SOURCE: "The Unreconstructed Heroes of Molière," in The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. IV, No. 3, March, 1960, pp. 14-37.

Nelson is an American critic and educator whose works on French literature include Play Within a Play: The Dramatist's Conception of His Art (1958), and Corneille: His Heroes and Their Worlds (1963). In the following essay, he discusses Molière 's treatment of the relationship between appearance and reality in Le Tartuffe, Dom Juan, and Le Misanthrope, "in order to assess [the meaning of this theme for Molière 's art in particular and for comic theory in general."]

There are, as Bailly has said [in L'Ecole classique franglaise], no conversions in Molière. To the end, Arnolphe remains a bigot, Harpagon a miser, Jourdain a parvenu, Argan a hypochondriac. Thus Molière remains true to a rule of comedy far more important than the conventions of time, place, and unity considered...