Moliere’s Wit Compromised in the Renditions of Tartuffe

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1 Moliere’s Wit Compromised in the Renditions of Tartuffe Moliere’s plays, especially Tartuffe, are difficult to render into English. Moliere employs Alexandrine, a unique form of verse in French, consisting of twelve syllables and usually a caesura after the sixth syllable which is quite different from the English version of Alexandrine that has six iambic feet and a caesura after the third foot. So it becomes difficult to use the rhyme in English. Besides, the rendition of Tartuffe in another language blows away the wittiness of Moliere. There are a number of other issues beyond the poetic ones that affect the renditions, especially when Tartuffe is to be enacted on stage. In case of plays, the perception about what can be performed dictates the course of translation. The performance fluctuates from one location and period to another location and period. Noel Peacock categorizes translators as conservationists, who try to retain all the attributes of the original work, though in a slightly modified form; modernizers, who change quite a few parts of the original to suit the present times; and the post modernizers who dismantle and restructure Moliere’s Tartuffe though they do use some of the original material (1994). The American exercise of staging Tartuffe is often predisposed towards expansive and ludicrous comedy; to such an extent that the audience can make out that it is just a sham. Most of the substance of Moliere’s work goes astray when it is performed just for fits of laughter. The analysis of personality becomes an exercise in futility in such performances. According to Copley, the adaptations of Moliere’s works have altered the poetic writer into a supplier of travesty (1960). This could apply to the stage performances of Tartuffe too! There is an alternative available to the translators. It is to write the play in the seventeenth century English,


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