Tartuffe is all about class, religion, hypocrisy, and politics. As a comedy, it ends on a positive note, but the issues it tackles are serious and in fact landed the playwright in trouble. Tartuffe had to fight in order to be seen, having been censured by Louis XIV after its original debut in 1664. Read these petitions to find out more about what Moliere had to go through to get his play onto the stage. Can you imagine any contemporary analogs in terms of the play's themes or in terms of the issue of censorship?
The version that we are reading by Richard Wilbur utilizes rhyming couplets and a ten-syllable line or pentameter. The original French is a rhyming couplet in a twelve-syllable line or alexandrine. It's of course extremely difficult to translate rhyme out of another language, and not every translator of Tartuffe has made the attempt. Some have chosen other forms. Consider this translation by Curtis Hidden Page from 1907. Which do you prefer?
"Were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world." - Moby-Dick (Chase - The Third Day)
Prof. Michael R. Broek
About Michael
- Michael Broek
- is an Assistant Professor of English at Brookdale Community College. He is currently completing his Ph.D in American Literature at the University of Essex (UK). His thesis/dissertation concerns issues of aesthetics, nationalism, and the works of Hawthorne and Melville. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Goddard College, and his work has been published in journals such as The Cimarron Review, The Sycamore Review, The Clackamas Review, Sundog, Slipstream, 42opus, The Paterson Literary Review, Fourteen Hills, and elsewhere in print and online. He is the recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts.
Schedule: World Literature II
World Literature II
Schedule
Week I- Introduction/Literary History Tour (Enlightenment Rationalism, Romanticism, Modernism, Post-Modernism)
Week 2: A New Way of Thinking - Descartes: Cogito Ergo Sum; Leibniz: From Theodicy; and Voltaire: Candide, Part 1
Week 3: Satire and the Limits of Rationalism - Franklin: "A Witch Trial at Mount Holly"; Jefferson: "Notes on the State of Virgina"; Sift: "A Modest Proposal"; Voltaire: Candide, Part 2
Week 4: Art's Resistance to Nationalism - Marx's Communist Manifesto, Chap. 1, Dostoevsky: “The Grand Inquisitor” (541-556); Neruda, "I'm Explaining a Few Things,"; Taha Muhammad Ali: "Revenge"; Martin Espada: "Alabanza"; Adrienne Rich: "Diving Into the Wreck"; Chika Sagawa: "Backside"
Week 5: I'd Prefer Not To - Melville: "Bartleby the Scrivener";
Week 6: People Don't Do Such Things - Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and An Enemy of the People; Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus";
Week 7: Slipping On Bananas - Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape; Camus' "The Guest"; William Butler Years: "Leda and the Swan"; Lucille Clifton: "Leda (1, 2, 3); W.H. Auden: "Musee des Beaux Arts"; William Carlos Williams: "Landscape With the Fall of Icarus"; Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons;
Week 8: Jorge Luis Borge - "The Garden of Forking Paths"; Ernest Hemingway: "Hills Like White Elephants"
Week 9: Naguib Mahfouz -
Week 10: Jose Saramago -
Week 11: Wole Soyinka -
Week 12: James Joyce -
Week 13: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
Week 14: Franz Kafka
Schedule
Week I- Introduction/Literary History Tour (Enlightenment Rationalism, Romanticism, Modernism, Post-Modernism)
Week 2: A New Way of Thinking - Descartes: Cogito Ergo Sum; Leibniz: From Theodicy; and Voltaire: Candide, Part 1
Week 3: Satire and the Limits of Rationalism - Franklin: "A Witch Trial at Mount Holly"; Jefferson: "Notes on the State of Virgina"; Sift: "A Modest Proposal"; Voltaire: Candide, Part 2
Week 4: Art's Resistance to Nationalism - Marx's Communist Manifesto, Chap. 1, Dostoevsky: “The Grand Inquisitor” (541-556); Neruda, "I'm Explaining a Few Things,"; Taha Muhammad Ali: "Revenge"; Martin Espada: "Alabanza"; Adrienne Rich: "Diving Into the Wreck"; Chika Sagawa: "Backside"
Week 5: I'd Prefer Not To - Melville: "Bartleby the Scrivener";
Week 6: People Don't Do Such Things - Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and An Enemy of the People; Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus";
Week 7: Slipping On Bananas - Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape; Camus' "The Guest"; William Butler Years: "Leda and the Swan"; Lucille Clifton: "Leda (1, 2, 3); W.H. Auden: "Musee des Beaux Arts"; William Carlos Williams: "Landscape With the Fall of Icarus"; Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons;
Week 8: Jorge Luis Borge - "The Garden of Forking Paths"; Ernest Hemingway: "Hills Like White Elephants"
Week 9: Naguib Mahfouz -
Week 10: Jose Saramago -
Week 11: Wole Soyinka -
Week 12: James Joyce -
Week 13: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
Week 14: Franz Kafka
10 comments:
I enjoyed Tartuffe more than Candide, but am a bit confused as to what the message is here. Is Orgon's obsession with Tartuffe supposed to be a jab at religious obsession? I did some research on the play and supposedly the Roman Catholic Church was offended by it when it was performed in the 1600s so am I on the right track here?
Absolutely. Though also religious hypocrisy and the abuses within the church. More later.
Heres what I thought of Moliere
--I
-- I
-- I
-- I
-- I
---- I
I
I
It started off a little slow, then i could not put it down. But the end was way to blah for me, such a great build up then it just gets resolved so quickly...to quickly. I wanted a more sad pessimistic ending for this. It did have my attention though, i just was not crazy about the ending, i think it ruined the book.
Hmm, ok, my little chart did not turn out as planed...
The ending is really a deus ex machina - a god out of the machine. It doesn't really make sense, but this takes me to my second post on Moliere. The Catholic church in France had the play banned, but Moliere was working for King Louis XIV. If he could show that the king possessed a sense of reason and justice, then Moliere could overcome the objections of the church and convince the king to allow the play to be produced. So, the weird and seemingly out-of-place ending of the play is really a way of Moliere reaffirming the righteous qualities of his boss, and therefore getting to stage Tartuffe. It may be unsatisfactory, but then I wouldn't want to spend time in the Bastille either.
So, Moliere conformed to the machine with his sappy ending to allow it to be played? Now that you say that I kinda like the ending, its such a obvious suck up ending, after i finished it i did think, wow what a great king, almost too great...
What was the ending before the play was banned?
If you clink on the title of the post - "Moliere" - it will take you to the three letters or petitions that Moliere wrote to the king to convince him to allow the play to be performed. I believe the ending is original, but the church convinced the king to have it banned because the play seemed to suggest that the church itself was hypocritical. So the king bowed to pressure and had it banned, but Moliere convinced him to change his mind.
yea i can agree with jacques here once again it was good reading but it almost felt like someone got tired fo writing it at the end and wanted to wrap it up, it could have gone on a bit longer i would have liked to read more. It's like, ok this is getting good now i want to see how it ends and the screen turns black on a movie and says they lived happily ever after-goodbye.
i actually enjoyed this book, but i can see where the church during that time could have taken parts of it offensivly. I think the original ending, whatever it was would probably have been better fit then the ending in the book. As most of you probably no reading these sorts of books isnt my forte, but this one i felt was bearable especially after being in france and the palace, i felt like i new what was going on at that time.
Regarding the ending of the story, it reveals how Moliere catered to part of his audience (the king) to get his story told. The king is portrayed as this all knowing, compassionate, very intelligent and noble highness. Moliere thus catered to the king’s vanity and arrogance to get the approval to publish the play. I wonder how the play had originally ended before Moliere caved in…
Post a Comment