Pratiques de l’argument dans le théâtre français des xvie et xviie siècles. Par Sandrine Berrégard

Abstract

‘Dans les ouvrages consacrés au théâtre français’, writes Sandrine Berrégard, ‘les Arguments ne sont presque jamais commentés’ (p. 9). Even when it is roundly acknowledged that paratextual analysis decisively informs our understanding of early modern theatre, it is all too easy to cast aside the ‘Argument’, a summary of the events to come in the play, as a sporadic and unenlightening relic of bygone eras. What the author admirably demonstrates is that, in spite of the lack of modern scholarship on the ‘Argument’, it is a text which ‘ouvre […] la voie à une nouvelle conception du texte dramatique et de sa réalisation scénique’ (p. 396). Through a comprehensive overview of the development of the ‘Argument’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (with its appearances usefully catalogued at the end of the book), Berrégard’s study makes the case for a re-evaluation of its critical and metatextual value. It is first...