DEVICES OF POLITICAL HUMOR AND MORAL SATIRE IN ALECSANDRI'S THEATRE
DEVICES OF POLITICAL HUMOR AND MORAL SATIRE IN ALECSANDRI'S THEATRE

Summary/Abstract: Alecsandri's theatre is a different kind of chronicle of his days, which does not simulate, but rather ironically reproduces (without succumbing to the temptation of caricature) the condition of the playwright and actor in a society that is not very progress-oriented and that assumes its condition from a resigned position. It goes without saying that social and political humour is omnipresent in the construction of Alecsandri's plays, the latter being triggered by social inequities and reactions sparked by the confusion that financial status symbolically transfers the possessor a document of cultural identity and spiritual property. Marriages arranged by parents, the mockery of those returning from trips abroad towards everything that represented the authentic Romanian spirit, the brake of conservatism opposed to the attempts at modernization and natural social evolution, the corruptibility and dishonor of state representatives, the growing discontent and peasant revolts, all constitute primitive forms of humor that, in Alecsandri’s theatre, manifest themselves predominantly at the conversational and situational level.

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