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Papers Published
- M. Longino. "Le "Mamamouchi" ou la colonisation de l'imaginaire français par le monde ottoman.." Théâtre et voyage (2009).
Abstract:
Mention of Molière’s comedy, Le Bourgeois
gentilhomme,
more often than not evokes the knowing
riposte: “ah, le
grand mamamouchi!” The play functions as a
standard
marker in the story of French exoticism.
Molière’s plot
resolution depends totally on a cross
cultural contrivance
—Frenchmen disguised as Turks—dressing like
them,
behaving like them, speaking like them, and
on cultural
markers such as rugs, dervishes, even the
Koran reduced
to the status of props. While the credulous
lead star,
Monsieur Jourdain, will believe his eyes and
fall for the
visuals of the ruse, even he will have
trouble believing his
ears: “Tant de choses en deux mots?” He,
son of a
merchant, knows how to count, and misapplies
the skills
of his family trade to assess translation.
While this is a
moment of high comedy, it is also a reminder
that
language and commerce are intimately related
through
the process of exchange they both represent.
Such
serious spoofing suggests that we look at the
linguistic
and commercial, and, by implication,
diplomatic and
cultural relations that obtained between the
French and
the Ottomans in and around 1670, when the
play was first
staged.
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