An untheorized genre dating mainly from the 1740s, which prefigures the drame, though it almost always uses verse, is not specifically bourgeois, and has no social mission. Its greatest exponents were Madame de Graffigny (whose Cénie, a prose work, was performed in 1750) and Nivelle de La Chaussée. Voltaire, in Nanine (1749), and Marivaux, in La Mère confidente (1735), also flirted with the genre. The plays present serious and highly artificial domestic situations, conceived for their sentimental appeal. Secret marriages, false identities, and (artifically delayed) recognition scenes are the hallmarks of the genre, along with psychological oversimplification. Though now neglected, these plays were none the less immensely popular with contemporary audiences.

[John Dunkley]

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.