Role Of Religion In Tartuffe

Tartuffe initially comes off as a well put together religious man, who has nothing but good intentions in mind. However, Tartuffe is deviously disguising his harmful intentions through religion in which he puts on a front of smoke and mirrors hiding the fact that he is, in fact, the opposite of a devout, put together christian.  When Orgon first meets Tartuffe, he has great respect for him simply for the fact that Orgon believes that Tartuffe is a religious man.  Knowing this, Tartuffe believes that he now has the power to do whatever he wants within Orgon’s house.  Molière exposes Tartuffe’s hypocrisy and abuse of religious power through the way that Tartuffe communicates throughout the play.  The character Tartuffe does not appear in the play until the third act, once every other character has had the opportunity to describe their opinion.  Molière uses this as a way to expose tartuffe’s real character through the way tartuffe communicates with the other characters.  When Tartuffe speaks, he portrays a very confident superior being to everybody else with almost a divine presence. It fools the society that tartuffe is targeting and essentially gets what he wants.  He also takes religious passages and interprets them to fit into his

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.

The practice of worshipping a religion has been a part of human existence for thousands of years. The practice itself changes and shifts as time and humans grow, but the fundamentals of faith remain the same. While in present day the idea of religion can be a point of contention, in the past centuries it was a center of all human interaction. Moliere introduces a new outlook on religion in his published 1669 play Tartuffe. Following the household of Orgon and their interactions with a con-man, Tartuffe, disguised as a holy man. Orgon himself is completely oblivious to Tartuffe’s true nature (Gainor 539). Moliere uses this play as commentary on the society he finds himself in, 17th century France. A time between the Renaissance and the coming Enlightenment, where free thinking is on the rise (Chill 155). The entire play revolves around ideals concerning religion, and is a critique on the everyday acceptance of religious authority and control. Through the manipulative relationship of Tartuffe and Orgon, as well as the abrupt deus ex machina ending, Moliere sets a challenge to society’s blind faith in religion therefore embodying the Neoclassical idea of reason versus passion.

Topic/Research Question: Which minor character plays the most significant role in Moliere’s Tartuffe? Tartuffe was written by Moliere in 1664 and is set in 17th century France. During this time King Louis XIV had France under his reign; he was known as the patron of the arts. The Catholic Church was a major political power so Moliere wrote about what he saw as well as all of the religious hypocrisy during the 17th century.

How can we use Moliere’s Tartuffe in today's current politics? This question alone is an interesting topic. The exploration here can be towards character, plot and character interaction. Making the two topics resemble one another is not very hard to do. There are moments in the play where Moliere’s Tartuffe characters resemble and act like our current presidential candidates whom are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Exploring these resemblances is going to be enjoyable.

The word Tartuffe means religious hypocrite, which is the title of French playwright, Molière’s, 1664 play Tartuffe. This play is about, Orgon, a wealthy patriarch who succumbs under the influence of a religious and self-righteous hypocrite, Tartuffe, whom Orgon took in. As the story progress, Orgon becomes infatuated and obsessed with Tartuffe and his “religious” ideals. This obsession of Orgon’s grows and his family not fooled by Tartuffe’s act, think that Orgon is ludacris for falling for Tartuffe’s scheme. Because of Orgon’s fondness of Tartuffe, he postpones his daughter’s marriage to Valère, because he would like her to marry Tartuffe.

The story of Tartuffe written by Moliere (2006) is about a religious clergyman and his un-pious ways. Tartuffe is based on the opinion of 17th - century society where men’s worldviews of women were different than today’s. In Moliere’s story, Tartuffe had a worldview of women that can be summarized into three categories: he saw them as harlot’s, assumed they were easily seduced by his charms and considered them manipulative. Tartuffe’s worldview of seeing women as harlots were expressed when he had a conversation with the maid Dorine. As he approached her he was focused on the flesh that she was exposing.

Morlière ridiculous every class in French society, during the seventeenth century. The rich and poor have nowhere to hide from his mocking plays. They do not resent him, but instead fill his theater house. They find humor in being able to identify personalities they know all too well. Molière bravely mocked the self-righteous people of the Church in his play, Tartuffe. He displays the battle between passion and reason. He saw the battle take place between his peers in the Enlightenment. They fought for reason while trying to fight against passion in themselves. Molière portrays the struggle between passion and reason in a comedic way during Tartuffe.

