Mieszczanin szlachcicem, czyli estetyzacja frustracji społecznej i jej transhistoryczne aktualizacje (1670–2022)
The Bourgeois Gentleman, or the Aestheticisation of Social Frustration and Its Transhistorical Applications (1670–2022)

Summary/Abstract: This article concerns Molière’s 1670 comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bour- geois Gentleman) and selected aspects of its scholarly and artistic reception. The argument is organised around two problems: the possibility of interpreting the social meanings of the work and the challenges that comédie-ballet poetics poses to translators and theater-makers. The author presents an overview of research on the image of impossible class advancement as thematized in The Bourgeois Gentleman and indicates a new interpretive direction, referring to categories drawn from the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu. He also discusses how the structural elements of comédie-ballet characteristic of Molière’s play have been approached in its Polish adaptations, translations, and stagings (18th-century court theater, Jerzy Gruza, Jerzy Stuhr, Benjamin Lazar). He argues that taken from a transhistorical perspective, both the interpretative work and stage practices concerning The Bourgeois Gentleman illustrate the same phenomenon: the play’s relevance is discovered not through modernization or revealing new meanings, but rather thanks to a reflection on the historical conditions of culture in Molière’s time.

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