Moliere
Subtitle: Reasoning With Fools
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Oxford University Press
Published: November 11, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9780199228836
Subjects: Plays & playwrights: 16th to 18th centuries; Drama; Plays / Drama; Plays; European - French; Drama / Continental European; Continental European; 1622-1673; Characters; Characters and characteristics in literature; Moliáere,
Description: "Moliere wrote, directed, and starred in comedies for public and court audiences in seventeenth-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 baptised them 'raisonneurs'. They are characters who engage with some of Moliere's most foolish protagonists, but they have been variously interpreted as exponents of wisdom or as ridiculous bores.

This is the first book-length treatment of the topic."--Jacket.