Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Bettina L. Knapp

Critical Essay by Bettina L. Knapp

SOURCE: "Jarry's The Supermale: The Sex Machine, the Food Machine, and the Bicycle Race. Is It a Question of Adaptation?" in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. XVIII, Nos. 3 & 4, Spring-Summer, 1990, pp. 492-507.

An American educator and critic specializing in French literature, Knapp is the author of many monographs on French literary figures, including: Antonin Artaud, Louis Celine, Paul Claudel, Jean Cocteau, Georges Duhamel, Jean Genet, Louise Labé, Gerárd de Nerval, Jean Racine, and Emile Zola. In the following essay, she interprets The Supermale as a warning about the dehumanization that Jarry believed accompanies technological advancement.

Alfred Jarry's farcical and fantastic novel The Supermale (1900) focuses upon a sex machine, a food machine, and bicycles that outdo a speeding train. Satiric in intent, the novel uses these as metaphoric devices to further energize Jarry's already super-virile and priapic protagonist. "To survive," the author noted, "man must become stronger than...
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