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L'Illusion comique: A Dramatic Anticipation of Corneille's Critical Analyses of his Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

H. T. Barnwell
H. T. Barnwell
Affiliation:
Emeritus Professor of French, University of Glasgow.
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Extract

Eric Bentley's statement is singularly appropriate to L'Illusion comique, with its plays within a play and its apparent insistence on the magical art of Alcandre which conjures up for Pridamant a theatrical vision of the reality he seeks, and for him and for us a demonstration of the imaginative power of drama, a territory governed by its own laws which Corneille calls ‘les préceptes de l'art’, adding that ‘il est constant qu'il y a des préceptes, puisqu'il y a un art…’ In the dedication of the first edition of L'Illusion comique, which appeared in 1639, three or four years after its first performance, the dramatist called the play ‘un étrange monstre’, ‘une invention bizarre et extravagante’, ‘cette pièce capricieuse’, and when, in 1660, his Examen of the comedy appeared in his collected works, he used similar expressions to describe it, ‘une galanterie extravagante’ and ‘ce caprice’, referring deprecatingly to his failure to observe the rules, those ‘precepts’ which by then he appeared to accept as a necessity.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Summer 1983 , pp. 110 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1983

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References

Notes

1. In The Life of the Drama (London, 1965), p. 150.Google Scholar

2. Discours dt l'utilité et des parties du poème dramatique, p. 1.Google Scholar All references to Corneille's critical writing will be to my edition (Writings on the Theatre, Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar, and the Discours will be referred to simply as first, second and third Discours, in the order in which they are printed there. Reference to the dedication and Examen of L'Illusion comique, and to the play itself, will be made to Robert Garapon's edition (Paris, 1965), which reproduces the original version of the text with subsequent variants. It will be clear that, for the purposes of the present argument, the 1639 text is the appropriate one. I have, however, modernized the spelling.

3. See Garapon's discussion of the date of the first performance: Introduction, pp. xiv–xvi.Google Scholar

4. Dedication, p. 3, 11.1, 5, 10Google Scholar; Examen, p. 123, 11. 1–2, 4.Google Scholar

5. By Nelson, R. J., Play within a Play. The Dramatist's Conception of his Art: Shakespeare to Anouilh (New Haven, 1958), p. 59.Google Scholar

6. See, for example, Garapon's introduction to the play; Richard, Annie, ‘L'Illusion comique’ de Corneille et le baroque. Etude d'une æuvre dans son milieu (Paris, 1972)Google Scholar; Alcover, Madeleine, ‘Les lieux et les temps dans L'Illusion comique’ (French Studies, XXX (1976), pp. 393–404)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Forestier, Georges, Le Théâtre dans le théâtre stir la scène française du XVIIe siècle (Geneva, 1981).Google Scholar

7. See most of trie prefaces and Examens of the early plays, and in particular the Examens of Mélite and Clitandre (Writings, pp. 80, 83).Google Scholar

8. Ibid. Cf. the same author's article, ‘Pierre Corneille's L'Illusion comique: the play as magic’, PMLA, LXVII (1956), pp. 1127–40Google Scholar, which corresponds substantially to chapter 4 of his book (see note 5 above).

9. See Garapon's Introduction and that of Marks, J. (Manchester, 2nd edition, 1969, pp. xxvii–xxviii).Google Scholar Cf. Richard, A., op. cit., p. 26.Google Scholar

10. See, for example, the preface to Clitandre (1632) and the Epître dédicatiore published with La Suivante (1637)Google Scholar, where Corneille expresses respect for the ancients, but without superstition, and at the same time says: ‘J'honore les modernes sans les envier …’, and ‘Chacun a sa méthode; je ne blâme point celle des autres, et me tiens à la mienne …’ (Writings, pp. 175, 177).Google Scholar All this is much in the vein of the Excuse à Ariste (published at the time of the Cid controversy) and later, for example, of the Examen of Rodogune (ibid., p. 132).

