Eugène Brieux et Georges Ancey: de la « pièce à thèse » au « drame décomposé »
Eugène Brieux and Georges Ancey: From the ‘Thesis Play’ to the ‘Decomposed Drama’

Summary/Abstract: Boulevard theater is often considered a dramatic art that strictly adheres to the fixed rules of the ‘wellmadeplay’. One of its offshoots is the ‘thesis play’, which, while appearing to respect the traditionalmodel, perverts it through openly epic elements. Indeed, at the turn of the 20th century, in dramasaddressing thorny social issues, authors readily resort to narratives to lead spectators, through unshakableevidence and reasoning, to adhere to their theses. This inherently rhetorical method underminesthe very foundations of the canonical form of drama, while contributing to impairing its smoothfunctioning. Two plays particularly illustrate the alteration of the Aristotelian ‘beautiful animal’, primarilydue to the intrusion of narrative sequences: Les Avariés by Eugène Brieux and Ces Messieursby Georges Ancey

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