Molière wrote, directed, and starred in comedies for public and court audiences in 17th-century France. He is perennially successful, but perennially subject to critical controversy: do his plays aim to do more than make audiences laugh? This book focuses on a group of characters in the plays, the interpretation of whose role lies at the heart of any answer to this question. For over a century critics have called them raisonneurs. They are characters who engage with some of Molière's most foolish protagonists, but they have been variously interpreted as either exponents of wisdom or as bores w ... More

Molière wrote, directed, and starred in comedies for public and court audiences in 17th-century France. He is perennially successful, but perennially subject to critical controversy: do his plays aim to do more than make audiences laugh? This book focuses on a group of characters in the plays, the interpretation of whose role lies at the heart of any answer to this question. For over a century critics have called them raisonneurs. They are characters who engage with some of Molière's most foolish protagonists, but they have been variously interpreted as either exponents of wisdom or as bores who are subject to ridicule. This book argues that new light can be shed on the words and actions of these characters, and on the tenor of the plays as a whole by detailed contextual analysis of the structures of dramaturgy and comedy in which they are deployed. They emerge neither as the mouthpieces of common sense nor as pompous fools, but as thoughtful, witty, and resourceful friends of the foolish protagonists whom Molière himself played. The book takes into account what is known of the performance styles of Molière's troupe of actors as well as engaging closely with the text of the plays and the critical debate to date. Some of Molière's most teasingly problematic plays are held up to fresh scrutiny, including L'Ecole des femmes, Le Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, and Le Malade imaginaire.