Rivalry and the Disruption of Order in Molière's TheatreMichael S. Koppisch
About the Author:
Michael S. Koppisch is professor of French at Michigan State University. His primary scholarly interest lies in seventeenth-century French literature. The author of The Dissolution of Character: Changing Perspectives in La Bruyère's "Caractères," he co-edited, with James F. Gaines, Approaches to Teaching Molière's "Tartuffe" and Other Plays.
In critical readings of ten of Molière's most important plays, this book argues that a rivalry that endangers order by collapsing differences structures the works and provides a key to their understanding. Rivalry born of desire is at the heart of Molière's major plays, determining how the characters define themselves and relate to each other. In L'Avare, the miserly Harpagon challenges his son for Mariane's hand, and in Amphitryon, even the supreme god, Jupiter, is reduced to competing with a mere mortal. Rivalry drives the action of the plays as characters vie for authority over others. It functions to emphasize differences between characters who attempt to distinguish themselves at the expense of those whom they would dominate. In Molière's theater, that rivalry also takes another turn, for the more characters exaggerate the differences between themselves and others, the more they become exactly like those from whom they intend to separate themselves. In other words, rivalry that stems initially from strongly felt and expressed differences eventuates in sameness. In the end, the identity that rivals share predominates over what makes them different. This perverse leveling of differences threatens order in the plays and must, therefore, be countered. If Molière's comedy has a subversive side, as some critics have maintained, the comic author also understands the utility and, indeed, necessity of social order founded on difference. In this, he is very much a writer of his historical moment, although not one who takes up his pen to defend it. Molière, on the contrary, clearly sees and depicts the flaws of both the defenders and the opponents of order. His theater does not simply mock those who, in one way or another, endanger good order. It shows rather that those who favor the rigidly established order and those whom it unfairly restrains can be equally wrong.ISBN 0-8386-4009-9, Price $43.50
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