Tag Archives: archetypes

Misers in Literature

22 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in archetypes, Comedy

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The Miser by Hendrick Gerritsz Pot, Uffizi Gallery (Wikimedia Commons)

The Wealthy and the Miser

In literature, miserliness is not necessarily associated with considerable wealth. Misers are persons who feel comforted by their money and may enter into a fit of rage or collapse when they lose money. For Molière‘s Harpagon, a literary miser featured in L’Avare, money is as dear to him as his very life. In other words, for Harpagon, Molière’s miser, money is no less than Shylock’s “pound of flesh.” In comedies, miserliness may be an obstacle to a young couple’s mariage.

Molière’s Harpagon is a fine example of literary miserliness, but as a blocking character he is not boastful, which is the case with L’École des femmes‘ Arnolphe, who is certain he will never be un cocu, cuckolded, and Tartuffe’s Orgon, who can be tyrannical with impunity. Tartuffe takes sin out of sinning. Pantalone is the miser of the commedia dell’arte and he is also boastful, which leads to ridicule, the worst of fate.

L’Avare: in a Nutshell

  • Harpagon: the miser
  • Anselme: an older gentleman
  • Élise and Cléante: Harpagon’s children
  • Mariane and Valère: Anselme’s children

But let us return to Molière’s Miser. Harpagon is a blocking character and greed is the flaw that jeopardizes the marriage of the young lovers: two couples. Molière’s miser does not want to give a dowry to his daughter Élise. He wishes to marry her to a person who will take her without the usual dowry. Anselme, a fine gentleman, will marry her “sans dot” (without a dowry). Very few men married women who did not bring a dowry. As for his son, Cléante, Harpagon would like him to marry a widow. In 17th-century France, widows had a freedom and privileges daughters or married women did not enjoy. Widows had money, their dowry, but also wealth inherited from their deceased spouse. They could choose their second spouse or choose not to marry. A widow would be a perfect spouse for Cléante. She would look after him.

Élise’s friend Valère hopes to find his father, in which case he would be rich. A kind destiny may save him. Anselme is Valère’s father. In theory, his father drowned. As for Cléante, he hopes to be able to live elsewhere with Mariane, whom his father wants to marry. It will turn out that Mariane is Anselme‘s daughter who will ensure she marries Cléante. In other words, there an anagnorisis (a discovery) which will save both Valère (Élise) and Mariane (Cléante). Anselme is the father Valère is looking for and Mariane’s father. As for Harpagon, he will think he has lost a buried treasure, but it is concealed, not stolen. Cléante’s valet La Flèche has found it and confiscated it. When Harpagon is reunited with his treasure, a cassette reminiscent of Orgon’s cassette (Tartuffe), he is delighted and abandons plans to marry.

In short, when it is proven that Anselme is Valère’s father as well as Mariane’s father and Mariane’s mother’s husband, the young couples may marry. There is sufficient money. Anselme will pay for all expenses. Besides, he has found his wife, whom he thought had drowned.

We will continue and perhaps finish looking at L’Avare in my next post.

gilbert-shylock

Shylock after the Trial, Sir John Gilbert (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Predecessors and Descendants of Molière’s L’Avare

  • Shylock (The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare) & predecessors
  • Séraphin (Un Homme et son péché by Claude-Henri Grignon)
  • Gesta Romanorum, Il Peconore, The Orator 

My last post was about Molière’s Miser‘s ancestry. Molière’s L’Avare (The Miser) (1658) is rooted in Roman playwright Plautus’ Aululuria, The Pot of Gold.  In the commedia dell’arte, Pantalone is the miser. However in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (1596-1599),  we meet Shylock, the Jewish money-lender and miser. Among works preceding Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and Molière’s L’Avare, we should also mention Il Peconore, a collection of short stories by Giovanni Fiorentino (1378), published in Milan in 1558, and the Gesta Romanorum, a collection of Latin tales dating back to the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th century, one of which, the three caskets, inspired Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and The Orator, a tale or novella by Alexandre Sylvane, published in 1558 by Lodovico Domenichi and published in an English translation by William Painter, in 1596. (See Sources, The Merchant of Venice, Wikipedia.)

