Jean Giraudoux

Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux (August 15, 1882 – January 31, 1944) was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II.

Biography

Born in Bellac, Haute-Vienne, Giraudoux's father, Léger Giraudoux, worked for the Ministry of Transportation. Giraudoux studied at the Lycée Lakanal, in Paris and upon graduation traveled extensively around Europe. After his return to France in 1910, Giraudoux accepted a position with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With the outbreak of World War I, he served with honors and in 1915 he became the first writer ever to be awarded the wartime Legion of Honor.

He was married in 1918, and in the subsequent period between the two World Wars Giraudoux produced the majority of his writing. He first achieved literary success through several of his novels, notably Siegfried et le Limousin (1922) and Eglantine (1927), but it is his plays that gained him international renown. A meeting with Louis Jouvet, in 1928, stimulated his writing.

Before World War II he published in 1939 a highly antisemitic political essay called "Pleins pouvoirs" (Full power).

He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris.

Partial listing of works

• Comedies
• Amphitryon 38--see Amphitryon; (in French Amphitryon 38)
• Apollo of Bellac (in French L'Apollon de Bellac)
• The Madwoman of Chaillot (in French La Folle de Chaillot)
• Dramas
• The Trojan war will not take place (in French La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu, presented in English-speaking countries as Tiger at the Gates).
• Electra (in French Électre)
• Ondine (in French Ondine)
• Sodom and Gomorrah (in French Sodome et Gomorrhe)

French Wikipedia has a page on Jean Giraudoux.

Trivia

• Giraudoux's name is gratified on a Parisian wall in François Truffaut's 1959 film The 400 Blows as a reference to the writer.

Notes

External links

• The Theatrical Art of Jean Giraudoux
• Analysis of the play Ondine (in French)
• Jean_Giraudoux (public domain in Canada)