Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée
Encyclopedia
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
; † 14 May 1754 in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
), French dramatist who blurred the lines between comedy and tragedy with his comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante was a genre of French drama of the 18th century. In this type of sentimental comedy, the impending tragedy was resolved at the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears. Plays of this genre that ended unhappily nevertheless allowed the audience to see that a "moral...
.
In 1731 he published an Epître a Clio, a didactic poem in defense of Leriget de la Faye in his dispute with Antoine Houdar de la Motte
Antoine Houdar de la Motte
Antoine Houdar de la Motte was a French author.He was born and died in Paris. In 1693 his comedy, Les Originaux, was a complete failure, and so depressed the author that he contemplated joining the Trappists. Four years later he began writing texts for operas and ballets, e.g...
, who had maintained that verse was useless in tragedy. La Chaussée was forty years old before he produced his first play, La Fausse Antipathic (1734). His second play, Le Prejugée à la mode (1735) turns on the fear of incurring ridicule felt by a man in love with his own wife, a prejudice dispelled in France, according to La Harpe
Jean-François de La Harpe
Jean-François de La Harpe was a French playwright, writer and critic.-Life:La Harpe was born in Paris of poor parents. His father, who signed himself Delharpe, was a descendant of a noble family originally of Vaud...
, by La Chaussée's comedy. L'Ecole des amis (1737) followed, and, after an unsuccessful attempt at tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
in Maximinien, he returned to comedy in Mélanide (1741).
Mélanide fully develops the type known as comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante was a genre of French drama of the 18th century. In this type of sentimental comedy, the impending tragedy was resolved at the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears. Plays of this genre that ended unhappily nevertheless allowed the audience to see that a "moral...
. Comedy was no longer to provoke laughter, but tears. The innovation consisted in destroying the sharp distinction then existing between tragedy and comedy in French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
. Indications of this change had been already offered in the work of Marivaux, and La Chaussée's plays led naturally to the domestic drama of Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
and of Sedaine
Michel-Jean Sedaine
Michel-Jean Sedaine was a French dramatist, was born in Paris.- Biography :His father, who was an architect, died when Sedaine was quite young, leaving no fortune, and the boy began life as a mason's labourer...
. The new method found bitter enemies. Alexis Piron
Alexis Piron
Alexis Piron was a French epigrammatist and dramatist.He was born at Dijon, where his father, Aimé Piron, was an apothecary. Piron senior wrote verse in the Burgundian language. Alexis began life as clerk and secretary to a banker, and then studied law...
nicknames the author "le Reverend Père Chaussee," and ridiculed him in one of his most famous epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
s.
Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
maintained that the comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante was a genre of French drama of the 18th century. In this type of sentimental comedy, the impending tragedy was resolved at the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears. Plays of this genre that ended unhappily nevertheless allowed the audience to see that a "moral...
was a proof of the inability of the author to produce either of the recognized kinds of drama, though he himself produced a play of similar character in L'Enfant prodigue. The hostility of the critics did not prevent the public from shedding tears nightly over the sorrows of La Chaussee's heroine.
L’École des Mères (1744) and La Gouvernante (1747) form, with those already mentioned, the best of his work. The strict moral aims pursued by La Chaussée in his plays seem hardly consistent with his private preferences. He frequented the same high society as did the comte de Caylus and contributed to the Recueils de ces messieurs. Villemain said of his style that he wrote prosaic verses with purity, while Voltaire, usually an adverse critic of his work, said he was "un des premiers apres ceux qui ont du genie."
For the comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante was a genre of French drama of the 18th century. In this type of sentimental comedy, the impending tragedy was resolved at the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears. Plays of this genre that ended unhappily nevertheless allowed the audience to see that a "moral...
see Gustave Lanson
Gustave Lanson
Gustave Lanson was a French historian and literary critic. He taught at the Sorbonne in Paris.-Biography:...
, Ninette de la Chaussée et la comedie larmoyante (1887).