Corneille's Trols Discours: A Reader's Guide

Abstract

Unlike the majority of his contemporaries who wrote treatises on drama theory, Pierre Corneille claimed not to believe in the necessity of a moral message in the theatre. This study suggests that Corneille did indeed have a didactic goal, but a rather original one: he forces the spectator or reader to judge the heroes of his plays in terms of their service to society.While Corneille obliges the audience to take on the responsibility of defining the hero, he also places himself and the audience in a similar relationship of performance and judgment in Les Trois Discours. The writer is a virtuoso performer who enumerates the ways in which a play might teach a moral lesson, only to undermine the didactic value of the reward of virtue and punishment of vice and of the moralistic conception of catharsis. Corneille dissects and then reconstructs such fundamental notions as vraisemblance and bienseance, showing how his colleagues’treatment of them is rigid and limiting. Corneille is the poet of flexibility: with supple arguments, he manipulates his audience into not simply reaction, but active analysis of the characters’behaviour, thereby engendering conflicting interpretations of his work, which continues to inspire controversy today.