Moliere : The Revelation Of The Misanthrope

Mme de Lafayette’s The Princesse de Clèves was written during the time period known as ‘the Age of Reason.’ Mainly concerned with the discovery of the self, thinkers began to seriously consider the foundation of knowledge on which we understand ourselves during this era. Philosophers at the time thought that in order to understand the self, we must first come to understand our fundamental human nature and the passions that influence our everyday actions. Unlike Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy or Hobbes’ Leviathan where the passions are philosophized and discussed, The Princesse de Clèves gives an entirely new perspective to these human emotions. The psychological novel allows us insight into how these passions can complicate our

Bertolt Brecht was the pioneer of a new style of theatre, epic theatre. Epic theatre differentiates itself from Bertolt’s previous influences by presenting a series of loosely connected scenes that avoid illusion and often interrupt the story line to address the audience directly with analysis, argument, or documentation. He sought to remind the spectator that the play is an illustration of the playwright’s point of view rather than a slice from reality. This made audiences react with curiousity and participate in a dialogical argument criticising their own life and what they could do to change it rather than an emotional and empathic response that accepts events in the play as a slice of reality, accepted as the norm. He wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order to recognise social injustice and to go forth and transform the reality.

Contextually it is important to understand how women are presented as tragic victims of men in ‘Othello’. Contemporary views of women were, according to Sir Thomas Elyot “to be mild, timorous, tractable, benign, of sure remembrance, and shamefast.” Conversely men were seen to be “fierce, strong in opinion, covetous of glory, desirous of knowledge, appetiting by generation to bring for his semblable.” Elyot’s views of the contemporary man, though much grander than those of women, could prove to be their downfall in ‘Othello’. Shakespeare’s protagonist’s downfall could be based on the fact that he is desirous of knowledge, and Iago’s manipulation of Othello’s trustworthy nature suggests that not only are women the tragic victims of men, but it is men who are also victims of men.

Shakespeare is known for his use of recurring themes throughout his work, including love, death and betrayal. These themes are present in his work of Othello. However, the most fundamental issue is jealousy. The lives of the characthers in Othello are ruined by jealousy from the beginning to the end of the play. The telling of the story is carried out by passion, jealousy, and death. Shakespeare’s Othello reveals devastating tragic inevitability, stunning psychological depth, and compelling poetic depth; the fragility and mysterious power of love, as well as demons of doubt, and how suspicion can be triggered by manipulative villain (Barthelemy 12).

Jean Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Moliere, is one of the most studied and renowned literary authors in history. Moliere was proficient in the art of satire and many of his plays used this element as the forefront of the plots to get across to the audience what it was Moliere wanted to get across. Moliere’s time period allows him to exploit the hypocrisy of his time through the use of his most powerful tool, his characters. During the time of Moliere, France was becoming the major power in Europe.

Firstly, the playwright uses universal and timeless problems to engage their audience. In addition, using taboos that most people don’t usually like to discuss also has the same effect.

In a Comedy of Manners production of Molière’s Tartuffe, how should the actor playing Tartuffe move and speak?

"I cannot improve on it, and assuredly never shall," said Molière of his satire The Misanthrope, {1} and the critic Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux concurred by accounting it one of Molière's best plays.{2} But the French public did not like it much, preferring the dramatist's more farcical The Doctor in Spite of Himself--a play that, according to tradition, was written two months after The Misanthrope's premiere to make up for the latter's lack of success.{3} In fact, The Misanthrope horrified Rousseau, who thought that its aim was, in Donald Frame's words, "to make virtue ridiculous by pandering to the shallow and vicious tastes of the man of the world."{4} Both he and Goethe after him regarded

     This essay will discuss the issue of irony in Hamlet by dealing with the problems that arise as a result of Hamlet's attempt to avenge his father's death. One of the central problems is the clash between Hamlet's overpowering need to believe in the ghost of his father, who is the authoritative figure in his life, and the awareness that he lacks empirical knowledge of the truth. In trying to achieve this knowledge, Hamlet sets out on a mixed mission of accusation, revenge and the search for truth, finally causing the upset of the original revenge plot when it ricochets off Polonius' dead body and hits Hamlet in the name of Laertes.

It is in the third act where we can determine the effect of Sganarelle as a representation of doctors and the extent of Molière’s satire in the play. Upon revealing to Léandre that he is not actually a doctor, Sganarelle offers this opinion of the medical profession:

In Moliere's work, The Misanthrope, it can be said that the characters he portrays, represent his understanding of the people that were living at the highest level in society during late 17th century France. A central theme of the play is honesty and hypocrisy. Alceste, the central character, is a misanthrope because he is disgusted by the hypocrisy that, in his view characterizes human society. Alceste claims to be the only honest person he knows. In Bloom’s piece The Western Canon, he makes many interesting remarks about Alceste as well as contrast him with a major character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Moliere also suggests that many women may have been considered gossipers based on the characters, Celimene and Arsinoe.

After Monsieur D’Alembert proposes a theatre in republican Geneva, where Rousseau hails from, Rousseau argues that the theatre would destroy the city’s morality. In his Letter to M. D’Alembert on the Theatre, Rousseau argues that because of how a theatre focuses on providing entertainment, there would be nothing decent that would arise from it. In addition, Rousseau claims that while the theatre has productions that have morally sound endings, as D’Alembert suggests, the fact that there would be a villain, who impresses the crowd with their deeds, would lead to “the fault of attaching the public admiration to the guilty party, who is really worthy of exactly the opposite”(30), resulting in more people admiring the villains for the boldness while scorning the virtuous heroes for being weak because they did not perform those same acts.

Purity of Genre: there should not be any serious scenes in a comedy, and no comedic scenes in a tragedy. Comedies should primarily focus on the middle and lower classes ridiculing their follies. Molière mostly follows this rule, except for at the end of The Misanthrope: his play ridicules folly and is unarguably funny. However, comedies are generally known for their happy endings, and this play just… doesn’t have one of those. Our main character ends the show with his decision to be a hermit as he did not win over his love or his rebound girl. The woman who should have ended the show as his lover is called out as a whore and turns down Alceste’s offer to love her anyway which leaves her ultimately unhappy as

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.

As a fellow reader of this exquisite play that goes by the name of Tartuffe that is well written by a well - known author in literature that goes by the name of Moliere. Moliere discusses in the play that the fact of society is that public life is more matter than private life. However, this means that in general, people were judged by others just by the way they dressed or even acted on the outside. As a matter of fact, that is how people were treated during The Enlightenment period. Since their life mattered more in the public than their private life. For example, this quote explains how Madame Pernelle is treating her daughter – in – law therefore it states, “You spend money like it grows on trees then wear it on your back in clothes like these…” (Moliere 1.1 line 29). However, that clearly explains that Madame Pernelle is being critical to her daughter – in – law by calling her out that she is being too free with money, by spending it all on clothing, and that she dresses like this princess when she is not even one. The emphasis of having a public and a private life is that it is an understanding between a person’s psychological motivation.