Les miroirs de Thalie: le théâtre sur le théâtre et la Comédie-Française (1680–1762) by Jeanne-Marie Hostiou

Abstract

Reviewed by: Les miroirs de Thalie: le théâtre sur le théâtre et la Comédie-Française (1680–1762) by Jeanne-Marie Hostiou Logan J. Connors Hostiou, Jeanne-Marie. Les miroirs de Thalie: le théâtre sur le théâtre et la Comédie-Française (1680–1762). Garnier, 2019. ISBN 978-2-406-08177-7. Pp. 870. In this comprehensive history of metatheatricality at the Comédie-Française from 1680 to 1762, Hostiou upends the misconception that France's most prestigious theater performed only lofty tragedies and highbrow comedies. Expanding on Georges Forestier's Théâtre dans le théâtre sur la scène française du XVIIe siècle (1996), which traces the rise of the play-within-a-play, Hostiou tackles a more inclusive corpus of plays "qui parlent du théâtre, à condition qu'elles le fassent explicitement" (12). She combs through hundreds of prologues, one-act comedies, and other performed metatheatrical works to construct a fascinating "histoire alternative du théâtre" (14). By illuminating an eerily (post?)modern world of intertexuality, citation, and ephemerality, Hostiou proves that the theatrical culture at the Comédie-Française was inextricable from French society's most palpable anxieties and vogues. Hostiou's book includes a lengthy critical analysis followed by plot summaries of her corpus plays, bibliographies, and indices. Her analysis is organized into three parts. Part one, "Définitions," is a quantitative and qualitative description of the metatheatrical phenomenon. Hostiou strikes a balance between separating plays into discrete categories (plays about theater professionals; plays about theater's effects; and plays depicting allegorical figures related to theater) and showing the flexibility and the "innommable" (96) quality of her corpus. In "Évolutions," Hostiou provides an analytical chronology of the rise and fall of plays about theater, from the boom associated with post-Molière anxiety at the Comédie-Française, to plays about spats with rival venues such as the Comédie-Italienne and the Fairs, to the decline of performed prologues and the metatheatrical genre as a whole in the 1760s. Hostiou argues that metatheater at the Comédie-Française collapsed because its distancing features were "inconciliable avec l'utopie d'un théâtre qui abolirait les frontières entre la fiction et la vie" (375)—the mission of theater encouraged by Diderot and other Enlightenment philosophes. In "Usages et images," Hostiou performs a series of close readings in which she highlights the phenomenon's most potent themes: authorial self-fashioning, score settling, social critique, publicity, political maneuvering, and more. Any critiques of Hostiou's volume are minor. There are several repetitions and the book can be difficult to search. The chapters are not numbered and many authors and plays are treated in all three parts. Even with Hostiou's helpful indices and lucid prose, her complex thematic approach requires readers to follow the specific logic of her book in order to get a full take on any given play, author, or polemic. This would [End Page 252] be a lot to ask of new students, but perfectly acceptable for more confirmed experts. Hostiou transforms a minor subgenre into proof that the Comédie-Française was a dynamic and inventive institution, not an ossified palace of high art looking backward toward glory. Logan J. Connors University of Miami (FL) Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French