Recommendations

Books Like Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée

Best books to read after Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée by Musset

Musset's most concentrated Proverbe dramatique (1845) — a perfect one-act play in which a Count and a Marquise exchange an increasingly charged conversation, moving from social pleasantry to argument to mutual confession of love. The door must be either open or shut.

  1. 1

    Il ne faut jurer de rien

    by Alfred de Musset

    The companion Proverbe — slightly longer, slightly funnier, but the closest in tone and formal economy; reading the two together shows the full range of what Musset can do in the form.

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  2. 2

    Fantasio

    by Alfred de Musset

    The comedy that established Musset's mode for the Proverbes — the ennui, the wit, the mask, and the eventual admission of genuine feeling that Il faut qu'une porte achieves with perfect concentration.

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  3. 3

    On ne badine pas avec l'amour

    by Alfred de Musset

    The companion play where the inability to say what one means directly has tragic consequences — the dark counterpart to Il faut qu'une porte's elegant resolution.

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  4. 4

    The Way of the World

    by William Congreve

    The English Restoration comedy with the finest dialogue of not-saying-what-you-mean — Millamant's and Mirabell's courtship negotiation is the closest ancestor to the Count and Marquise's conversation.

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  5. 5

    Love in Idleness

    by Alfred de Musset

    Another of the shorter Proverbes — On ne saurait penser à tout — which shows the later Musset working in the same miniature form with even lighter stakes.

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  6. 6

    A Room with a View

    by E.M. Forster

    The novel in which the social conversation that fills most of the book is itself the obstacle to what everyone wants to say; Forster's precision about what is unsaid parallels Musset's.

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  7. 7

    Le Misanthrope

    by Molière

    The great French comedy of what cannot be said directly — Alceste's furious sincerity against Célimène's flirtatious indirection; the model for all French drama of social speech and silence.

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  8. 8

    Much Ado About Nothing

    by William Shakespeare

    The play where Benedick and Beatrice argue and insult each other for three acts because they cannot say they love each other — the structural parallel to the Count and Marquise's charged conversation.

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