LA CHAUSSE, PIERRE-CLAUDE NIVELLE DE

born 1692, Paris, France died March 14, 1754, Paris French playwright who created the comdie larmoyante (tearful comedy), a verse-drama form merging tearful, sentimental scenes with an invariably happy ending. These sentimental comedies, which were precursors of Denis Diderot's drames bourgeois, were psychologically superficial and rhetorically exaggerated and were intended to contribute to the public's moral education. La Chausse was the author of nine such playsamong them L'cole des Mres (1744; Mothers' School), Mlanide (1741), and Le Prjug la mode (1735; Stylish Prejudice). La Chausse was the scion of a prosperous bourgeois family and did not embark on a literary career until his middle age; his first play, La Fausse Antipathie (False Antipathy), was written when he was 41 years old. From that time, however, he wrote steadily. In addition to the comdies larmoyantes, he produced other comedies and several tragedies. He was elected to the French Academy in 1736.