Literature has other misers closer to us. Scrooge, the protagonist of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) is a miser. The miser also inhabits fables.[1] “A Beirut Maronite (a Roman Catholic following the Syrio-Antiochene rite, widespread in the area), Mārūn al Naqqāsh (died 1855), who knew French and Italian as well as Arabic and Turkish, adapted  Molière’s  L’Avare (“The Miser”) and presented it on a makeshift stage in Beirut in 1848.”[2]

In 1933, Claude Henri Grignon (8 July 1894 – 3 April 1976), a French-Canadian writer, journalist and politician, wrote a novel entitled Un Homme et son péché. The novel grew into one of the most popular Quebec radio serials, Un Homme et son péché. Later, it became a very successful television serial, entitled Les Belles Histoires des pays d’en haut (en haut is north). The musical theme of the television serial was a movement from Glazunov‘s Seasons: Autumn, Petit Adagio. Claude-Henri Grignon’s Un Homme et son péché also inspired a film: Séraphin: Heart of Stone, 2002.

shakespeares_heroines_-_jessica

Jessica, The Merchant of Venice by Luke Fildes

Conclusion

Literature has types, prototypes and archetypes (see Jungian archetypes, Wikipedia). These figures are universal and describe, in an intensive way, very real persons. One of Honoré de Balzac‘s Comédie humaine characters is Eugénie Grandet, a miser. The literary depiction of characters, or types, is rooted in Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BCE) who inspired La Bruyère (16 August 1645 – 11 May 1696), the author of Les Caractères (1688). Playwrights and writers, fabulists, in particular, have often depicted misers, occurrences of intertextuality. Misers usually meet with a sorry end, but Molière’s L’Avare doesn’t.

Love to everyone ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

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[1] La Fontaine, L’Avare qui a perdu son trésor, The Miser who had lost his Treasure (1[IV, 20]);  Le Savetier et le Financier, The Cobbler and the Financier (2.[VIII, 2])
[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Islamic-arts/Dance-and-theatre

—ooo—

François Couperin 3/3, Le Charme-L’Enjouement, Watteau

avarebnf_jpeg_jpeg

© Micheline Walker
22 November 2016
(Revised 23 November 2016)
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Molière: Farces and “Grandes Comédies”

08 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in Comedy, Commedia dell'arte, France, French Literature, Italy, Molière

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162276393

Molière and Pierre Corneille or A Collaboration by Jean-Léon Gérôme (Wikiart.org.)

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Le Misanthrope

Farces and Comedies

  • Farces & grandes comédies
  • Commedia dell’arte
  • Atellane Farce

Getty Images has a fine selection of prints featuring farceurs. Farceurs are comédiens who are featured in burlesque plays. Molière was called the “premier farceur de France.” The farce is a comic genre in which the tables are turned on a person or persons. Molière’s Précieuses ridicules (18 November 1659) is a farce. Farces are short plays, one to three acts, and Molière’s used prose instead of verses (12-syllable alexandrins). Molière wrote both farces and “grandes comédies.” Grandes comédies are five-act plays and are usually written using alexandrins.

During the years he spent touring the provinces, we assume Molière’s troupe (his company) performed several farces. At any rate, we have no text of plays produced in the provinces, with the possible exception of one farce La Jalousie du barbouillé. A barbouillé is someone whose face is smeared.

Farce is an old genre, going back to the Atellane Farce/Fable, called Fabulae atelanae in Latin. These farces contain some of the masks of the Commedia dell’arte, a product of 16th-century Italy. Italian comedians were given sketches or scenarios and improvised on these canevas. Troupes were poor and had to make do with costumes only, rather than elaborate stagecraft, such as machines. Some farceurs, however, were supported by noblemen during carnivals such as the Carnival of Venice. Carnival season ended with Mardi Gras, the day before Lent began, Ash Wednesday.

The Commedia dell’arte features types or masks as characters. Pantalone was always a jealous older man and jealousy is the main ‘sin’ in Molière comedies. It’s a terrible sin because through one’s own behaviour one alienates the person one loves. Molière’s finest play on this subject is L’École des femmes, The School for Wives (26 December 1662). It created a controversy.

The Italians always played the same role.  The blocking character, the character hindering the innamorati‘s marriage, coud be Pantalone, Il Dottore, Il Capitano, etc. Their roles were functions, or masks, in which they followed in the footsteps of the oldest comédiens, Attic (Greek) comedy and ancient rituals. These functions are often called archetypes. (See Northrop Frye, Sources and Resources).

