"THE MISER"   Term Paper ID:18698 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: (Moliere). Plot, characters, action, themes, critical views, comic approach to ideas.... More...

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Paper Abstract: (Moliere). Plot, characters, action, themes, critical views, comic approach to ideas. Paper Introduction: The purpose of this research is to examine The Miser by Moliere. The plan of the research will be to set forth a short outline of the story, and to discuss the principal critical ideas that have arisen around the play. The action of The Miser is built around the central character (comic hero), Harpagon, who has been consumed by his avarice, and whose enactment of that avarice on all the other characters in the play provides its central tension. Harpagon opposes the marital intentions of his son Cleante toward Mariane because he wants to marry her himself; and of his daughter Elise toward Valere because he wants to marry her off to his rich elderly friend Anselm. The greed of Harpagon, who indulges himself in jewelry and finery but denies ordinary comforts to his children and servants, has driven his children to deceit and his Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The fact that he turns his preoccupation into social pathologydoes not prevent Moliere from putting a valid observation of theheedlessness and foppish preoccupations of youth in his mouth. . Moliere is not concerned to showdevelopment. Accordingly, Harpagon is the archetype of themiser, and whatever other action is resolved, the play ends with Harpagonand his money box paired presumably for eternity. That such heroes may encounter the impact of painmitigates and in some sense redeems the pain that other characters and theaudience have suffered at the heroes' hands. If Harpagon is occasionally so perspicacious, how is it that he isotherwise ridiculous? There is a littleof the miser, the misanthrope, the possessive lover, in many persons, andin displaying them onstage, Moliere questions misplaced values. The dramaticcontrast of character, on this view, provides both the tension and theexuberance of the play. 386-92.Dullin, Charles. They may even accidentally say something useful fromtime to time. They are reasonable dramatic creations because theyrepresent extreme personalities that are not obliged to change in relationto their situations. At the core of Harpagon's character is a wish to alter situations tofit his personality. It is profoundly Moliere's point that who ignores orsubverts nature or the fundamental moral claims of others in the universelays himself bare to moral judgment by the fundament. Moliere leaves recognition to the audience, even as hewithholds it from his central comic figures; all he requires of the centralfigures is a reversal of fortune. His Miser, where the vice destroys all thenatural piety between father and son, is especially great, and in a highsense tragic" (Goethe 273). . New York: Crown, 1965. That is, Moliere'smessage of what the critics of the period might have termed delightfulinstruction, and the lesson is as pitiless as it is hilarious. Determined excess of character, to the degree it impinges on thepsychological or moral well-being of others, discourages sympathy andencourages justice. It is therefore at the moment of plotresolution, or the "affirmation" to which Guicharnaud refers, when theexcess of character typing works itself out, that the playwright'sintention to engage the audience in a dialogue of social criticism becomesapparent. As Guicharnaud comments, "the miserly and love-smitten old manpushes the unreal logic of his nature to the extreme; where he is the idealobstacle to 'honest' loves; where an order is established by the poetdespite insoluble or unpleasant realities, leading to a poetic finale whichis not a concession to convention but an affirmation" (Guicharnaud 11).Similarly, Dullin, establishing the play as one written in the outrageousfarcical tone of Plautus, says that "Harpagon stands out as black against aluminous background of youth and freshness" (Dullin 157). IfMoliere's characters seem to be flat, flat in this case does not have apejorative meaning. The fate of his comic heroes is conceived in much the same wayas that of fairy tale witches, ogres, goblins, and assorted monsters; theyhave no moral entitlements whatever. "Dedicatory Letter to The Barber of Seville." European Theories of the Drama. Clark. For crimes against the authentic order of society, such askeeping young lovers from marrying or setting the "shoulds" and "oughts" ofeveryone's behavior according as such rules are suited to an idiosyncraticidea of social correctness, there is always retribution. Works CitedAristotle. T.S. Trans. