is featured in two major works; le Barbier de Séville (1775) and le Mariage de Figaro (1784). The theater of the 18th century also introduced two new genres, now considered minor, which both strongly influenced the French theater in the following century; the "Comedy of Tears" (comédie larmoyante) and the bourgeois drama (drame bourgeois) which told stories full of pathos in a realistic setting, and which concerned the lives of bourgeois families, rather than aristocrats. Some popular examples of these genres were the Le Fils naturel (The Natural Son) by Diderot in 1757; Le Père de famille (The Father of the Family) by Diderot in 1758; Le Philosophe sans le savoir (The Philosopher who did not know he was a Philosopher) by Michel-Jean Sedaine, (1765); La Brouette du vinaigrier (The Vinegar Cart) by Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1775); and La Mère Coupable (The Guilty Mother) by Beaumarchais, (1792). The 18th century also saw the development of new forms of musical theater, such as the vaudeville theater, and the opéra comique, as well as a new genre of literary writing about theater, such as Diderot's Paradoxe sur le comédien; the writings of Voltaire defending theater actors against the condemnation of the church; and Rousseau's condemnation of immorality in the theater. The French novel in the 18th century The novel in the 18th century saw innovations in form and content which opened the way for the modern novel, a work of fiction in prose recounting the adventures or the evolution of one or several characters. In the 18th century the genre of the novel enjoyed a great increase in readership, and was marked by the effort to convey feelings realistically, through such literary devices as first-person narration, exchanges of letters, and dialogues, all trying to show, in the spirit of the lumieres, a society which was evolving. The French novel was strongly influenced by the English novel, through the translation of the works of Samuel Richardson, Jonathan Swift, and Daniel Defoe. The novel of the 18th century explored all the potential devices of a novel - different points of view, surprise twists of the plot, engaging the reader, careful psychological analysis, realistic descriptions of the setting, imagination, and attention to form. The texts of the period are difficult to neatly divide into categories, but they can loosely be divided into several subgenres. The philosophical tale This category includes the contes philosophiques of Voltaire, Zadig