Les Italiens

As a child, Molière (1622 – 1673) was influenced by Italian comedy. The Italians performed at the Pont-Neuf (still standing and called the Pont-Neuf [the new bridge]).

Biographical Notes

Molière, né Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, lived in an affluent area of Paris, rue Saint-Honoré, where Madeleine de Scudéry‘s salon was located. He studied at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont, now the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and also studied law, but may not have completed his degree.

Molière’s father, Jean Poquelin, had bought a position from Louis XIII in 1631. It should have provided Molière with a good income. In 1641, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin became “valent of the King’s chamber and keeper of carpets and upholstery” (“valet de chambre ordinaire et tapissier du roi”), but in 1643, he founded l’Illustre Théâtre with Madeleine Béjart. The troupe went bankrupt and Molière was jailed, briefly. After his release, he and his comédiens left Paris.

Upon his return to Paris, Molière had a successful but relatively short career, about fifteen years. On 17 February 1673, while playing Argan, the Imaginary Invalid, Molière collapsed. He remained on stage performing his role, but died shortly after the comedy was over. The Imaginary Invalid is a three-act comédie-ballet, set to music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and choreographed by Pierre Beauchamp.

Medieval Farces

Farces were common entertainment during the Middle Ages. They were performed to amuse spectators between scenes during long plays, such as Passion plays. Passion plays were reenactments of the Passion of Christ. These lasted for days and farces provided the “comic relief.” Passion plays have survived. The most acclaimed has been performed at Oberammergau (Bavaria), since 1634.

Pathelin

La Farce de Maître Pathelin, court scene (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The Medieval Farce: La Farce de Maître Pathelin

The most famous French medieval farce is La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin, The Farce of Master Pierre Pathelin (1457). We do not know the name of its author, but the farce features a legal battle. Maître is the title given lawyers. A lawyer, Maître Pathelin, has purchased fabric on credit from a clothier named Guillaume Joceaulme. Pierre Pathelin is hired to defend a shepherd named Thibaut l’Aignelet (from agneau, sheep) who stands accused of stealing a sheep (un agneau) from the cloth merchant.

In previous centuries, lawyers had not been trained, but they now learned their profession. Consequently, Maître Pierre Pathelin had fewer and fewer customers, so there were holes in his clothes and in wife Guillemette’s clothes. His not having money explains why he has bought fabric on credit. When the cloth merchant comes to his house to be paid, Pathelin make believe he is sick to escape paying.

During the trial, Guillaume Joceaulme, the cloth merchant, recognizes Maître Pathelin. So the trial takes on new dimensions. Pathelin has instructed his client to say nothing but  “Baaa” when he is asked a question, which he does. Pathelin rules against Joceaulme because of the incoherence the case presents. When Maître Pathelin asks to be paid, Thibault l’Aignelet does as he was told. He says “Baaa.” Consequently, Pathelin is “hoisted with his own petard” (trompeur trompé) as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin was so famous that speakers of French still say  “Revenons à nos moutons,” (Let’s get back to our sheep, i.e. Let’s get back to our topic) when the conversation is drifting to another topic.

The French farce is therefore rooted in the medieval French farces (entertainment between scenes) and in the irreverent fabliau. But it also borrows from the commedia dell’arte, Latin comedy (Plautus and Terrence), the farces of Antiquity and Greek comedy. Molière had to write down his comedies, beginning with Les Précieuses ridicules (18 November 1659) to avoid theft of his material. But when he was touring in the provinces, members of his troupe would write their part using a canevas, a sketch (see Commedia dell’arte).

The picture below depicts French as well as Italian “masks.” Molière is at the far left (brown clothes). Jodelet, who performed in the Précieuses ridicules, is standing next to him.

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Les Farceurs, French and Italian (1670)

Conclusion

Molière did not write comedies in a void. There is a context, such as the Commedia dell’arte, salons, préciosité, l’honnête homme, la galanterie… 

I will be sharing my book with you as I did in my last post. The subject, Molière’s comedies, is not obscure and I would prefer not to stay away from my weblog for long periods. I am writing the book itself in French, but the posts will be in English and brief, yet complete. Molière’s plays are online publications, which is very useful. We also have images and music.

Although my book refers to La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin, no detail is given. But it is part of the material Molière inherited.

