Open Collections

L'Amour-propre dans L'Ecole des femmes et dans le Dom Juan de Moliere

University of British Columbia

The theme of self-love is omnipresent in the theatrical works of Molière. More specifically, this theme is apparent in The School for Wives and Dom Juan. In these two plays, we notice that the two main characters, Arnolphe and Dom Juan, are guided in their actions by their overarching self-love. Using the philosophical concepts of La Rochefoucauld and Pierre Nicole as benchmarks in our analysis of self-love in the two plays, we first note that this egoism, which leads to the pursuit of one’s own interests, is demonstrated in Dom Juan’s « libertinage » and Arnolphe’s cynicism. We then examine how such egoism is manifested through tyranny and the use of trickery. These two preceding points lead to our main topic explaining that Molière put these characters on stage to show that inordinate self-love does not lead to the desired objective. In other words, not being able to see reality – because their actions and ideas were guided only by their self-interests – these narcissists fail to recognize themselves as much as Ovid’s mythical character Narcissus and end up in ruin in L’École des femmes and Dom Juan.

Text

2012-12-19

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/43721

French

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/