Tartuffe

Paper Summary:

"Tartuffe" narrates the story of how a scoundrel and a hypocrite disguises himself as a pious man of religion. By affecting religious behavior, Tartuffe charms his way into the house and the favors of Orgon, a local rich man. Orgon is unfortunately unable to see through Tartuffe's duplicity, and in the process, almost loses all his possessions to the scoundrel Tartuffe. Only the fortuitous intervention of the king saves Orgon's family from the machinations of the unscrupulous Tartuffe. This paper argues that "Tartuffe" is best read as a satire against the hypocrisy of political and religious authority figures of Moliere's day.

From the Paper:

"The satire contained in this play made its author a target of 17th century religious authorities. After all, the main audience of this play was the Parisian elite in the late 17th century. This audience would have understood that Tartuffe had an underlying critique of both bad kingship and lying religious leaders (Baker, "Tartuffe as political parable"). The authority figures evidently understood this as well. When Moliere died, he was originally denied burial on consecrated ground. Only through the intervention of the king swayed the Archbishop of Paris's mind, smoothing the playwright's burial in holy ground (Bloom, "Chronology," p. 208)."

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