Molière (Vol. 64) - Richard Maber (essay date 1994)
Richard Maber (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: “Molière's Bawdy,” in Nottingham French Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, 1994, pp. 124-32.
[In this essay, Maber traces the sexual humor throughout Molière's works, distinguishing playwright's use of bawdy, a broad, obvious form of comedy, from his use of subtle double entendre, which requires some complicity from the audience for the humor to be realized.]
Molière is one of the most accessible of all French writers, and arguably the most universal in his appeal; and yet at the same time he is one of the most elusive. From his own lifetime to the present day, he has been the subject of a great diversity of interpretations, of his own complex and multi-faceted personality as a man as much as his intentions as an author; and the same diversity of interpretation has of course always been brought to the performance of the plays.
The title of this paper is a deliberate echo of Eric Partridge's...
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