Chapter 31 - Molière as National Hero

Summary

This chapter considers Molière as an icon of French national identity and a celebrated hero. It sketches the trajectory of this national veneration as it evolved over centuries, from the first years after his death, when he was transformed from ordinary scribbler to a writer of discerning common sense and humanitarian empathy. In the century that followed, Enlightenment thinkers elevated Molière to the status of a philosopher; the secularisation of national honour paved the way for Molière’s investiture in the ‘cult of great men’. Authors of the Romantic movement solidified his reputation as a suffering genius while the efforts of historians secured Molière’s status as a French national treasure worthy of archival investigations. The Molière of the twentieth century became a distinctly more earthy presence. He comes to be viewed first and foremost as a theatre-maker, a ‘man of the theatre’, with his plays, his life and the practicalities of his livelihood now defining him as a working man. The efforts of nineteenth-century historians come to fruition in the twentieth century’s definitive art form, film, where Molière comes alive through leaps of imagination that expose contested French views of his importance.