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1964.Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. No one but a dedicated miser can fullyappreciate the consequences of being a skinflint in business, love,parenthood, life. His actions are exaggeratedinasmuch as they deviate from the norm, yet normal inasmuch as they remaintrue to their type. Harpagon is a typical Moliere comic hero inasmuch as he is not somuch a duplication as an archetype of character. Ed. It permeates his very psychology. The social commentary contained in Moliere's plays derivefrom a shock of moral recognition, which is grounded in realisticpsychology. Bergson's discussion of repetition as acomic device includes the idea of a dominant character type that isexpressed in the details of psychology. Indeed, Harpagon can't seem to do enough to discourageidentification or sympathy, and Moliere's point of view is that the comichero has little inclination toward a basic shift of character type. It is extremism as much or more as thefatuousness of social forms that is the butt of Moliere's joke. Nor is Harpagon's miserliness confined to his preoccupation with hismoney. Thisexplains his cautioning his son Cleante against spending all his money onfine clothes. Were Harpagon to see us laugh at his miserliness, I do not say that he would get rid of it, but he would either show it less or show it differently. [A] comic character is generally comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself. That iswhy in the theater, in performance, as laden with realistic psychology ashis subtext might be, his text savages for the laugh. Clark. Stride Toward Freedom. "No dowry wanted!" interrupts the miserly Harpagon every few moments. Introduction. "On L'Avare." Moliere: A Collection of Critical Essays. Sylvan Barnet, Morton Berman, William Burto. Barrett H. Thatis one role of social comedy, and that, at least as much as the working-outof the love plots, is the content of comedy's affirmation of life. That is the basis of the play, of which might have been made, with equal success, a tragedy, a comedy, a drama, an opera, and so on. Moliere's characters succeed in maintaining theatricalillusion because, in all their extremity of personality, they are bound toevoke comic effect. His latter characteristics are secondary tomiserliness, but they proceed from that miserliness, and they add dimensionand believability to his persona. Harpagon embodies such materialism, the most evidentconstant of the action of the play. The comic person is unconscious . Rather, he takes snapshots of behavior and follows the logicof that behavior and everything it touches to its conclusion. For it is that element of character that controls the entireaction of the play. This aspect of Moliere, particularly in The Miser, was noticed byboth Beaumarchais and Goethe, as they probed what might today be calledMoliere's realistic psychology. [This] . Tartuffe, inthe play of that name, will rot in prison. He does not really have to learn anything about true love, however,because to him human love is secondary to the love he bears for hisprecious casket of gold. In themoment he assents to the marriage of his children, his value system staysthe same from first to last. Classical Literary Criticism. If Harpagon's personality is not well-rounded as theterm is commonly understood, it is because Moliere has drawn characteroutlines instead of delineating psychology. Barrett H. An amorous old man intends to marry his ward to-morrow; a young lover, who is much cleverer, forestalls him, and that very day makes the girl his wife in the house and before the very eyes of the guardian. Thus he forfeits anyclaim he might have to what in another context might be called fundamentalcivil rights. It is the source ofa comic catharsis, a realization that the fundament has been reordered andthat the character who has sought to order it to his own silly, ugly, would-be painful purposes has been set aside as after all contemptiblyinconsequential. New York: Crown, 1965. Harpagon, likeArnolphe in L'ecole des femmes or Alceste in Le Misanthrope, is guilty ofthe kind of excess in belief and action that leaves others no dignity.Actions have consequences, particularly if such actions affect the wayothers will live their lives. "Moliere," said Goethe, "is so great, thatone is astonished anew every time one reads him. Just as it is perfectly permissiblefor the brave little tailor to kill a limitless quota of giants, it is allright for Harpagon to end with no hope of family attachment. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1964.King, Martin Luther, Jr. Thefate of such characters as Harpagon is either wholly tragic or whollylaughable, or at once tragic and laughable. Or Le Grand Mithridate [a tragedy]? 