Molière's "Dom Juan": Form, Meaning, Audience

Abstract

One way of looking at Moliere's great comedies is to see them as representations of a conflict between the normal world and a major character with one exaggerated trait. In Dom Juan ou le festin de pierre, this trait is a complex one: it is the assertion of absolute freedom for the self.' The work as it unfolds depends for its effect on the spectator's need for personal freedom. A spectator with no such imperious need might respond to the play as an exercise in folklore motifs K1315.8 (Seduction upon false promise of marriage) and A1335.6 (Death as punishment for scorning deity), complicated just enough to lead scholars astray by C744 (The tabu against accepting an invitation).2 But Le Festin de pierre is not a morality play worked up from folklore. It is more like a problem comedy. The protagonist's drive for limitless personal freedom propels him through a society, or a stage, which has an imperious need for order and limit. The main problem is that Moliere-typically-refuses to treat this tragic conflict tragically, and this in turn raises difficult problems of meaning and value. Every episode in this episodically but coherently structured play reveals another aspect of Don Juan's will to freedom and the increasingly intense conflict of that will with the world. To schematize:3