Love to everyone. ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Le Malade imaginaire de Molière
http://www.simphonie-du-marais.org/ch…

Madeleine Béjart, in the Précieuses ridicules (Wikipedia)

© Micheline Walker
8 May 2016
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Molière’s Tartuffe & Northrop Frye

21 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Art, Canada, Comedy, Literature

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Elmire, by Tammy Grimes http://shop.broadwaydesignexchange.com/TAMMY-GRIMES-AS-ELMIRE-IN-TARTUFFE-Costume-by-Zack-Brown-00019-04-00016.htm
Elmire, Tartuffe, by Tammy Grimes, 1977; costume by Zack Brown

This post is based on an article originally posted on 7 January 2012. In its earlier version, it had to do with Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.[i] However, I used Molière‘s Le Tartuffe as an example. This time, the emphasis is on Molière’s Tartuffe. 

Northrop Frye: a Conceptual Framework

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays was published by Northrop Frye in 1957. In his Polemical Introduction, Frye emphasizes the importance of approaching literature with “a conceptual framework,”[ii] so one can uncover a literary work’s organizing principles. In this regard, Frye refers to Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 BCE). However, he also reveals archetypes shared by comedy from the plays of Greek dramatists Aristophanes (c. 446 BCE – c.386 BCE) and Menander c. 341/92 BCE – c. 290 BCE) to Beaumarchais. (See list Greek dramatists in  Ancient Greek Comedy, Wikipedia.)

Comedy: the characters as “archetypes”

Frye describes comedy as we know it. It is a genre where a young couple, or young couples, have to overcome obstacles, in order to marry. They are usually opposed by a pater familias, descendent of the heavy father of Roman New Comedy[iii] (Plautus [c. 254 –184 BCE] and Terence [195/185 –159 BCE]), to the more buffoon-like stock characters of the commedia dell’arte. Usually the young lovers (Mariane and Valère) are helped by servants, suivant-e-s, valets, confident-e-s,[iv] friends, siblings, a mother (Elmire) or, at times, an avuncular (good uncle) figure such as Le Tartuffe‘s Cléante. (Le Tartuffe or  Tartuffe is the title of the play and Tartuffe, the name of the impostor who goes to prison at the end of the play). In Le Tartuffe, we have a complete cast.

The Plot: all’s well that ends well

Comedy has its archetypal figures and it is an “all’s-well-that-ends-well” narrative, but theories can be reductive. No two trees are alike. Therefore, although we require “a conceptual framework,” the goal is not merely to state that an author is using or not using a customary narrative and archetypal figures. In the case of Le Tartuffe, the impostor feigns devotion, yet covets Orgon’s wife and is also in possession of incriminating information. In such circumstances, dramatists may use a deus ex machina to bring about the traditional happy ending of comedy. Therefore, Le Tartuffe is both the same as other comedies and unique.

Molière’s Le Tartuffe: the hypocrite

A play-within-a-play: the discovery

For instance, in Molière’s Le Tartuffe, Tartuffe who feigns piety, has so bewitched a vulnerable Orgon, the heavy father, that members of his family have to put on a little play-within-the-play to show Orgon, the comedy’s father, that Tartuffe is a hypocrite and that, far from turning his back on the pleasures of the flesh, he is “gros et gras” (“big and fat;” Act I, sc. iv) and wants to seduce Orgon’s wife, and nearly succeeds.

Hidden under a table, Orgon, the pater familias is made to see Tartuffe trying to seduce his wife and realizes, too late, that he has been fooled. Orgon’s daughter will not have to marry Tartuffe, but Orgon cannot get rid of the impostor, because Tartuffe is privy to knowledge that could cause Orgon to be thrown in jail.

Tartuffe dans la pièce du même nom de Molière. Gouache (XVIIIe siècle) de Fesch et Whirsker. Archives Larbor

Tartuffe dans la pièce du même nom de Molière. Gouache (XVIIIe siècle) de Fesch et Whirsker. (Photo credit: Larousse)

 (Please click on the images in order to enlarge them.)

Monsieur Loyal, Edmond Geffroy

Monsieur Loyal, by Edmond Geffroy

The Deus ex machina or divine intervention

At the beginning of Act V, sc. iv, a huissier (a bailiff), Monsieur Loyal, depicted above, comes to notify Orgon that Tartuffe now owns Orgon’s house. Fortunately, given the conventions of comedy, the family will be saved. An exempt, or deus ex machina, arrives just in time, an instance of kairos* (the right timing) and an element of fairy tales, to tell the family that Tartuffe is a villain who will be thrown in jail. Orgon is saved by an insightful “Prince.”