269-81.Guicharnaud, Jacques, ed. Ed. As Dullin comments, "Harpagon must almost alwayshave one ear strained toward the garden [where his money is buried], whilehe lends the other to the person with whom he is conversing" (Dullin 158).It does not ultimately matter to him that Cleante will marry Mariane, withwhom he had fancied himself in love. Is it really necessary to spend money on wigs when you can wear the hair of your own head, which costs nothing? Moliere's approach to comedy is to create characters who inviteridicule by remaining stubbornly faithful to their psychology. Eight Great Comedies. . "The Comic Element." European Theories of the Drama. The Miser. The greed of Harpagon, who indulges himself injewelry and finery but denies ordinary comforts to his children andservants, has driven his children to deceit and his servants to schemingaround his wishes. Barrett H. New York: Harper & Row, 1959.Moliere, Jean Baptiste Poquelin. Virtually all critical treatments of The Miser focus on theextraordinary character of Harpagon, from which all the action of the playproceeds. The action of The Miser is built around the central character (comichero), Harpagon, who has been consumed by his avarice, and whose enactmentof that avarice on all the other characters in the play provides itscentral tension. Harpagon, Arnolphe, Alceste will be lonely men forthe rest of their lives. The same is true of theother characters, who, as Guicharnaud says, "put on masks to perform acomedy according to the rules, but the masks are necessarily transparent;hence the spectator, who has been made aware of the reality, is obliged toplay the game with them" (Guicharnaud 1 ). If you are lucky at cards, you ought to profit by it and invest at good interest the money that you win, so that you'll have it on a rainy day. That Harpagon learns nothing from being outwitted and outlived by hischildren is not so much due to Moliere's limited skill with charactertransformation as to the probability that Moliere, in making Harpagon thearchetype of the miser, is pointing to the comic absurdity of extremematerialism. All of Moliere's comic heroes come off badly where real humanvalues are concerned. Indeed, it is in this sense only that laughter "corrects men's manners." It makes us at once endeavour to appear what we ought to be, what some day we shall perhaps end in being (Bergson 387). Without troubling about anything else, I'd really like to know what good are all those ribbons you are bedecked with from head to foot, and if a half-dozen laces are not enough to hod up your breeches. . He is a man by himself--his pieces border on tragedy; they are apprehensive; and no one has thecourage to imitate them. The actual form of a play, or any other sort of literature, depends less on the action than on the characters which set that action into play (Beaumarchais 26 ). To put itanother way, from Moliere's point of view, If Harpagon can stand it, theaudience can stand it, too. . Behind this exclamation, which recurs automatically we faintly discern a complete repeating-machine set going by a fixed idea (Bergson 388). Leaving aside the fact that Harpagon's complaint ismade to a young man he has deprived of ordinary comforts, the answer liesin the fact that Moliere is a social critic in touch not only with thecomplexities of his own time but very much in touch with the failings ofall humanity. and Eds. But that is as unimportant to Moliere the socialcritic, Moliere the social observer, as it is to the comic heroesthemselves. Misanthropic Alceste willsurely die in solitary surliness. Moreover, what one is pleased to consider the "norm"is discovered to be perhaps not so very normal or admirable after all.Harpagon's psychology--broadly drawn as it is--is believable because herepresents something that is very real in most people. In a comic repetition of words we generally find two terms: a repressed feeling which goes off like a spring, and an idea that delights in repressing the feeling anew . New York: Crown, 1965. On the Art of Poetry. 