Molière

About Molière

Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622–1673), remains a monumental figure in French literature, ranking #207 in global historical importance according to MIT's Pantheon project. As a playwright, actor, and director, he was the preeminent master of comedy in the French classical tradition, lauded for masterpieces like Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, and The Imaginary Invalid. His works offered sharp, satirical critiques of religious hypocrisy, social pretension, and human folly, securing his legacy as one of the most performed and influential dramatists in history.

Despite this towering cultural importance, Molière's digital footprint in 2025 suggests a significant attention gap. He garnered approximately 269K Wikipedia views last year. This level of attention places him far behind contemporaries in the 'writer' category, such as George Orwell (2.0M views) and Oscar Wilde (2.0M views), though his own importance (HPI #207) is significantly higher than both. Relative to his historical impact, Molière's attention ratio is very close to 1x, suggesting a near-perfect alignment, yet this masks the vast discrepancy between his essential status and the attention paid to less historically influential, but currently popular, modern figures.

Encouragingly, Molière's digital engagement is not entirely static; his 2025 performance showed a modest Year-over-Year Change of +2.5% and a strong Q1 vs Q3 Momentum increase of +6%, indicating a slight, but positive, current resonance online.