Person and Persona in the raisonneurs of Molière’s Ecoles

Abstract

The long-standing debate about the function and meaning of the role of the raisonneur in Molière’s theatre is still as alive and as unresolved today as it ever was. Since F. Brunetière first used the word to identify and isolate a particular kind of recurrent character in the plays, the raisonneur has made a considerable contribution to the critical literature surrounding Molière.¹ By this term Brunetiére designated Cléante (Le Tartuffe), Philinte (Le Misanthrope), Ariste (L’Ecole des Maris), Chrysalde (L’Ecole des Femmes), and Béralde (Le Malade Imaginaire). These raisonneurs had for Brunetière the function of articulating at least partially Molière’s own thought on the topics treated in the plays, and later they came to represent for E. Faguet the ideas of the author.² It was G. Michaut who developed these views of the raisonneur in more systematic form by the elaboration of the philosophy of the juste-milieu which Molière was thought to express through them in each play.³ R. Fernandez initiated the reaction to this line of thought by questioning the explicitly didactic relationship which Michaut established between Molière and his raisonneurs. Thus Molière became not just a thinker or philosopher but a comic dramatist as well, who was not to be identified solely with one of his characters but who animated all of them in and through a poetic vision of incompatibility.⁴