thesis

Le théâtre de la foire des origines à 1762 : des tréteaux à l'or des boulevards, un cas d'appropriation culturelle et de détournement d'un média

Defense date:

Jan. 1, 1993

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Institution:

Paris 3

Disciplines:

Directors:

Abstract EN:

Le theatre de la foire s'epanouit a paris dans les foires de saint-germain et de saintlaurent entre la fin du regne de louis xiv jusqu'a 1762, annee ou il fusionne avec la comedie italienne. Ce theatre que ses createurs et certains critiques percoivent comme original est en realite composite. Il emprunte ses themes au folklore et la litterature francaise ou etrangere tant populaire que savante. Il s'inspire largement pour ses techniques et ses personnages des spectacles de treteaux, de la comedie italienne, ainsi que de sa rivale, la comedie francaise. Il est original par plusieurs aspects : - il annonce le spectacle rigoureusement commercial concu comme une entreprise. - il reussit a briser les pribleges royaux reglementant le theatre a paris en en demontrant l'absurdite au cours de proces retentissants. -il conflisque a son profit les spectacles populaires et contestataires pour produire une synthese dans laquelle s'exprime les aspirations de la bourgeoisie parisienne. -il sert de laboratoire a certains auteurs (lessage, fuselier, piron) pour des experiences theatrales qui liberent definitivement le theatre des "genres" issus de l'antiquite. Ce theatre fecond (plus de 600 pieces), trop meconnu, meritait d'etre analyuse, ses pieces, ses manuscrits, ses auteurs et ses critiques inventories.

Abstract FR:

The "theatre de la foire" blommed in paris in the saint-germain and the saint-laurent fairs from the end of louis xiv's reign to 1762, when it merges with the comedie italienne. This theater considered by its founders and its critics as totally original is heterogeneous. Its themes are borrowed from folklore or from french or foreign litterature, popular as well as scholar. It derives from the platform's entertainment, from the comedie italienne and the comedie francaise its technics and its characters. The "theatre de la foire" is however original in several aspects : it foretells the stricitly commercial entertainment concelved as an entreprise. It succeded to break the royal privileges that controled the theater in paris, by showing its absurdity through important lawsuits. It confiscated to its own benefit several parisian stages diverting its popular and anti establishment characteristics to create a synthesis expressing the ambitions of the french bourgeoisie. Its stage was used as a laboratory by some writers (lesage, fuselier, piron) for theatrical experiments which completely broke it away from the generes inherited from antiquity. This prolific theater (more than 600 plays), badly known, deserved to be analysed; its plays, its manuscripts, its writers and its critics to be redescovered.