Archipelag Marivaux: «Wyspa niewolników» – «Wyspa Rozumu» – «Kolonia»

Abstract

One of the important and widespread motifs in the French culture of the first half of the 18th century, from painting to literature, was that of imaginary voyages: voyages imaginaires. Marivaux makes frequent use of it in his work, most notably in his three comedies: L’île des Esclaves, L’île de la Raison, and La Nouvelle Colonie ou la Ligue des femmes (or Colonie, in its later version). All the three plays, set on islands, may be called comedies of manners, but we can find a conscious social reform proposal in them, too: Marivaux would thus be a proponent of abolishing slavery and of equal rights for women. And though such a reading should not dismissed, it seems more appropriate to analyse the works as exercises in imagination. They are utopias, from the point of view of Marivaux and his times, impossible to become a reality and thus belonging to a world of fantasy, which is not to say that they did not influence the consciousness of the 18th-century French. This “conceiving of the inconceivable” let the contemporaries go beyond their limits and break away from schematic thinking, perhaps contributing to political and social change more effectively than a rational critique would.

Keywords

• pierre de marivaux
• comedy
• utopia