Molière and Paradox: Skepticism and Theater in the Early Modern Age by James F. Gaines (review)

James F. Gaines acknowledges that, "[a]t first glance, it seems that the ground of seventeenth-century comedy is much too shallow a place to search for the treasure of philosophical wisdom" (9). The religious and intellectual institutions of the time contributed to this well-ingrained idea that stuck for centuries: even in its apogee, seventeenth-century theater, and especially the genre of comedy, had already been condemned by the Church as a sinful entertainment, and as Gaines points out, was discriminated against as an inferior genre by the Académie Française. The author's ambitious task is to disprove this impression by offering careful analyses of Molière's comedies. Yet Moliere, one of the three greatest dramatists of his time as well as one of the greatest masters of Western comedy, is a playwright who, Gaines argues, "of all the French Classical dramatists, seems one of the least qualified as a philosopher" because of his middle-class background and the lack of a "paper trail" on his education (9). But Gaines addresses this issue in the introduction.

The author has dedicated much of his scholarly research to Molière, and in the last two decades has published several articles on the paradoxes in Molière's plays. In fact, as mentioned on the Acknowledgments page, this volume draws substantially on the author's six articles published in other journals and books between 1992 and 2003. This book, Molière and Paradox: Skepticism and Theater in the Early Modern Age, gathers a wealth of well-thought-out and ripe ideas, adding to them and producing a cohesive whole demonstrating how the recurring paradoxes in Molière's plays draw a parallel to arguments of skepticism and attempting to position Molière in this movement. With a total of nine chapters, Gaines dedicates a full chapter each to some of the playwright's most popular pieces: L'École des femmes, Dom Juan, Le Misanthrope, Tartuffe, Le Malade imaginaire. Another two chapters discuss Les Précieuses ridicules, Sganarelle, ou le cocu imaginaire, Amphitryon, L'Avare, and Les Femmes savantes, as well as a few other plays mentioned briefly.

The introduction of the book is a very enticing invitation to the reading of this volume as the author explains why he believes Molière was exposed to and had a disposition toward the skeptic school of thought as it was defined in his time, and it also includes details about Molière's life before he became a playwright for Monsieur (brother of the king, Louis XIV). But the introduction also falls short of a much needed informative introduction to the philosophy of skepticism—its followers and its enemies—to help with its intricacy in the analytical chapters to follow. Gaines is without a doubt very well read in this school of thought. The close readings of his plays use a theoretical and philosophical framework that calls heavily on important thinkers who contributed or were opposed to the movement of skepticism from seventeenth-century thinkers—Michel de Montaigne, Pierre Charron, René Descartes, François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Blaise Pascal, and Pierre Gassendi—all the way back to the classical Greeks, including Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, Agrippa, Lucretius, and Aristotle. He also intelligently supports his arguments with excellent contemporary references from other experts on the topic. Gaines's stance on Molière's works is unusual, but it is not new, as he makes mention of Robert McBride's The Skeptical Vision of Molière: A Study in Paradox, which he often addresses and discusses alongside his readings. Gaines even goes so far as to include a comment by George Soros, a contemporary economist-philosopher whose name is familiar to anyone who keeps up to date with current issues. It is a surprising, but a welcome and most fitting, reference to initiate a discussion of Monsieur Jourdain's mental function in Le...