize and ridicule habitual behavior's that was imposed during the neo-classical time period. His work, known as a comedy of manners, consists of flat characters, with few and similar traits and that always restore some kind of peace in the end. He down plays society as a whole by creating a microseism, where everyone in the family has to be obedient, respectful, and mindful of the head of the home, which is played by the father Orgon. Mariane shows her obedience when she replies "To please you, sir, is what delights me best." (Moliere 324,11) Shortly afterwards, Orgon commands Mariane to take Tartuffe as her husband even though she is not interested in him at all.

        Moliere rocked the 17th century French world with his comedy "Tartuffe" in 1664. Although, religious factions kept the play banned from theatres from 1664-1669, "Tartuffe" emerged from the controversy as one of the all-time great comedies. Tartuffe is a convincing religious hypocrite. He is a parasite who is sucking Orgon, the rich trusting father, for all he is worth. Orgon does not realize that Tartuffe is a phony, and caters to his every whim. For instance, he reneges on his promise to let his daughter Mariane, marry Valere. Instead he demands that she wed Tartuffe, whom she despises. He also banishes his own son, Damis, from his house for speaking out against Tartuffe and

Throughout time, man has used many forms of deception to get what they want. Moliere’s play Tartuffe is a classical story about deception and how a “mask” is used to hide someone’s true intentions. Moliere applies the idea of a mask and a theme of deception to exploit the power struggles within a traditional household. The character Tartuffe employs deception so he can achieve social and economical standings while Elmire, Mariane, and Dorine use deception to defy the authority of Orgon over the entire household and to help bring back family harmony.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere wrote Tartuffe during the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment. One of the main characteristics of the Age of Enlightenment was a push towards using reason over emotions to make decisions. The leaders of the enlightenment truly believed that the world could be made a better place if people did this. In Tartuffe, when the characters use their emotions to make their decisions they find themselves in undesirable situations. While those who let their emotions rule them find their lives spinning out of control, there are other characters in the play who try to approach them with reason and logic. Out of these characters the lady’s maid Dorine stands out as the voice of reason.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere's Tartuffe is an epic play of hypocrisy, betrayal, and the tale of a foolish mind. Moliere's choice of protagonist in this play happens to be the most blatantly ignorant character in the play. Orgon is naive to the villain Tartuffe's hypocritical ways, makes a complete dunce of himself by uplifting Tartuffe as holy, and failing to pick up the abundance of clues of Tartuffe being fake. Analyzing this character is rather interesting and at the same time frustrating to read of someone so ignorant that they fail to see the wolf hiding under the sheep clothing. A fool is a fool unless they open their eyes to see the truth, and it took Orgon the majority of the play to realize the truth.

pamphlets were circulated demanding Moliere to be stopped; although the King found the Tartuffe to be amusing and believed Moliere had good intentions, he temporarily banned further performances until it was reviewed. Later that summer Tartuffe was approved by the Popes nephew, Cardinal Chigi; “he approved it, finding nothing offensive to Christianity” (Tartuffe 202). From that point forward Moliere continued to write plays until his death. But his biggest success, Tartuffe, is still read and performed every day, by people all around the world, and it will continue to be a part of history because of the clear representation of beliefs that were encouraged during Enlightenment Period.

Throughout the play Molière uses many religious phrases to characterize Tartuffe including “saint”, “holy”, and “hypocrite” (Molière 1.1.73, 1.1.81, 1.1.74). This idea of false religiosity is summed up by Clèante’s simile “Religious passion worn as a facade” (Molière 1.5.128). When Tartuffe was originally

The context surrounding the period in which Tartuffe was written in, the 17th Century is remembered as being a time of extreme power for the French Monarchy. King Louis XIV and Cardinal Richelieu transformed France’s feudal monarchy to an absolute monarchy. What must also be noted about this time is the fact that the Catholic Church and Politicians had a great deal of power over authors and playwrights. In this time of social and religious persecution, Molière created Tartuffe , a comedy dealing with hypocrisy and to a great extent, religion and how religion can be used in a negative way, to mask sin. The play is known to be offensive towards the Catholic Church and religion in general. When it was first performed in 1664, it was censored,

Jessica Lonon FREN 0868-701 Moliere Essay Tartuffe is Moliere’s most famous play. It was originally written in 1664 as a three-act comedy, however the final version – which is what has survived to today – is composed of five acts. Many have said that Tartuffe was written in response to hypocritical religious situations of the age. Religious hypocrisy was an issue that plagued many upper class Frenchmen and this play subtly targets them and their folly.

