Jean Anouilh

Anouilh, Jean 

Born June 23, 1910, in Bordeaux. French playwright.

After forgoing his law studies, Anouilh published his first plays The Ermine (1934), Traveler Without Luggage (1937), and The Savage (1938). Constructed on the noble hero’s moral conflict with falsehood and cruelty, these early plays have an intimate quality. Anouilh later united them into the cycle “black plays.” The “new black plays” (1946) include tragedies based on subjects from the Bible (Jezebel), Shakespeare (Romeo and Jeannette), and antiquity (Medea and Antigone). Anouilh’s heroes reject compromise in the name of an ethical principle and perish, as for example in Antigone (staged, 1943; published, 1944). This idea in the plays of the 1940’s bears the quality of despair and is expressed in the spirit of existentialism. The “black plays” include the cycle “costume plays” (1960). These comprise the historical dramas The Lark (1953), in which the national heroine Joan of Arc asserts her human dignity through saving the people of France from enslavement, and Becket, or the Honor of God (1959).

Anouilh’s ironically lyrical plays are united into the cycle “pink plays” (1942), which include Dinner in Senlis, Léocadia, and others, and the cycle “brilliant plays,” which include Cecile, or a Lesson to Fathers (1951) and other plays. The heroes of these plays find happiness by isolating themselves from the world of suffering and cruelty; however, the conventional theatricality of these comedies underscores the illusoriness of such happiness. Anouilh’s satirical comedies are combined in the cycle “thorny plays” (1956). The cycle includes the plays Ornifle, or the Draft and Poor Bitos, in which the character of Robespierre is tendentiously parodied and the thought is expressed that any violence is evil. Variety and novelty of plot, free and easy dialogue, action, emotionality, and humor are all attributes of the bright theatricality of Anouilh’s plays.

WORKS

Théâtre complet, vols. 1–6. Paris, 1962.
La foire d’empoigne. Paris, 1961.
In Russian translation:
P’esy, vols. 1–2. Afterword by L. Zonina. Moscow, 1969.

REFERENCES

Zonina, L. “Zhan Anuil.” In Sovremennaia zarubezhnaia drama. Moscow, 1962.
Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 4. Moscow, 1963.
Luppé, R. de. Jean Anouilh. Paris, [1959].
Borgal, C. Anouilh: la peine de vivre. [Paris,] 1966. (Contains a bibliography.)