Le théâtre de Mme de Genlis. Une morale chrétienne sécuralisée

Abstract

Madame de Genlis'S theatre : A secularised Christian morality. The varied plays in Madame de Genlis's Théâtre d'éducation à l'usage des jeunes personnes and the Théâtre de société (1779 to 1785), have an apparently not very original unifying moral plan. They criticize pride, vanity, laziness, idle talk, calumny, and praise charity, courage and temperance. But its historical context dates this transformed Christian morality ; it is socially justified, as it preserves the harmony between man and the external world from which the individual cannot isolate himself. Once she has established the secularisation of morality and the laws of balance, Mme de Genlis can draw a series of portraits according to the theatre of conditions. Her moral vision, founded on harmony, virtue (the guarantee of individual and collective happiness) and the practice of charity, finds its aesthetic expression in the conception of edifying theatre, the representation and guarantee of a new world.