La Structure Mythique de La Modification de Michel Butor (review)

Book Reviews unacknowledged, characteristic: both are rooted in ideology. For all its claims of objectivity and good sense, "la critique universitaire" is founded no less on ideological convictions than is its rival. Whence the bitter antagonism. If one needed proof of this, René Pommier's work on Tartuffe would provide it. M. Pommier begins by announcing that, "sur Le Tartuffe, comme sur bon nombre de nos grandes œuvres classiques, l'essentiel a déjà été dit et souvent bien dit, et parfois depuis longtemps, voire depuis toujours. . ." (5). The text, in this view, is perfectly limpid and need only be read carefully to be understood. The role of the critic is to do precisely this meticulous—and, of course, objective—reading. The role of the director staging Molière's play is to take the text literally and thereby produce a version as close as possible to what the author obviously intended. True to his notion that the reader or audience can see what Molière had in mind, René Pommier sets out to explain three key passages in Tartuffe and, along the way, refute the aberrant readings of critics and directors like Charles Mauron and Roger Planchón. Readers familiar with M. Pommier's earlier works will not be surprised that Roland Barthes, despite having written no major text on Molière, is also harshly assailed. The explications de texte that form the core of this book treat Madame Pernelle's entrance in the play's opening lines (vv. 1-40), Orgon's account of how he came to know Tartuffe (vv. 281-310), and Tartuffe's famous third-act appearance on stage. M. Pommier concludes that, in the first scene, "Molière a réussi un véritable exploit" (57) by having Madame Pernelle behave as she naturally would and still reveal so much about six major characters. Orgon's attempt to demonstrate to Cléante Tartuffe's virtues merely proves how gullible Orgon is and shows Molière's intention to "faire la double satire de l'hypocrisie et de la crédulité, de l'imposture et de la jobardise, du mensonge et de la bêtise" (112). That, for M. Pommier, is what the play is all about, and that is all it is about. Tartuffe's third-act entrance underscores "la sensualité de son personnage" and emphasizes "la contradiction qu'il y a entre le masque que prend Tartuffe et son vrai visage" (161). The book's concluding chapter is an attack against those who portray Tartuffe as "jeune et séduisant" (182). M. Pommier holds Charles Mauron primarily responsible for the popularity of this idea and is especially troubled by Roger Planchon's seeming extension of it to suggest that Orgon is physically attracted to Tartuffe. Even those who disagree with Planchón here—and I, for one, do—will wish that M. Pommier had adopted a more measured tone in this chapter and throughout his work. Calling critics and their supposedly credulous readers "des imposteurs et des dupes, des escrocs et des gogos, des hâbleurs et des jobards" (243) does not advance critical discourse. M. Pommier's approach adds little to our knowledge of the play, but he claims that to do so is virtually impossible. Nor, however, does it enhance our understanding of the critical debate that has so often swirled around Tartuffe. How to explain, for example, the popularity of readings that M. Pommier finds so abhorrent? The absence of questions like this one and a careless job of proofreading by its editors detract from the contribution this book might have made. Michael S. Koppisch Michigan State University Patricia A. Struebig. La Structure Mythique de La Modification de Michel Butor. Peter Lang, 1994. Pp. 126. $39.95. In a work that is both highly technical and yet relatively accessible to readers with some grounding in literary theory, Patricia Struebig offers new insights into Butor's novel as seen VOL. XXXVI, NO. 1 95 L'Esprit Créateur through the structuralist paradigms of Lévi-Strauss. Struebig's exposition of the structuralist methods of literary analysis and her carefully constructed tables indicating the ways in which the structure of La Modification...