Essai sur le comique de Molière. by Danilo RomanoReview by: H. Carrington LancasterModern Language Notes, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Jan., 1952), pp. 67-68Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2909743 .

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REVIEWS 67

literature is leads to some arbitrary judgments: " le milieu de charbonniers que Lope de Vega met en scene dans sa comedie La carbonera est interessant, mais factice" (p. 213). Unless there are non-literary documents against which to check such an am- bience, Bomli's assertions are nothing more than one man's opinions.

The work should be used as a description, not of real women, but of fictional women. If the historical documents are lacking, it is not Bomli's fault. Students of literature, if not historians and sociologists, will find the work invaluable.

BRUCE W. WARDROPPER The Johns Hopkins University

Essai sur le comique de Molie're. Par DANILO ROMANO. Berne: Franke, 1950. Pp. 155. (Studiorum Romanicorum Collectio Turicensis, IV.) SFr. 10.

The author quotes Hobbes, Ribot, Freud, Bergson, and others on the comic, finds their explanations incomplete, and points out that it depends, not only on what is represented and to whom it is repre- sented, but on the " rapport qui relie la representation a l'individu." He stresses this last element, which, he thinks, has been overlooked except by M. Chapiro, who has recently defined the comic as " un mode de presentation d'un illogisme a l'esprit." 1 M. Romano then illustrates his theory with well chosen examples from Moliere's comedies.2

He gives examples of the comic of word, gesture, and situation, but he objects to such a method of classification because it seems to him to be arbitrary and because it may separate a word from a gesture, although they are comic only because they are associated. He never gives a complete definition of the comic and holds that it cannot be said to result from a disappointed expectation, which, he declares, gives only the frame in which the comic phenomenon is to be found. He emphasizes the fact that a comic reaction is produced when a trivial object is suddenly associated with one that belongs to a higher sphere (" La femme est en effet le potage de l'homme "), when there is a certain kind of ambiguity (as in l'Ecole des femmes, II, 5, when Arnolphe and Agnes misunder- stand each other), when there is a momentary illusion, followed by an awakening to certain facts (as in Sganarelle). What morality there is comes from the consequences to the hero of seeking to appear what he ig not and thus doing violence to nature.

1 In his edition of Corneille's Illusion comique, quoted by Romano, p. 24. 2 He quotes from many of them, but barely mentions some, including,

strange to say, le Misanthrope.

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68 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, JANUARY, 1952

The examples given by M. Romano are entertaining, but they by no means illustrate all of Moliere's comic devices. For instance, he writes (p. 112), just after quoting from l'Amphitryon, that, if the comic hero is ridiculous, it is "pour vouloir paraitre ce qu'il n'est pas." But he mnay also be comic, as this same play shows, for wishing to be himself and not being allowed to.

I cannot agree with M. Romano (pp. 85-6) that, when Tartuffe characterizes Orgon in the phrase " C'est un homme, entre nous, a mener par le nez," he unconsciously refers in " entre nous " to the fact that there is a man between him and Elmire. To get this secondary meaning one has to do violence not only, as R. admits, to the commas, but to grammar. Such a reflection, moreover, detracts from the effect of this highly comic line, one that shows pious Orgon as unable to believe in the hypocrisy of Tartuffe until he is himself described by him as a man " a mener par le nez."

Finally, I must point out that there were earlier modern treatises on the comic than those of 1579 mentioned on p. 83,3 and that on p. 33 Angelique is twice mentioned instead of Agnes. Such slips do not materially detract, however, from this instructive and often amusing little volume.

HI. CARRIINGTON LANCASTER

BRIEF MENTION

Processo de cartas de amores. By JUAN DE SEGURA. Ed. and trans. by EDWIN B. PLACE. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1950. Pp. x + 160. $3.00. " Juan de Segura's work . . . marks a long step forward in perfecting the techniques of the sentimental romance " (p. 15). Mr. Place's estimate of this work is difficult to share. If one takes Diego de San Pedro's Carcel de amor (1492) as the culmination of the sentimental novel, it is evident that the Processo, published fifty-six years later, is inferior to it in most respects. The grand passion of Leriano for Laureola has subsided to a playful flirtation based on the same symbols and conceits. The anonymous Lady says truly to her lover: " Ya los amantes de agora soys como sombra de los passados" (p. 40). The sublimity of courtly love has been replaced by a more classical notion of steadfast love (cf. p. 102, n. 141). Suicide threats have become nothing more than devices for cajoling the beloved. The

s Cf. Pietro Valla's commentary on Plautus of 1499 and writings of Robor- tellus, 1548, Madius, 1550, Trissino, 1563, mentioned by Mr. Herrick in his Comic Theory in the Sixteenth Century, Urbana, University of Illinois, 1950, pp. 38-40.

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