Jean baptiste poquelin biography of abraham
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This view is also evident in his later works, and was a source of inspiration for many later authors, including (in a different field and with different effect) Luigi Pirandello. This friendship would end later, when Conti joined Molière's enemies in the Parti des Dévots. Owing to his satirical wit, Molière was always getting himself into entanglements with censors, and it would not be until the king of France himself became the producer of Molière’s acting company that he would be free from harassment and controversy.
However, the King expressed his solidarity with the author, granting him a pension and agreeing to be the godfather of Molière's first son. He then asked his Italian partner, Tiberio Fiorelli, famous for his play Scaramouche, to teach him the techniques of Commedia dell'arte. This life lasted 14 years, during which he initially played with the companies of Charles Dufresne, and subsequently created a company of his own.
Influence on French culture
Many words or phrases used in Molière's places are still used in current French:
- A tartuffe is a hypocrite, especially a hypocrite displaying affected morality or religious piety.
- A harpagon, named after the main character of "The Miser", is an obsessively greedy and cheap man.
- The statue of the Commander (Statue du Commandeur) from Don Juan is used as a model of implacable rigidity (raide comme la statue du Commandeur).
- A Don Juan is a man who seduces women with false pretenses, then abandons them.
- In Les Fourberies de Scapin, Act II, scene 7, Géronte is asked for ransom money for his son, allegedly held in a galley.
Les Femmes Savantes (“The Learned Ladies”) of 1672 is considered one of Molière's masterpieces. He also wrote two comedies in verse, but these were less successful and are generally considered less significant.
Molière’s position in French literature is perhaps most similar to that of Christopher Marlowe, even though Marlowe was primarily a tragedian.
He is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and literature. There, Molière witnessed the antics of some of the greatest performers of that time including Gros-Guillaume, Gaultier-Garguille, and Turlupin. Taken ill during a performance, he died of a hemorrhage within a day and was denied holy burial.
In 1792 his remains were brought to the museum of French monuments and in 1817 transferred to Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, close to La Fontaine.
As an actor, he was not allowed by the laws of the time to be buried in an ordinary cemetery, in sacred ground. It is now widely regarded as Molière's most refined masterpiece, the one with the highest moral content, but it was little appreciated at its time. It was born from the termination of the legal use of music in theater, since Lully had patented the opera in France, so Molière had to go back to his traditional genre.
There are many stories about his time at the college: it is said that his father was very demanding, that he met the prince of Conti, or that he was a pupil of the philosopher Pierre Gassendi, but none of these seems to have any foundation. Le Sicilien, ou l'Amour Peintre was written for festivities at the castle of Saint-Germain, and was followed in 1668 by a very elegant Amphitryon, obviously inspired by Plautus's version but with allusions to the king's love affairs.
He repeats, "What the devil was he doing in that galley?" ("Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?") The word galère ("galley") is used in French nowadays to mean "a cumbersome, painful affair," often with this sentence from Les Fourberies de Scapin.
- In Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme , the title character, M.
Jourdain, composes a love note as follows: "Beautiful marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die from love" ("Belle marquise, vos beaux yeux me font mourir d'amour"). It was a strange work, derived from a work by Tirso de Molina, inspired by the life of Giovanni Tenorio, and rendered in a prose that still seems modern today; it describes the story of an atheist who becomes a religious hypocrite and for this is punished by God.
This work too was quickly suspended. He entered the prestigious Jesuit Collège de Clermont, to complete his studies.