Diderot: teatro e libertà : filosofia, censura, scrittura clandestina

The theater of Diderot and Marivaux (but not only), in the eighteenth century, is the social and cultural place where a very high political stake is played. What is lawful to say and what, on the contrary, is it better or more prudent to be silent about, and not to say, or to which it is simply possible only to allude on the scene, with gestures, looks, movements? The theatrical space is, like the clandestine literature of the same era, also the place of a struggle for the affirmation of freedom of expression and thought, through «writing techniques» that make use of encrypted markers, signs that are allusions to a common code (art of writing) that only a few spectators have the opportunity to understand and decrypt. The essay analyzes some lesser known pièces by the two authors – Est-il bon? Est-il méchant? (Diderot) and L’Île des esclaves (Marivaux) – to identify the subtle interplay of references to the theme of political freedom of conscience, through the détours of clandestine writing and (self) censorship.