Molière

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great figures in world literature. The French playwright Moliere (1622-1673) began as an actor, aiming to be a tragedian, but he was stronger in comedy, touring with a troupe for 13 years until Louis XIV summoned him to audition at the Louvre and gave him his break. It was in Paris and at Versailles that Moliere wrote and performed his best known plays, among them Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope and Le Malade Imaginaire, and in time he was so celebrated that French became known as The Language of Moliere.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Noel Peacock No other episodes
  Emeritus Marshall Professor in French Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow
• Jan Clarke No other episodes
  Professor of French at Durham University
• Joe Harris No other episodes
  Professor of Early Modern French and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

Reading list

• The Cambridge Companion to Moliere
  David Bradby and Andrew Calder (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
• Moliere in Context
  Jan Clarke (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
• Moliere
  Georges Forestier (Gallimard, 2018)
• Moliere: Reasoning with Fools
  Michael Hawcroft (Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Women and Irony in Moliere's Comedies of Mariage
  John D. Lyons (Oxford University Press, 2023)
• Le Nouveau Molieriste
  Robert McBride and Noel Peacock (eds.) (University of Glasgow Presw, 1994-)
• The Public Mirror: Moliere and the Social Commerce of Depiction
  Larry F. Norman (University of Chicago Press, 1999)
• Moliere sous les feux de la rampe
  Noel Peacock (Hermann, 2012)
• Controversy in French Drama: Moliere's Tartuffe and the Struggle for Influence
  Julia Prest (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
• Moliere: A Theatrical Life
  Virginia Scott (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Related episodes

• Samuel Beckett
  
  17 Jan, 2019 840 French and related literatures
• Montaigne
  
  25 Apr, 2013 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Bertolt Brecht
  
  25 Apr, 2024 830 German and related literatures
• Bohemianism
  
  9 Oct, 2003 700 Arts
• Marlowe
  
  7 Jul, 2005 820 English and Old English literatures
• Germaine de Stael
  
  16 Nov, 2017 840 French and related literatures
• Sartre
  
  7 Oct, 2004 840 French and related literatures
• Camus
  
  3 Jan, 2008 840 French and related literatures
• Thomas Middleton
  
  20 Mar, 2025 820 English and Old English literatures
• Voltaire’s Candide
  
  3 May, 2012 840 French and related literatures

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: m002b701

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002b701

Auto-category: 842.4 (French drama - 17th century)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. The French playwright Molière, 1622 to 1673, is one of the great figures in world literature.