Marivaux’s Archipelago: «L’Île des Esclaves», «L’Île de la Raison», and «Colonie»
Abstract
One of the important and widespread motifs in the French culture of the first half of the 18th century, from painting to literature, was that of imaginary voyages: voyages imaginaires. Marivaux makes frequent use of it in his work, most notably in his three comedies: L’île des Esclaves, L’île de la Raison, and La Nouvelle Colonie ou la Ligue des femmes (or Colonie, in its later version). All the three plays, set on islands, may be called comedies of manners, but we can find a conscious social reform proposal in them, too: Marivaux would thus be a proponent of abolishing slavery and of equal rights for women. And though such a reading should not dismissed, it seems more appropriate to analyse the works as exercises in imagination. They are utopias, from the point of view of Marivaux and his times, impossible to become a reality and thus belonging to a world of fantasy, which is not to say that they did not influence the consciousness of the 18th-century French. This “conceiving of the inconceivable” let the contemporaries go beyond their limits and break away from schematic thinking, perhaps contributing to political and social change more effectively than a rational critique would.
Keywords:
Pierre de Marivaux, comedy, utopiaReferences
Baczko, Bronisław. Światła utopii. Tłumaczenie Wiktor Dłuski. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Filozofii i Socjologii PAN, 2016.
Google Scholar
Deloffre, Frederic. Marivaux et le marivaudage: Une préciosité nouvelle. Genève: Slatkine, 2009.
Google Scholar
Francastel, Pierre, ed. Utopie et Institutions au XVIIIe siècle: Le Pragmatisme des Lumières. Paris: Mouton et C, 1963.
Google Scholar
Granderoute, Robert. “De ‘L’Éducation Des Filles’ Aux ‘Avis d’une Mère à Sa Fille’: Fénelon et Madame de Lambert.” Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France 87, no. 1 (1987): 15–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40528735.
Google Scholar
Greene, Edgar Joseph Hollingsworth. Marivaux. Toronto: Univeristy of Toronto Press, 1965.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487596163
Google Scholar
Hartig, Irmgard, et Albert Soboul. «Notes pour une histoire de l’utopie en France, au XVIIIe siècle”. Annales historiques de la Révolution française” 224 (1976): 161–179.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/ahrf.1976.1000
Google Scholar
Olkusz, Piotr. „Marivaux w osiemnastowiecznej Francji i Polsce: Dwa modele recepcji”. Pamiętnik Teatralny 62, z. 4 (2014): 97–142.
Google Scholar
Ozouf, Mona. Les Mots des femmes: Essai sur la singularité française. Paris: Fayard, 1995.
Google Scholar
Sokół, Lech. „Watteau, Marivaux, Fêtes galantes, czyli co może się wydarzyć w ogrodzie?”. Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 63, nr 1/4 (2001): 125-141.
Google Scholar
Starobinski, Jean. Wynalezienie wolności 1700–1789. Tłumaczenie Maryna Ochab. Gdańsk: słowo/obraz terytoria, 2006.
Google Scholar
Authors
Piotr OlkuszUniversity of Lodz Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7618-7014
Piotr Olkusz - Assistant Professor of Theater and Cultural studies at the University of Lodz, editor of Dialog, reviewer of the portal teatralny.pl. He is primarily interested in French theater, the institutional determinants of theatrical aesthetics, the development of the idea of popular theater, as well as the 18th century in theater and the birth of modernity.
Statistics
Abstract views: 34PDF downloads: 25
License
Copyright (c) 2017 Piotr Olkusz
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author grants a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Pamiętnik Teatralny should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). By submitting an article the author agrees to make it available under CC BY 4.0 license.
From issue 1/2018 to 3/2022 all articles were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Piotr Olkusz, The Paradox of Convention: «Critical reflections» by Jean-Baptiste Dubos , Pamiętnik Teatralny: Vol. 69 No. 1 (2020)
- Piotr Olkusz, Théâtres de Société in France: A Salon Experiment and Laboratory of New Rules , Pamiętnik Teatralny: Vol. 67 No. 4 (2018)
- Piotr Olkusz, From the Company to the Theatre Enterprise: The Official Stages of 18th-century Paris: Development and Scrutiny , Pamiętnik Teatralny: Vol. 67 No. 1/2 (2018)
- Piotr Olkusz, Molière’s «The Affected Ladies»: A Farce against Women? , Pamiętnik Teatralny: Vol. 72 No. 1 (2023): Molière: Revisited (with essay cluster curated by Patryk Kencki)
