Monvel, 'Les Victimes Clotres'

Amants spars, vertu perscute, moines lubriques et meurtriers, confrontation de l'Ancien Rgime et du nouvel ordre, avec la Rvolution en guise de deux ex machina ; mais aussi passions dchanes, proclamations enflammes et tableaux frappants : l'intrigue des Victimes clotres, drame de Jacques-Marie Boutet dit Monvel, avait tout pour plaire au public de 1791, et connut, tout au long de la priode rvolutionnaire, un grand succs scnique ainsi que de nombreuses rditions. La prsente dition retrace l'histoire du texte et de ses reprsentations, de sa cration ses dernires reprises lors des clbrations du Bicentenaire de la Rvolution franaise en 1789. Elle s'efforce d'clairer les implications historiques de cette pice intimement lie aux circonstances et la question monacale, en prsentant les modifications imposes au texte par le contexte idologique et les interprtations varies qui en ont t faites. Mais elle met galement en lumire l'importance proprement dramatique de cette uvre, crite par un acteur soucieux de spectaculaire et d'effets scniques. Avec Les Victimes clotres, chanon manquant entre le drame bourgeois de Diderot, le roman gothique anglais et le mlodrame du dbut du XIXe sicle, s'invente un nouveau type de dramaturgie et un nouveau rapport du public au spectacle : un vritable thtre de la fascination. tous ces titres, le drame de Monvel mrite d'tre redcouvert.

Separated lovers, persecuted virtue, lecherous and murderous monks; the confrontation between the Ancien Rgime and the new order, the Revolution appearing as a kind of deux ex machine; unrestrained passions, enflamed speeches and striking tableaux: the plot of Les Victimes clotres, a drame by Jacques-Marie Boutet, known as Monvel, had everything necessary to please the audiences of 1791. Throughout the revolutionary period this work enjoyed an immense success on the stage, and was also reprinted numerous times. This new edition retraces the history of the text and its performances, from its debut to its last production during the bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution in 1989. This edition explores the historical implications of a work intimately linked to the times in which it was produced, as well as to the debate about monasteries and religious vows. This volume presents not only the changes imposed upon the text by the ideological context, but also the various interpretations that the play has provoked. It sheds light on the theatrical importance of the work, written as it was by an actor attentive to spectacle and stage effects. The missing link between Diderot's drame bourgeois, the English gothic novel and early nineteenth-century melodrama, Les Victimes clotres invents a new kind of dramaturgy and a new relationship between the audience and the performance: a true theatre of fascination. For all these reasons, Monvel's drame deserves to be discovered afresh.