romantic love. The theoretical basis for this rigidity of character is developed by Bergson in his discussion of comedy.
[A] comic character is generally comic in proportion to his
ignorance of himself. The comic person is unconscious. . . . Were
Harpagon to see us laugh at his miserliness, I do not say that he
would get rid of it, but he would either show it less or show it
differently. Indeed, it is in this sense only that laughter
"corrects men's manners." It makes us at once endeavour to appear
what we ought to be, what some day we shall perhaps end in
That Harpagon learns nothing from being outwitted and outlived by his children is not so much due to Moliere's limited skill with character transformation as to the probability that Moliere, in making Harpagon the archetype of the miser, is pointing to the comic absurdity of extreme materialism. For it is that element of character that controls the entire action of the play. Harpagon embodies such ma
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