Description At the end of Moli re's masterpiece Le Misanthrope (1666), the irascible anti-hero Alceste storms off the stage, resolved to spend the rest of his life in a remote wilderness rather than to spend another moment mixing with corrupt Parisian society.
Moli re's comedy is thus, in an important sense, unfinished, and various writers over the centuries, from Fabre d' glantine in the eighteenth century to David Ives in the twenty-first, have written sequels - works that aim simultaneously to exploit the popularity of the original play, to resolve its narrative, and to lay to rest some of its more troubling implications about society.
This volume brings together two of the first sequels.
As their titles imply, both Jean-Fran ois Marmontel's 'moral tale' Le Misanthrope corrig (1765) and its dramatic adaptation, Charles-Albert Demoustier's three-act verse comedy Alceste la campagne, ou le Misanthrope corrig (c.
1790), follow the gradual rehabilitation of Moli re's bad-tempered misanthrope.
This critical edition traces the two plays' complex relationships both to each other and to Moli re's original comedy.
It situates them both in the context of Moli re reception in the Enlightenment, and particularly in relation to Marmontel's debates with Jean-Jacques Rousseau about the ethics and aesthetics of Moli re's original play.
Modern Humanities Research Association Marmontel and demoustier, 'le misanthrope corrigé': two eighteenth-century sequels to moličre's 'le misanthrope', paperback/joseph harris