259-6 .Bergson, Henri. Besides the miser in Harpagon,we find the older-man-in-search-of-a-young-wife (Mariane), as well as theoverprotective father. In comic situations and characters worthy ofthem, he exposes human folly with merciless farce, inviting laughter butalso inviting the audience to engage in after-the-play introspection.Moliere does in his play what no one could do in real life, inflict theconsequences of outrageous actions on those who perform the actions. Like Moliere's othercomic heroes, Harpagon may win or lose the conflict surrounding the pairingoff of the young lovers, but he learns nothing from the experience. Is L'Avare of Moliere anything else? Here, too, it is really a kind of automatism that makes us laugh--an automatism, as we have already remarked, closely akin to absentmindedness (Bergson 387). The characters themselves aremask-like inasmuch as their character traits rarely change; neither domasks change expression. Beaumarchais's dedication to The Barber ofSeville pays homage to the comic sensibility, which is, however, inMoliere's hands not far removed from high tragedy. Social masks, deception,hypocrisies--these are the principal issues that engage Moliere, and theyengage him as a social critic, an observer and reporter of the very societyfor which he was writing. Trans. The purpose of this research is to examine The Miser by Moliere. London: Penguin, 197 .Beaumarchais. He is married to his money, and it is this fact thatis satirized in the play. Ed. Attitude, in this view, counts for a good deal, but in Moliere theattitude of social criticism is efficiently demonstrated by the actions ofthe comic hero. New York: New American Library, 1985.----------------------- 12 Harpagon also exploits his status in society, and he is willing touse it to impose his will on the fate of others. Jacques Guicharnaud. He shares his joy with his "darlingmoney box" (Act V). The theoretical basis for this rigidity of character isdeveloped by Bergson in his discussion of comedy. Moliere: A Collection of Critical Essays. There is no room for sentiment on hisstage; compare the development of Harpagon with that of Dickens's EbenezerScrooge. Nor should one put too fine a point on the question of Dain inMoliere, for the comedy is so broad and the characters themselves sobroadly sketched as types that resiliency and the physical protection ofthe kind offered by a mask is a strong portion of each of them. is applicable to the scene in which valere points out to Harpagon the wrong he would be doing in marrying his daughter to a man she did not love. . Fatuous old Harpagon is quite correct, for example, in hisestimation of the fatuousness of prevailing social values where money isconcerned. Clark. In Moliere, whatever pain the comic heroes havecaused is balanced by the fate they encounter by the play's end. [L]et us think of a spring that is rather of a moral type, an idea that is first expressed, then repressed, and then expressed again; a stream of words that bursts forth, is checked, and keeps on starting afresh. Once more we have the vision of one stubborn force, counteracted by another, equally pertinacious . Ed. With the servant La Fleche's help, Cleante obtainsHarpagon's money box, which Cleante is able to use as leverage to persuadeHarpagon to give up designs on Mariane and permit Elise's marriage toValere. This is the background of Bergson's perception of the comic formas a whole: Look closely: you will find that the art of the comic poet consists in making us so well acquainted with the particular vice, in introducing us, the spectators, to such a degree of intimacy with it, that in the end we get hold of some of the strings of the marionette with which he is playing, and actually work them ourselves; this it is that explains part of the pleasure we feel. Moliere's forte was social satire, and The Miser is an example of aplay that, grounded in an extreme character as it is, is chiefly a vehicleof discussion between playwright and audience. Harpagon opposes the marital intentions of his sonCleante toward Mariane because he wants to marry her himself; and of hisdaughter Elise toward Valere because he wants to marry her off to his richelderly friend Anselm. Harpagon's emotional distress is mitigated by two facts: (a)Mariane and Valere turn out to be Anselm's long lost children, and (b) hisdarling money box is returned to him. Theplan of the research will be to set forth a short outline of the story, andto discuss the principal critical ideas that have arisen around the play. At itshighest comic point, such a message verges very much on the tragic abyssand what Dr. King would later call "the bleakness of nagging despair" (King91). As Aristotle explains, "theridiculous is a species of ugliness or badness. Dorsch. . Nor does Harpagon appreciate them; he is faithful tomoney, possessive far more of it than of the treasure of filial piety orromantic love. . For the ridiculousconsists in some form of error or ugliness that is not painful orinjurious; the comic mask, for example, is distorted and ugly, but causesno pain" (Aristotle 37). I'll wager that your wigs and ribbons alone are worth at least twenty pistoles; and twenty pistoles bring in eighteen livres, six sous, and eight deniers a year, even at only eight per cent interest (Act I). "Conversations (Extracts)." European Theories of the Drama. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.