Des Lumières à la Contre-Révolution : un drame écartelé, la Mélanie de La Harpe

Abstract

From Enlightenment to Counter-revolution : Contradictions in the Structure of La Harpe's " Mélanie ". Mélanie, La Harpe's version of la Religieuse, was perhaps the literary event of 1770. It reads like an explicit attack on enforced vows, and monastic vows in general. But it also expresses, implicitly, the struggle of a particular rising social group, the ' noblesse de robe against its own guilty conscience. This play, impossible to stage under the Ancien Régime, had difficulty in achieving the success which the Revolution seemed to offer it ; in 1791-92 the violent acting of Monvel could not disguise its ideological timidity. In 1802, La Harpe, now reactionary and religious, rewrote his play. He replaced its social tragedy by an existential tragedy, and Mélanie finally found, in the Counter-Revolution, a coherence which the Enlightenment had been unable to give it.