Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux , more commonly called Marivaux , born the February 4th 1688 with Paris where he died, almost forgotten, the February 12th 1763, is a Journaliste, dramatic author and novelist French.

Biography

Of a family originating in Normandy which had provided several magistrates to the Parliament of this province, his/her father Nicolas Carlet is civil servant in the administration of the marine of his birth until 1688. In 1698, this last takes along its family to settle with Riom where it has just been appointed director of the Monnaie, then with Limoges. Of her mother, Marie-Anne Bullet, one knows few things.

He becomes pupil of the Oratoriens of Riom. Its family is of minor nobility. In 1710, it ambitionne to follow the paternal way and enters in Faculty of Law to Paris. After its meeting with Fontenelle, cumulated with the frequentation of the living room of Mrs Lambert, Marivaux locates the modern spirits and is initiated with the fashionable preciosity. Its first text is the careful and equitable Father, or happy Crispin cheating the in 1712. It develops its critical observation then, engages in the battle against the traditional ones and is tested with multiple kinds: Romance parodic, Chronic Poem Burlesque or journalistic. The parodic is then its principal way of writing. Far from disparaging traditional works, it takes again all however that makes the cultural heritage of the traditional writers and the transvestite in works original and shifted compared to the use. One sees for example his Homère Travesti as 1716.

Its works are signed of its name, it is then regarded as a brilliance moralist, kind again the Heather. He Marie in 1718 with Dove Boulogne, this one brings an easy dowry to him. He is ruined by the bankruptcy of Law in 1720, then loses his wife in 1723. He must then work to live. Its raison d'être is very found in the theater.

Its first success is Arlequin polished by the love in 1720. He appreciates the Italian Actors and collaborates with them for some parts. Its meeting with Silvia Baletti is outstanding. Marivaux revolutionizes the theatrical comedy, kind which it exposes through both Surprises love or of Double Inconstancy . Its philosophical comedies occur. They are placed within utopian frameworks with the image of the Island of the slaves in 1725 or of the New Colony in 1729.

He studies then the faces of the social existence, just as them through contemporaries. He concludes that reality that he observes is increasingly more complex and fugitive that the rigid executives in which one tries to lock up it. Its romantic philosopher's stone is the Life of Marianne from which the drafting extends over approximately fifteen years (1726 - 1741). Starting from 1733, it attends the living room of Claudine de Tencin, which becomes for him an invaluable friend. Thanks to it, he is elected with the French Academy in 1742. He does not compose any more whereas some parts only exploited Comédie-Française, with reflections the French language in itself. With its death of a Pleurisy, it leaves a will with a quite thin financial heritage with his daughter.

Theater

The theater of Marivaux builds a kind of bridge between the Italian traditional theater ( Commedia dell' arte , whose currency is castigat ridendo mores : to correct manners by the laughter) and its figures (in particular Harlequin) and a more literary theater, nearer to the French and English authors.

Marivaux is regarded by certain as the French Master of the mask and the lie. Principal tool of the lie, the language is also the mask behind which the characters hide. Those are often of young people, terrorized with the idea to enter the life and to reveal their feelings. Their at the same time complex and naive psychological adventures proceed under the glance of oldest (parents) and of the spectators who make fun in a mixture of indulgence and spite.

Voltaire regarded the theater of Marivaux as being of a very large psychological smoothness, and said some: “It weighs eggs of fly in a balance in cobweb. ” But one can also interpret this counterpart like a critic of the theater of Marivaux which he considers futile and uninteresting: Voltaire is indeed a large rival and the critic in his book the Temple of the taste .

At the 18th century, success is never bright: the French Actors and their public do not appreciate it, and the Theater-Italian remains a secondary scene. In addition, Marivaux always kept away from the clan from the philosophers. But at the 19th century, the success of the comedies of Musset causes a true resurrection of Marivaux. It then finds a public enthusiastic which finds very modern complexity precisely that one reproached him of his time.

The light-hearted gallantry

The name of Marivaux gave rise to the verb marivauder which means to exchange gallant remarks and of a large smoothness, in order to allure a man or a woman. By extension the word light-hearted gallantry was created. Jean-François of the Toothing-stone defines the light-hearted gallantry as “ the mixture of metaphysics, commonplace phrases, alambiqués feelings and popular dictions most subtle ”. It also refers to other terms such as libertinage and the banter. Marivaux was shown not to speak ordinary French (of Alembert, 1785), to sin against the taste and sometimes even against the language (Palissot, 1764), because its sentences seemed artificial and awkward, its too required and obscure figures, and that it created even new words as this verbal phrase which appears now so current to us, but which did not exist yet at the time, to fall in love (front, one said to make oneself in love). This taste for the assignment, this alambiqué style, these incoherent images, define what is called, of living even of Marivaux, the light-hearted gallantry. Thus Palissot, the famous enemy of the philosophers, writes it in 1777.

“This jargon in time was called light-hearted gallantry. In spite of this assignment, Mr. de Marivaux had spirit infinitely; but it was disfigured by a twisted and invaluable style, as a pretty woman disfigures herself by mines. ”

As of the 18th century, the word light-hearted gallantry thus has a pejorative direction: it does not indicate only the style of the writer, but also this form of moral and psychological analysis refined; excess that Marivaux puts into practice in its novels, its comedies and its tests. At the end of the century, in its college or course of old and modern literature, the Toothing-stone summarizes this double direction of the term, while insisting on the mixture of the opposite registers.

“Marivaux was made a style so particular that it had the honor to give him its name; it was called light-hearted gallantry it is the oddest mixture of subtle metaphysics and commonplace phrases, alambiqués feelings and popular dictions. ”

The word then will become positive and take a second more general direction: it describes a certain type of dialog in love (of which the comedies of Marivaux offer the model), it returns to a certain way of living the exchange on the mode of the galantery and the banter. It is in this broad direction that the word is nowadays most usually employed to indicate a enjouée and spiritual atmosphere, reports/ratios in love founded on the play and the seduction, such as one finds them in films of Eric Rohmer, for example.

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