The Sceptical Vision of Moliere: A Study in Paradox

Abstract

The Sceptical Vision of Moliere: A Study in Paradox affords a jud icious and illuminating survey of traditional and recent trends in Moliere criticism, and uses them as a springboard to setting Moliere’s ‘problem’ plays in the context of the prevalent morale of the playwright’s time. Too often the philosophic components consist of the extensive use of apt quotations from such as Gassendi, Montaigne, and La Mothe Ie Vayer without any very rigorous application to the plays in question. McBride is at his best when he steps away from the history of ideas and focuses on what, for want of a better term, could be described as New Critical analysis of the ‘internal coherent structure’ of the plays: their suggestive juxtaposition of absolutists and raisonneurs in the Molieresque moral dialectic; the linguistic games subtending the doubleness of the comic vision; and Moliere’s dual role as actor on the scene and playwright behind.