Tartuffe is a comedy written by Moliere during the enlightenment period. Moliere shows us the hypocrisy and corruption that exist in our homes and church. The characters are mixed between being rational and irrational. Moliere's edified thinking gets the chance to be unmistakably evident within the impression of the inconsiderateness and absurdity that he fuses with the goals of his spoof. The variance between the actions that Moliere gives out to his typecast characters and the celebrated impression of those same characters, given the situations, makes a wide gap raising issues with the thoughts of the reader.

Moliere’s Tartuffe is from 17th century France, during the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. The type of Enlightenment in the western culture differed from the Eastern Asian philosophies. Enlightenment thinkers put faith in reason and analysis in the Western culture. Tartuffe was born to a culture that valued the age of rationalism, or practical thinking, which had gradually departed from religious beginnings. Furthermore, people in Paris were interested in Enlightenment values such as rationality, moderation, and order. In addition, good manners and gender roles were strictly enforced during this time period. Moliere demonstrates all of these Enlightenment values in his play.

In his most notorious play Tartuffe, Molière relates the story of an attempt, by a manipulative hypocrite, to destroy the domestic happiness of a citizen who, charmed by his seeming piety, has taken him into his home as a respectable guest. The play was disallowed after its first performance because it was deemed anti-religion. However this ruling was made unfairly since true religion is never confounded with hypocrisy, but is upheld with warmth, which shows his characteristic hatred of imposture in any shape.

Moliére's Tartuffe has long been considered a masterpiece of French Literature for its powerful social commentary, finely sculptured characters and its presentation of moral theme. While Tartuffe stands soundly on its own merits, its curiosity and impact for audiences both within its own period and for contemporary productions are heightened by the history surrounding its original presentation.

Regarding the genre of Tartuffe, Moliere made a clear definition of which is which, those rich people and those who serves the upper class. The interaction of both the rich men and aristocrats and the ladies and helpers is the thing that gets everyone laughing where their hired helpers tries to get into the rich men’s personal lives. And as stated earlier, Religion is also a big deal in the world of Tartuffe. Priests and other members of the Catholic Church were considered to be a part of totally different class that is respected and valued jut like the royalties and aristocrats. Moliere was also controversial because of his satirical ways of writing his plays. He is so call as the enemy of the hypocrites because he tends to show the true features of every kind of people in his plays. In Tartuffe, he made Mr. Tartuffe as a play write who was convicted and was adopted by a rich family of Orgon. There, he was hired to teach Orgon the art of acting, but for him to be able to enter the house, Tartuffe must first pretend to be a religious person, as a priest to teach their family the ways and sayings of the Catholic Church. The controversial part of play for the Catholic Church for me is the part where Tartuffe, as an acting priest, tries to seduce the wife of Orgon, Elmire, when she have read the writings of Mr. Tartuffe that was rejected by

Hypocrisy’ as a common theme throughout literature has often been advocated by the author’s use of concealing the true characteristics or meaning of the character. ‘Tartuffe’ by Moliere is an amazing neo-classical drama, where it portrays the contradictory relationship between appearance and reality in terms of hypocrisy. In one hand, Tartuffe, the religious hypocrite, who always wears a false mask of untrue righteousness to deceive others around him, on the other hand in reality he turns out to be the falsifier. Despite Tartuffe is treacherous in his undertakings and manages to deceive some people, however he cannot help but reveals his true nature/characteristics whenever he is confronted by sincere individuals. In another sense, he fails to realize that there are at least some people who has the right knowledge and will be able to identify his true instinct. I believe by using Tartuffe as a model of ‘religious hypocrite’, Moliere superbly demonstrates the logic that although the inherent tendency of a hypocrite is to manipulate others with his deceitful virtue, yet he will only be able to misguide individuals, who are insincere and unwise.