*For the Greeks of Antiquity, time was kairos (the moment; vertical),
chronos (the duration; horizontal),
and aeon (eternity).
 

Therefore, Tartuffe is a play where characters favouring the traditional marriage of comedy have very little power. It is therefore a problematical play because it stretches the “all’s-well-that-ends-well” to its limits. Molière wrote several problematical plays. In the “Figaro trilogy,” Figaro can oust Bégearss, but Tartuffe owns Orgon’s House. There is no salvation from within the comedy itself, yet comedies have a happy ending. The young couple, Orgon’s daughter Mariane and Valère, must be free to marry.

The Pharmakos

Northrop Frye writes that “[t]he pharmakos is neither innocent nor guilty.”[v] Pharmakos is the Greek word for “scapegoat.” In Ancient Greece, the pharmakos was often sacrificed. In Molière’s Le Tartuffe, the pharmakos is not sacrificed, but he is vilified, although he is not entirely to blame. In Le Tartuffe, the villain has been empowered by Orgon, the father in the comedy. Orgon has let himself be blinded by his own needs. Therefore, the removal of the pharmakos is somewhat ritualistic. Tartuffe is a scapegoat.

In fact, there is nothing pious about Tartuffe, except in Orgon’s eyes and in the eyes of Orgon’s mother, Madame Pernelle. If everyone else sees Tartuffe as he is, Orgon is in dire need of Tartuffe. Tartuffe can lift (lever) sins away. What he says to Elmire, who does not want to sin by making love with Tartuffe, is evidence of seventeenth-century Jesuit casuistry (see Casuistry, or how to sin without sinning).

Si ce n’est que le Ciel qu’à mes vœux l’on oppose,
Lever un tel obstacle est à moi peu de chose,
Et cela ne doit pas retenir votre cœur.
 
If it’s only God that opposes my desire,
I’ll think up a way to make him conspire,
And that need not restrain your heart, my dear
(Act IV, sc. v)
 

Casuistry

Since he can make arrangements with God, Tartuffe allows Orgon to be tyrannical with impunity. Orgon’s family convinces the pater familias to hide under the table so he can hear and see his “frère,” as he calls Tartuffe, attempt to seduce his wife Elmire. So Orgon crouches under the table shielded by the tablecloth, a makeshift curtain, and, to his profound dismay, he learns the truth. He is so surprised that he has difficuty rescuing his poor wife.

Orgon has therefore learned the truth, but too late. Monsieur Loyal, beautifully depicted by Edmond Geffroy (20 July 1804 – 1895), an artist, actor, and member (sociétaire) of the Comédie-Française, is at the door ready to collect all of Orgon’s possessions Tartuffe has appropriated. Fortunately, a “Prince,” has seen the truth so Tartuffe, not Orgon, is arrested by l’Exempt. This allows members of Orgon’s family and servants (zanni) to be reunited at the end of the play.

Scene from Tartuffe Jacobus Buys

Scene from Tartuffe, by
Jacobus Buys (Photo credit: Google images)

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Sources and Resources

Northrop Frye

Northrop Frye, CC, FRSC (14 July 1912 – 23 January 1991) was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec. He was raised in New Brunswick, studied in Toronto (Victoria College, University of Toronto) and at Oxford (Merton College). He became a minister in the United Church, and then spent most of his life teaching at the University of Toronto (Victoria College), where he was an inspiration to his students as he has been to me.

He wrote his thesis on William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827), one of English literature’s most fascinating figures.  Entitled Fearful Symmetry, Frye’s thesis was published in 1947, but he has published numerous other studies, all of which are listed in Wikipedia’s entry on Northrop Frye.

[i] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 1973 [1957]).

[ii] See Commedia dell’arte, Wikipedia.

[iii] “commedia erudita.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 21 Jul. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top/127767/commedia-erudita>.

[iv] Frye, op. cit., p. 15.

[v] Frye, op. cit., p. 41.

Jean-Philippe Rameau – Pièces de clavecin en concert N° 5 (La Forqueray) / Il Giardino Armonico

Elmire & Tartuffe

Elmire & Tartuffe (Photo credit: Googles images)

© Micheline Walker
7 January 2012
WordPress
revised 20 July 2014