Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, Le Malade Imaginaire [The Hypochondriac]

Julia Prest (University of St Andrews)

Ed. by David Williams, University of Sheffield
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.03: French Writing and Culture of the Seventeenth Century: Classical and Baroque, 1600-1700.
Vol. editors: Heather Kirk (University of Western Ontario), Kathrina LaPorta (New York University), Polly Mangerson (DePaul University), Julia Prest (University of St Andrews), Allison Stedman (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1673

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Comedy
Play

Resources

It is difficult to separate Le Malade imaginaire from its early performance history. The pleasing and calculated irony of the eponymous Argan (originally played by Molière) complaining about Molière, for example, is far outweighed by the terrible and unwitting irony of Argan's superstitious and obsessive fear of death when we know that Molière fell ill during the fourth performance of the work and died later that night. As a result of this unhappy and poignant coincidence, some critics have tended to conflate Argan with Molière, suggesting that Argan really is ill or that Molière had written a bitter and personal attack on the medical profession. The first of these tendencies is particularly unhelpful. Argan is, as the …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2228 words

Citation: Prest, Julia. "Le Malade Imaginaire". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 September 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4078, accessed 21 November 2024.]

Save this article