11. Le sentiment de I'amour dans l'æuvre de Pierre Corneille (Paris, 1948), p. 117 ff.Google Scholar

12. Corneille et la dialectique du héros (Paris, 1963), note 89, pp. 531–2.Google Scholar

13. Tragédie cornélienne: tragédie racinienne. Etude sur les sources de l'intérêt dramatique (Urbana, 1948), p. 75.Google Scholar

14. Cf. Rubin, D. L., ‘The Hierarchy of Illusion and the Structure of L'Illusion comique’. La Cohérence intérieure. Etudes sur la littérature française du XVIIe siècle présentées en hommage à J. D. Hubert (Paris, 1977), pp. 75–93.Google Scholar

15. French Comic Drama from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London, 1977), pp. 25–6.Google Scholar

16. Cf. Garapon, 's Introduction, p. xx.Google Scholar

17. Cf. Sweetser, M.-O., La Dramaturgie de Corneille (Geneva and Paris, 1977), p. 102.Google Scholar

18. See Chappuzeau, Samuel's evidence: Le Théâtre françois (Lyons, 1674), p. 174.Google Scholar

19. See Nelson, R. J., Play within a playGoogle Scholar, chapter 4.

20. Corneille's argument closely follows that of D'Aubignac, (La Pratique du théâtre, ed. Martino, P., Algiers, 1927, p. 295)Google Scholar, who writes of keeping the spectator ‘dans l'attente de quelque nouveauté’ by giving to narrative passages the character ‘des explications pathétiques’ arising ‘des passions et mouvements d'esprit’.

21. Cf. Nelson, , loc. cit., p. 53.Google Scholar

22. See Alcover, M., art. cit., p. 400.Google Scholar On the ‘choral’ nature of the presence of Alcandre and Pridamant, see Forestier, , op. cit., pp. 31 ff., 59–60.Google Scholar

23. I see no reason to suppose, as M. Alcover does (art. cit., p. 389), that Alcandre and Pridamant at these words disappear from view into the ‘coulisses’: they simply move, still to one side, farther upstage.

24. Cf. Nelson, , loc. cit., p. 52 ff.Google Scholar

25. The episodes are clearly quite deliberately chosen by Alcandre as those likely to produce the maximum emotional effect on Pridamant. In the third Discours (p. 64)Google Scholar, Corneille was later to comment on the need for the dramatist to do this.

26. Cf. Scherer, J., La Dramaturgie classique en France (Paris, 1950), pp. 79, 81.Google Scholar

27. Alcandre's pride in his art is akin to that of Corneille as expressed in the Excuse à Ariste.

28. Cf. Sweetser, M.-O., op. cit., p. 103.Google Scholar

29. By Sellstrom, A. D., in ‘L'Illusion comique of Corneille: The Tragic Scenes of Act V’, Modern Language Notes, LXXIII (1958), pp. 421–7.Google Scholar

30. In discussing these, R. Garapon (Introduction, pp. liv–lv) does not consider them in relation to the genres.

31. Op. cit., pp. 284, 338.

32. Cf. D'Aubignac, , op. cit., p. 282.Google Scholar

33. Op. cit., p. 284.

34. For a detailed technical analysis, with an examination of the possible moral implications, see Fumaroli, M., ‘Rhétorique et dramaturgie dans L'Illusion comique de Corneille’, XVIIe siècle, 80–81 (1968), pp. 107–32.Google Scholar

35. By Garapon, for example: Introduction, pp. xxxii–xxxiii.Google Scholar

36. Cf. Hubert, J. D., ‘Le réel et l'illusoire dans le théâtre de Corneille et dans celui de Rotrou’, Revue des Sciences humaines, XCI (1958), pp. 333–50Google Scholar; Fumaroli, M., art. cit., p. 124Google Scholar If.; Marks, J., Introduction, pp. xxvii–xxviii.Google Scholar

37. Cf. Garapon, R., La Fantaisie verbale et le comique dans le théâtre français du Moyen-age à la fin du XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1957), pp. 173–4Google Scholar, note 4; M.-O. Sweetser, op. cit., p. 103.

38. Cf. May, G., ‘Corneille and the Classics’, in The Classical Line. Essays in honor of Henri Peyre: Yale French Studies, XXXVIII (1967), pp. 138–50.Google Scholar

39. See François, C., ‘Illusion et mensonge’: Esprit créateur, IV (1964), pp. 169–75.Google Scholar

40. Cf. Fumaroli, M., art. cit., pp. 131–2.Google Scholar

41. See my article, ‘Some Reflections on Corneille, 's Theory of VraisemblanceGoogle Scholar as formulated in the Discours’: Forum for Modern Language Studies, I (1965), pp. 295–310.Google Scholar