Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Renée R. Hubert

Critical Essay by Renée R. Hubert

SOURCE: Hubert, Renée R. “Raw and Cooked: An Interpretation of Ubu Roi.” L'Esprit Créateur 24, no. 4 (winter 1984): 75-83.

In the following essay, Hubert examines the significance of food and the act of eating in Ubu Roi, arguing that Ubu—and by extension, the petit-bougeoisie he represents—is the ultimate consumer in a world dominated by and reducible to food and human refuse.

Alfred Jarry is one of the heroes in Roger Shattuck's Banquet Years, a lively evocation of “la belle époque” in which the barriers between literature and life are drastically diminished and where anecdotes are rapidly metamorphosed into criticism.¹ Shattuck, who considered the banquet a supreme rite in these years, informs his readers that even the poverty-stricken Jarry contributed his share:

In these drafty dirt-floored premises he decided to repay his social obligations by throwing a banquet of his own … Jarry had caught a fish for every plate,...
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