12. If the function of comedy is to
correct men’s vices, I do not see
why any should be exempt. . . .
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. It is a
vigorous blow to vices to expose
them to public laughter.
- Moliere, preface to Tartuffe
13. Vice Common Sense
Tartuffe Dorine
Orgon Cleante
Elmire Officer (king)
Mariane
Damis
Valere
Mme. Pernelle
15. Who was offended?
• The Catholic hierarchy
• The French aristocracy
• The Company of the Holy
Sacrament (a religious
secret society seeking to
reform French Christianity)
17. "...although it was found to be extremely
diverting, the king recognized so much
conformity between those that a true
devotion leads on the path to heaven and
those that a vain ostentation of some good
works does not prevent from committing
some bad ones, that his extreme delicacy
to religious matters can not suffer this
resemblance of vice to virtue, which
could be mistaken for each other;
although one does not doubt the good
intentions of the author, even so he forbids
it in public, and deprived himself of this
pleasure, in order not to allow it to be
abused by others, less capable of making
a just discernment of it."
King Louis XIV’s
official statement
18. Moliere’s defense
of comedy
The comic is the outward and visible
form that nature's bounty has attached
to everything unreasonable, so that we
should see, and avoid, it. To know the
comic we must know the rational, of
which it denotes the absence and we
must see wherein the rational consists
. . . incongruity is the heart of the
comic . . . it follows that all lying,
disguise, cheating, dissimulation, all
outward show different from the reality,
all contradiction in fact between
actions that proceed from a single
source, all this is in essence comic.
Lettre sur la comédie de l'Imposteur
(1667)
