MÉLODRAME ET PARODIE DANS LE THÉÂTRE DE EUGÈNE IONESCO
MELODRAMA AND PARODY IN THE THEATRE OF EUGÈNE IONESCO

Summary/Abstract: The study Melodrama and Parody in the theatre of Eugène Ionesco focuses on the sometimes exaggerated sentimentality of Ionesco’s plays, which reaches the point of parodic deconstruction. Devoid of the burden of any apparent content, of any aleatory dramatic substance, these plays seem rather transparent, imponderable, even purified by any thematic charge of a psychological, ideological or philosophic order. Ionesco, as character within his own texts, therefore in a position of a metafiction, frequently indulges in a self-intoxicated emotional disposition of a melodramatic type, corresponding to an aesthetics of the excess, as well as to an aesthetics of the astonishment. The melodramatic type of theatrality implies, with Ionesco, as formerly with classic authors of melodramas, such as Guilbert de Pixerécourt, nicknamed "Corneille of the boulevards", Louis-Charles Caigniez, Victor Ducange, Joseph Bouchardy and, finally, Victor Hugo, an ethical statement, embodied in the absurd and somehow poetic revolt of a hero-type protagonist.

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