La Chaussee, Pierre Claude Nivelle de

La Chaussée, Pierre Claude Nivelle de 

Born 1692 in Paris; died there Mar. 14, 1754. French playwright; member of the Académie Française (1736).

La Chaussée created the comédie larmoyante, the genre of the moralizing “tearful comedy” that anticipated some tendencies of the drame bourgeoise of the second half of the 18th century. The element of humor present in the comedies False Antipathy (1733) and Fashionable Prejudice (1735) was later replaced by sentimental scenes that predominated in his subsequent works, including Mélanide (1741), Pamela (1743; a stage adaptation of S. Richardson’s novel), and The Governess (1747; Russian translation, 1955). Sharing none of the ideas of the Enlightenment, La Chaussée made his aristocrats the embodiment of virtue.

WORKS

Oeuvres choisies, vols. 1–2. Paris, 1810.
Contes et poésies. Paris [1880].

REFERENCES

Mokul’skii, S. Istoriia zapadnoevropeiskogo teatra, vol. 2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1957.
Lanson, G. Nivelle de la Chaussée et la comédie larmoyante, 2nd ed. Paris, 1903.

I. A. LILEEVA