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In 1664, Molière´s Tartuffe was banned from public performance. This book provides a detailed, in-depth account of five-year struggle (1664-69) to have the ban lifted and, so doing, sheds important new light on 1660s France and the ancien régime more broadly.

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1. The Struggle for Influence: The Stakes and their Protagonists 2. What Is a faux dévot? The Hypocrite 3. What Is a faux dévot? The Zealot 4. What Is a vrai dévot and Is He a véritable homme de bien? 5. The Struggle for Influence: Tartuffe in an Age of Absolutism

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"In this important new monograph, Julia Prest sets the five most intense years of the Tartuffe controversy - the period of its banning, from 1664 to 1669 - in the context of the varied interests competing for authority in society and, especially, for influence over the young king. ... Julia Prest´s attractively written monograph is now essential reading for understanding the text of the play itself, and the whole controversy that surrounded it." (Richard Maber, Oxford University Press Journals - French Studies, Vol. 71, January, 2017)

"Julia Prest´s Controversy in French Drama: Molière´s Tartuffe and the Struggle for Influence elucidates standard narratives of the 1664-69 Tartuffe controversy and adds new dimensions by examining a wide swath of primary and secondary sources. ... Grounded in religious history and synthesizing French-language and English-language scholarship on Tartuffe, this book is sure to have a long shelf life. Prest provides crucial literary and historical context, clearly articulating the stakes of the Tartuffe debates." (Daniel Smith, Comparative Drama, Vol. 50 (1), September, 2016)

"The Shape of [Prest´s] argument is essentially chiastic, with the ´struggle for influence´ of the first and last chapters encasing three central pieces which focus, relatedly, on the nature and meaning of true and false devotion in the period . . . The valuable insight which Prest affords is to bring out how, as a result, the presence of moral goodness is seen to lie most clearly outside, rather than within, the parameters of Christianity. The book adopts a clearly articulated line of argument and, in doing so, brings history, spirituality, and theatre into an enlightening synthesis." - Times Literary Supplement

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Julia Prest is Senior Lecturer in the Department of French at the University of St Andrews, UK.

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