Molière and Paradox

Offering a wide perspective on Molière’s plays, this study opens a new opportunity for understanding the dramatist’s links to the tradition and methods of Sextus Empiricus and his followers. By concentrating on the multiple uses of paradox in language, thought, and stagecraft, it updates Molière studies through the major philosophical research of the past twenty years, which have seen a resurgent recognition of Sextus’s role in early modern thought. Designed to be useful to students of theatre and philosophy as well as to French literature specialists, it enriches the interpretation of Molière’s major masterpieces, as well as showing the evolution of skeptical influences through the course of his entire career as writer and actor. Characters such as Dom Juan, Arnolphe, Tartuffe, Alceste and Sganarelle assume their full importance in the philosophical dialogue of the Age of Louis XIV.