The general aim of this book is to present a study of a dramatic genre which was a significant facet of French drama in the period from 1784 to 1834 and has never before been singled out or analyzed. The striking feature of the plays of this genre is that the protagonists represent French literary figures. A casual examination of a collection of late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century plays, many of which concern literary figures, led to the initial idea for this study. Conscientious cross-checking was sub sequently done in a number of reference works and contemporary newspapers to obtain complete coverage and to draw up a list of all the plays in which French literary figures appeared as characters. From the total number of such plays, 153 have been used as the primary source of information. They were found scattered either in different collections or as separate copies in various libraries. This source has been supplemented by use of theatrical journals and almanacs giving reviews of some of the plays which were not published.

The general aim of this book is to present a study of a dramatic genre which was a significant facet of French drama in the period from 1784 to 1834 and has never before been singled out or analyzed. The striking feature of the plays of this genre is that the protagonists represent French literary figures. A casual examination of a collection of late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century plays, many of which concern literary figures, led to the initial idea for this study. Conscientious cross-checking was sub sequently done in a number of reference works and contemporary newspapers to obtain complete coverage and to draw up a list of all the plays in which French literary figures appeared as characters. From the total number of such plays, 153 have been used as the primary source of information. They were found scattered either in different collections or as separate copies in various libraries. This source has been supplemented by use of theatrical journals and almanacs giving reviews of some of the plays which were not published.

Richard A. Brooks, general editor, v.

It does not treat Romanticism as a limited "period" dominated by some construed singular master-ethos or dialectic; rather, it follows the literary patterns and dynamics of Romanticism as a flow of interactive currents across geocultural frontiers

Filling a critical void, this book examines French women dramatists of the nineteenth-century who staged works prior to the lifting of censorship laws in 1864. Though none staged overtly feminist drama, Sophie de Bawr, Sophie Gay, Virginie Ancelot, and Delphine Girardin questioned patriarchal dominance and reconstructed ideals of womanhood.

From 1680 until the French Revolution, when legislation abolished restrictions on theatrical enterprise, a single theatre held sole proprietorship of Molière’s works. After 1791, his plays were performed in new theatres all over Paris by new actors, before audiences new to his works. Both his plays and his image took on new dimensions. In Molière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife, Mechele Leon convincingly demonstrates how revolutionaries challenged the ties that bound this preeminent seventeenth-century comic playwright to the Old Regime and provided him with a place of honor in the nation’s new cultural memory. Leon begins by analyzing the performance of Molière’s plays during the Revolution, showing how his privileged position as royal servant was disrupted by the practical conditions of the revolutionary theatre. Next she explores Molière’s relationship to Louis XIV, Tartuffe, and the social function of his comedy, using Rousseau’s famous critique of Molière as well as appropriations of George Dandin in revolutionary iconography to discuss how Moliérean laughter was retooled to serve republican interests. After examining the profusion of plays dealing with his life in the latter years of the Revolution, she looks at the exhumation of his remains and their reentombment as the tangible manifestation of his passage from Ancien Régime favorite to new national icon. The great Molière is appreciated by theatre artists and audiences worldwide, but for the French people it is no exaggeration to say that the Father of French Comedy is part of their national soul. By showing how he was represented, reborn, and reburied in the new France—how the revolutionaries asserted his relevance for their tumultuous time in ways that were audacious, irreverent, imaginative, and extreme—Leon clarifies the important role of theatrical figures in preserving and portraying a nation’s history.