L'Illusion comique: A Dramatic Anticipation of Corneille's Critical Analyses of his Art

Abstract

Eric Bentley's statement is singularly appropriate to L'Illusion comique, with its plays within a play and its apparent insistence on the magical art of Alcandre which conjures up for Pridamant a theatrical vision of the reality he seeks, and for him and for us a demonstration of the imaginative power of drama, a territory governed by its own laws which Corneille calls ‘les préceptes de l'art’, adding that ‘il est constant qu'il y a des préceptes, puisqu'il y a un art…’ In the dedication of the first edition of L'Illusion comique, which appeared in 1639, three or four years after its first performance, the dramatist called the play ‘un étrange monstre’, ‘une invention bizarre et extravagante’, ‘cette pièce capricieuse’, and when, in 1660, his Examen of the comedy appeared in his collected works, he used similar expressions to describe it, ‘une galanterie extravagante’ and ‘ce caprice’, referring deprecatingly to his failure to observe the rules, those ‘precepts’ which by then he appeared to accept as a necessity.