The Enchantment and The Mask by Henry Bataille: Formal Overthrowing of the “Boulevard Theatre”

Abstract

During his lifetime, Henry Bataille was considered the “new Racine”, but he has since been remembered as the creator of “sentimental realism” that seems to fit perfectly within the aesthetic of boulevard theatre. In fact, the playwright’s name often appears among those who sincerely admire the rigid and anachronistic structure of the “well-made play”. However, despite the author’s certain attachment to the tradition of dramatic art, he does not hesitate to subvert its essential foundations. By analyzing Bataille’s earliest plays, such as The Enchantment and The Mask, one can observe an evident crisis in the canonical form that Bataille perverts through the intrusion of narrative sequences, the undermining of the fable, and the construction of a character deliberately devoid of active attributes. The study of these two texts reveals the originality of the writer, who, despite a few concessions to realism, turns away from various constraints of the “absolute drama”, while heralding the advent of a new drama poetics.