The Bourgeois Gentleman

this book was exactly what I needed for my french class. All in French, and the supplemental materials were very helpful and easy to understand, as were the footnotes.

In seventeenth century class-conscious France a tradesman, even one that had achieved financial success, was not considered a gentleman. The Bourgeois Gentleman (1670), sometimes titled The Would-Be Gentleman, is a comedic tale of a wealthy tradesman, Monsieur Jourdain, that aspires to be a gentleman. His motivation is to gain favor with a beautiful marchioness; his efforts are complicated by the fact that he is already married. Jourdain hires tutors for singing, dancing, fencing, and even philosophy and also engages a private tailor to dress him fashionably. They all have great fun with the vain, gullible Jourdain, easily persuading him to behave in an outrageously, ridiculous manner. The fast moving plot and snappy dialogue make good reading, but I strongly suspect that The Bourgeois Gentleman is much better in performance than in print. The absurd, hilarious situations must have the audience continuously laughing. The Bourgeois Gentleman is available in an inexpensive Dover Thrift Edition. Also, virtually all collections of Moliere's plays include this delightful comedy. An Unexpected Literary Connection: The Bourgeois Gentleman was still quite popular nearly two hundred years later when Alexander Dumas was writing his swashbuckling adventure stories. Humorously, Dumas utilized Moliere as a minor character in an early chapter of The Man in the Iron Mask. A farcical situation, one in which Moliere is mistaken to be an assistant to King Louis XIV's tailor, is prefaced by Dumas with the comment "Where Probably Moliere Formed His First Idea of The Bourgeois Gentilhomme".

I studied this text when I was 18. Moliere is witty and humorous, which actually made reading this text a pleasure. He has lovely usage of his language.

I read this in my French class... the play is hilarious, well worth reading, and if you can't read French, you should read a translation or go see the play! It's funny, and although it is like many of Molière's other plays, it's a nice deviation from the normal play.