ABSTRACT
Garnier’s plays constitute an early theatre of cruelty - conceived, it might be said, with the laudable object of moving the spectators to pity, but in which the means seem disproportionate to the end. The anguish experienced by the characters is so strongly stressed that ultimately it becomes deadening, so that pity is eliminated by either incredulity or revulsion. In spite of the fragmentary nature of their moral content, Garnier’s tragedies served a general moral purpose in his own view. He saw the miseries depicted in them as a reflection of his own times and pointed this out repeatedly in his dedications and elsewhere. The plays themselves also contain passages which it is easy to construe as allusions to the contemporary state of France. They help to link Garnier’s drama to the political climate of his age and make it impossible to consider it as a product of purely academic humanism.