Tartuffe, a supposedly humble and noble man, needed nothing but food and shelter and a place to worship. Yet, encroaching on a family in a quest to gain more and more status within the family and eventually become owner of the actual household. Another example is Tartuffe’s supposed desire and holy pilgrimage to life long celibacy, but at the same time seducing the wife of the man who brought him off the streets, clothed, fed and housed him. It is in the way that Moliere describes and characterizes Tartuffe that really shows the frustration he was trying to get across. It can be said that Moliere’s characterization of Orgon is also a vent of frustration in that everybody can see through Tartuffe’s hypocrisy except he whom it mattered most to see.

"The most forceful lines of a serious moral statement are usually less powerful than those of satire, and nothing will reform most men better than the depiction of their faults"(Moliere's preface to Tartuffe). Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere's play Tartuffe caused much controversy on its release upon the reigning king of France at that time. This comedy of greed, lust, deceit, hypocrisy, devotion, ardor, and truth had to be rewritten three times before the clergy approved it for public viewing. It especially angered a group called The Brotherhood, which was dedicated to the preservation of very strict religious observances. Moliere was merely finding a way to express his thoughts about several attitudes

In March-April 1664, Molière wrote a first Tartuffe, in three acts, at a time when devotees gathered around the powerful Company of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, are shocked by the privacy of Louis XIV, lover Mademoiselle de La Valliere. On the Pleasures of the Enchanted Island in May of the same year, the sumptuous feast given by King in Versailles, Molière's play The Princess of Elis, The Unfortunate and Tartuffe. This last work is very successful, and the spectators try to guess which contemporary could serve as a model for the character of the hero. Immediately, the cabal led by the Holy Sacrament of the Company is unleashed with much greater violence that during the

Jean-Baptitste Poquelin Moliere’s Tartuffe, is undoubtedly a satirical comedy. In Moliere’s description of a satire, he was very direct as to the function and objectives of one are. The function is to correct men’s vices, using satire to ridicule them and expose them to public laughter (Moliere, p.14). Although this satire is making fun of many things in the church and organized religion, which is not the only objective Moliere had in mind. Tartuffe has many themes that reoccur through out the play. The time period, in which this play was written, was known as the Age of Reason. One of the main ideas and attitudes during this time was, reason must always control passion. Due to this

At the end of Moliere’s play, Orgon suddenly has a change of heart when he sees and hears for himself that Tartuffe has in fact deceived him and his family. Orgon says angrily, “ That man’s a perfect monster, I must admit! I’m simply stunned. I can’t get over it.'; (Act 4, scene 6) Orgon, after finding that Tartuffe had deceived them confronted him about it. Orgon sates to Tartuffe, “ Hold on, my passionate fellow, not so fast! I should advise a little more restraint. Well, so you thought you’d fool me, my dear saint! How soon you wearied of the saintly life- wedding my daughter, and coveting my wife!

11. Personal Response – Molière’s play, Tartuffe, well shows the flaws of humanity. His use of characters filled with extremes

Molière’s plays have often unsettled readers and critics who like to keep their genres clean and uncomplicated. In an introduction to the book One-Act Comedies of Molière, Albert Bermel writes, “Tartuffe, The School For Wives, [...] are richly comic yet they contain scenes that are disturbing, if not distressing, to sit through, and they end by stirring up in us a discord of emotions” (1). Examining Tartuffe specifically, this discord of emotions comes from watching Tartuffe try to seduce women while claiming to be devoutly religious or scenes where the father of the household seemingly forces his daughter to be betrothed to someone she does not love. Though readers see Tartuffe trusting Orgon’s apparently unalterable trust in him, “he may also rely on quick thinking and pious banalities to extricate him from an embarrassing situations” (Bermel, Moliere’s Theatrical Bounty 165). These and other moments when character’s actions contradict their supposed beliefs lead to the play “centering around the confusion of appearances and reality which forms the basis of religious hypocrisy” (McBride 31). Scholars remain divided over the intentions behind Tartuffe’s embodiment of a religious hypocrite. Throughout Tartuffe, Molière represents the religious hypocrite less as a means to directly criticize religion and more as a way to attack self-deception and meaningless piety.