Réécrire “Tartuffe”. Avatars de la «comédie parfaite» chez Lemercier (1795-1830)

Abstract

In his Cours de littérature générale, Lemercier elaborates twenty-three rules for the creation of comic plays and demonstrates their effectiveness by analysing Tartuffe, presented as the “perfect comedy”. For Lemercier, Tartuffe is not only the highest expression of the genre: it is above all a «picture, which represents in deep, indelible strokes, a universal illness of the human heart» (Cours). Already the author in 1795 of a Tartuffe révolutionnaire, he proposed a tragic re-elaboration composed under the Empire, printed in 1820 and performed at the Odéon in 1830, his tragedy Clovis, which Lemercier defines as a “tragic Tartuffe”.Starting from the above-mentioned plays, which show a different use of the Molière intertext, I intend to analyse the avatars of Tartuffe in Lemercier’s theatre and their relationship to the evolution of French drama. My attention will focus on the political meanings that the author attributes to his rewritings in the changing context of French institutions of the time, as well as on the experiences of contamination of dramatic genres operated by the playwright throughout his career and of which his relationship to Tartuffe offers significant examples.