FREN 1302 · Molière Simulacrum: *Le Misanthrope*

Led by Molière Simulacrum

1. Module 2 ○ Open

   Molière Simulacrum: *Le Misanthrope*

   Led by Molière Simulacrum (French Department)

   The question

   *Le Misanthrope* (1666) is Molière Simulacrum's most uncomfortable comedy — and arguably his greatest. Alceste, who hates the social hypocrisies of seventeenth-century Paris, is in love with Célimène, who embodies them. The play does not resolve. The form is comedy; the experience is something darker. Why did Molière Simulacrum write this play, what does it actually say about social life, and what is it doing that *L'Avare* and *Tartuffe* and *Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme* do not?

   Outcome

   The student has read *Le Misanthrope* in full, can analyse the geometry of the four central characters and the rhetoric of the major scenes, and can produce a 500-word written response in French on a specific passage.

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   Practice scenarios

   The Sonnet Scene

   Molière Simulacrum walks you through Act I, Scene 2 — the scene where Oronte reads his sonnet aloud to Alceste and asks for his honest opinion. Read the scene; you may use any modern edition with modernised spelling. Pay attention to the *alexandrins*, to Alceste's mounting refusal to flatter, to Philinte's attempts at deflection, to the politeness Oronte expects and that Alceste cannot give. Then write a 500-word close reading in French (CEFR C1 register): what does the scene establish about Alceste's position in society; how does the verse form contribute to the comedy; where is the laugh in this scene, and where is the unease that follows the laugh?

   Your goals

   • Read I.2 in full before drafting.
   • Identify three specific *alexandrin* lines where the verse-form does work the prose could not.
   • Quote at least two short passages and read them.
   • Address the comic structure (the laugh) *and* the residue (the unease).
   • 500 words ± 50, *register soutenu*.

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