Proverbes ostrovskiens

The article shows that if the use of proverbs in Ostrovsky's theatre, far from being an innovation, goes back to a practice used by Russian comedians of the 18th century, among whom Mikhail Matinsky can be considered the founder of the theatre of manners, this practice actually serves other purposes in Ostrovsky. It bas been thought that it is a way of promoting a "Russianness", close to the Slavophile trend, but the playwright's work on the role of proverbs in the composition of the plays gives to the paremic statements a properly poetic function, which comes under the heading of epiphonem. Involved in the dramatic writing, the proverbs at Ostrovsky are indeed "acts of speech". They structure the argumentation, and underlie an authentic rhetoric of the proverb. This rhetoric, backed by a hermeneutic of proverbs, allows the playwright to build a network of interpretations and to probe the question of human destiny. While the Russian theatre of the eighteenth century had confined the proverb to the comedy, Ostrovsky opens the horizon of the drama.