Abstract
Molière’s Dom Juan goes beyond surface travesty of the legend to develop its profound comic sense. The hero’s failures in action are farcical; his failures in consciousness are antitragic. Dom Juan limits himself to the sensual perceptions of the present moment, thus becoming incapable of remorse or dread. The obvious presence and the repeated warnings of Divine Providence he ignores or treats with contempt. His willful continuation of a life of error, carried to the point of offering God as a scapegoat for his crimes, cuts him off from his virtuous ancestry and from the possibility of conversion. A series of miracles confirms his rejection of anagnorisis. The catastrophe of Dom Juan’s damnation includes the entire comic vision of the work in a mixture of the burlesque and the grotesque.
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