Recommendations

Books Like Le Chandelier

Best books to read after Le Chandelier by Alfred de Musset

Musset's 1835 Proverbe in which the young clerk Fortunio is introduced as a false lover to distract a suspicious husband from his wife's real affair — but his genuine love for her is so pure it displaces the calculating officer who devised the scheme. A defense of naive Romantic feeling against strategic cynicism.

  1. 1

    Les Caprices de Marianne

    by Alfred de Musset

    The structural parallel — the young man used as cover in an adulterous arrangement, with very different emotional outcomes; the comparison shows what Musset does with the same basic situation.

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  2. 2

    On ne badine pas avec l'amour

    by Alfred de Musset

    The companion play where naive feeling also wins out over defensive strategy — but the stakes are higher and the outcome tragic rather than comic.

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  3. 3

    Fantasio

    by Alfred de Musset

    The companion comedy where the unconventional young man's wit and feeling disrupt the social arrangements that surround him — Fortunio's naive love parallels Fantasio's jester's freedom.

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  4. 4

    Cyrano de Bergerac

    by Edmond Rostand

    The most famous French comedy of the man whose genuine love is overlooked in favor of a more conventionally attractive rival — Fortunio is Cyrano without the tragic dimension.

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  5. 5

    Much Ado About Nothing

    by William Shakespeare

    The Shakespearean comedy where the social game of wit and denial is finally overcome by direct honest feeling — the English model for what Musset does in the Proverbes.

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  6. 6

    Le Misanthrope

    by Molière

    Molière's Alceste is the ancestor of Fortunio's type — the man whose directness and sincerity are treated as naivety by the sophisticated world around him, but who is the only one who is right.

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  7. 7

    Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée

    by Alfred de Musset

    The companion Proverbe where genuine feeling also breaks through the social performance — in the one-act form rather than the three-act comedy.

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  8. 8

    The Importance of Being Earnest

    by Oscar Wilde

    Wilde's comedy where the cynical social performer is finally disarmed by direct feeling — Algernon's arc in Act III parallels Clavaroche's displacement by Fortunio's sincerity.

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