We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
L'ENFANT ET LE TYRAN: “LA MARSEILLAISE” AND THE BIRTH OF MELODRAMA.
- Authors
Wise, Jennifer
- Abstract
Whether through its association with 1789 or 1830, with the German labor movement of the nineteenth century, or the fight against fascism in the twentieth, the stirring sound of the national anthem of France is familiar to us all.1 (And film buffs everywhere have a powerful image of this last association thanks to the unforgettable depiction of the song in Casablanca.) Less well known is that this famous song, though feared during the 1790s as the terrorist “chant” of the guillotine,2 also provided René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt with the ingredients, and a ready-made dramaturgical recipe, for inventing a new theatrical genre.3 With its simple division of the world into vulnerable, imperiled enfants on the one hand, and powerful, plotting tyrans on the other, and its demand that the latter be killed, “La Marseillaise” may well have helped to stoke the fire of the Terror and certainly helped legitimize its violence. But in terms of its plot, characters, and politicomoral thought, even in terms of its diction and spectacle,4 “La Marseillaise” also laid down the dramaturgical rules for playwriting in revolutionary Paris, showing the father of melodrama how to make for the happiness of the enfants de la patrie—those in the audience and those on the stage.
- Subjects
FRANCE; LA Marseillaise (Music); FRENCH melodrama; THEATER; FRENCH Revolution, 1789-1799, in literature; PIXERECOURT, R.-C. Guilbert de (Rene-Charles Guilbert de), 1773-1844; FRENCH drama; VICTOR ou les enfants au pouvoir (Theatrical production); COELINA, ou L'Enfant du mystere (Play); VICTOR, ou L'Enfant de la foret (Play); THEATER audiences; EIGHTEENTH century; DRAMA criticism; THEATER history
- Publication
Theatre Survey, 2012, Vol 53, Issue 1, p29
- ISSN
0040-5574
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0040557411000950