Pour une autre histoire du théâtre français du XVIIe siècle

Abstract

The 17^th century is considered to be the golden age of French theater, incarnated by the trio of promising dramatists Corneille, Molière and Racine, authors of immortal master pieces, notably Le Cid, Tartuffe et Phèdre. Without ever mentioning or even less recognizing it, this conception of theater historiography parallels the evolving French theater with Parisian theater only and reduces a whole century of theater production to only more or less 40 years. In this paper, I aim at narrating or least pointing to a different history of French theater, a history that embraces theater production outside of the capital, before and after the narrow time period that goes from the 1630s to the 1670s, and in languages other than (Molièrian) French.