Alfred Jarry's life and work are both wildly separated and inextricably connected. The varied nature of his writing makes his work as a whole difficult to assimilate. Jarry is widely regarded as an icon of the modern theater. His best-known play is the...

The life and work of Alfred Jarry, both of which are enigmatic, complex, and at times undecipherable, mark a watershed in French theatrical history. Jarry's best-known play, Ubu Roi (1896; translated as Ubu Roi, 1951), was a revolutionary work that...

In the following essay, Fell suggests that Jarry was one of the first to use the word “cubisme” and that Jarry practiced a linguistic cubism in essays such as “Commentaire pour servir à la construction practique de la machine à explorer le temps” and plays such as César-Antechrist, as well as through his neologisms and textual acrobatics that emphasized multiple points of view.

In the following essay, Cutshall examines the critical and commercial failure of Alfred Jarry's novels, providing an overview of the works themselves and their historical context, and suggests that a radical reappraisal of Jarry's work as a novelist is long overdue.

In the following essay, Cutshall examines the ways in which Jarry's journalism, plays, and novels commented upon the Dreyfus Affair and the ensuing scandal.