Théâtre complet

by Jean Giraudoux

Texte intégral révisé suivi d'une biographie de Jean Giraudoux. Pas plus que dans ses romans, Giraudoux ne cherche sur la scène à briller par l'originalité des "Siegfried" n'est au fond qu'une adaptation, le thème d'"Ondine" est emprunté à La Motte-Fouqué, ceux d'"Electre", de "Judith", d'"Amphytrion", de "La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu" appartiennent au patrimoine le plus traditionnel. Seules de ses pièces, "Intermezzo" et "La Folle de Chaillot" sont absolument originales. Giraudoux dédaigne tout autant les fameux "conflits psychologiques", la peinture sociale ou celle des caractères. Ses pièces sont au-delà des particularités individuelles, hors du temps. Il retrouve ainsi la vertu essentiellement mythique, religieuse, du théâtre. Sans doute nous touche-t-il moins par la sensibilité que par l'intelligence, mais son dessein est de nous arracher à l'accidentel, de nous "confronter solennellement" avec le destin humain. Ce volume comprend les pièces "Siegfried", "La Fin de Siegfried", "Amphitryon 38", "Judith", "Intermezzo", "Tessa", "La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu", "Électre", "Supplément au voyage de Cook", "L'impromptu de Paris", "Cantique des cantiques", "Ondine", "Sodome et Gomorrhe", "L'Apollon de Bellac", "La Folle de Chaillot", "Pour Lucrèce", "Les Gracques".

1755 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Greek mythology or Biblical stories base dramas, such as Electra (1937), of French writer Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux, who also wrote several novels. He fathered Jean-Pierre Giraudoux.

People consider this French novelist, essayist, diplomat. and playwright among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. They note his work for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy. The relationship between man and woman or some unattainable ideal in some cases dominates themes of Giraudoux .

Léger Giraudoux, father of Jean Giraudoux, worked for the ministry of transport. Giraudoux studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux and upon graduation traveled extensively in Europe. After his return to France in 1910, he accepted a position with the ministry of foreign affairs.
With the outbreak of World War I, he served with distinction and in 1915 became the first writer ever to be awarded the wartime Legion of Honour.

He married in 1918 and in the subsequent inter-war period produced the majority of his writing. He first achieved literary success through his novels, notably Siegfried et le Limousin (1922) and Eglantine (1927). An ongoing collaboration with actor and theater director Louis Jouvet, beginning in 1928 with Jouvet's radical streamlining of Siegfried for the stage, stimulated his writing. But it is through his plays that gained him international renown. He became well known in the English-speaking world largely because of the award-winning adaptations of his plays by Christopher Fry (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place) and Maurice Valency (The Madwoman of Chaillot, Ondine, The Enchanted, The Apollo of Bellac).

Giraudoux served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.

He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris.

His son, Jean-Pierre Giraudoux, was also a writer.