Diderot drammaturgo. Dal "Fils naturel" a "Est-il bon? Est-il méchant?"

Diderot as a Playwright. from Fils naturel to est-il bon? est-il méchant? Diderot’s dramaturgy, with the model of the Drame bourgeois, as it is known, marks a turning point in the history of theatre and philosophical ideas about theatre. Central to his early works is his interest in pantomime as a non-minor genre. With the writings of 1757-1758 around the two pièces (Le Fils naturel and Le Père de famille) – but not with the pièces themselves – Diderotian dramaturgy advances a new ideal of the “stage” that moves from a theatre of characters to a theatre of conditions/actions, causally linked to the principles of vitalistic materialism that is its premise. The first point to be analyzed is the theoretical disconnect between the intentions expressed – in the writings accompanying the two works: the Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel and the De la poésie dramatique – and the artistic realizations, of little or no interest. The second point to be investigated is the aesthetic leap made by Diderot, more than twenty years later, with the composition of his last play, the posthumous Diversissement domestique: Est-il bon? Est-il méchant? ou L’Officieux Persifleur, ou Celui qui les sert tous et qui n’en contente aucun (1781). Here, the Philosophe partially realises the theoretical propositions expressed in his writings on the theatre, and in particular the theses advanced in the famous Paradoxe sur le comédien (also posthumous), elaborated in the intermediate period (1769-1777). Diderot finally succeeds in developing a new model of bourgeois drama, based on the critical sensibility of the present, with which he confirms the theatrical and dialogical vocation of his philosophy, building, for the theatre itself, an innovative conceptual apparatus based on the realism of conditions and on the variety/contrast of sensitivities in the intrigue.