DIDEROT (Denis). LePère de famille, comédie en cinq actes, e - Lot 38

DIDEROT (Denis). LePère de famille, comédie en cinq actes, et en prose, avec un discours sur la poésie dramatique. ÀAmsterdam, s.n., 1758. 2 parts in one volume in-8, xxiv[misquoted xxix]-220-xii-195-(one blank) pp. 22cartons, marbled brown calf, smooth spine with garnet title, filleted edges, red edges; spine rubbed, spines split, headbands worn and corners worn (contemporary binding). First edition. Diderot's name, absent from the title, appears at the end of the dedicatory epistle. LE PÈRE DE FAMILLE, "bourgeois drama". A few months after the publication of Le Fils naturel (1757), Denis Diderot set about writing a second (and final) play, taking into account the praise and criticism he had received: LePère de famille met with the same publishing success as Fils naturel, but unlike the latter (created in 1771), it met with public approval. After a few performances in the provinces in 1759, the play entered the Comédie française repertoire in 1761, and remained there until 1839. The appendix contains the speech "De la Poésie dramatique", in which Denis Diderot develops his conception of bourgeois drama, based on a verist aesthetic: the aim is to illustrate the sentimental, family and professional lives of good people, the hardships they endure; their practice of bourgeois virtues as opposed to aristocratic libertinism. With a program of princely education based on common virtues. LePère de famille is preceded by a dedicatory epistle from Denis Diderot to his friend the Princess of Nassau-Sarrebruck, in which he sets out principles for the education of the dedicatee's son, the future sovereign of the principality. However, he took the bold step of presenting this speech as coming from the princess herself, who asked Malesherbes to censor a passage extolling the merits of pleasure. She approved of the substance of the passage, but, as she wrote to Friedrich-Melchior Grimm, "the corrupt world so easily confuses voluptuousness with its mortal enemy, debauchery". These deleted lines would be taken up again in the Encyclopédie as the basis for the article "Jouissance".