Curated category
20th-century French male writers
- Jean BeaufretJean Beaufret was born on the 22nd of May 1907 in Auzances, a small town in central France, and he would spend his life building a bridge between French…
- André BretonAndré Breton defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism" - a phrase that landed in print in 1924 and reoriented the entire direction of modern art.
- Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski was born on the 18th of August 1933 in interbellum Paris, the child of two agnostics from very different worlds.
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, and he refused it. He said a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an…
- Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp walked into a New York exhibition hall in 1917 and submitted a urinal for display. He had signed it with a pseudonym, "R.
- Albert CamusAlbert Camus was born on the 7th of November 1913 in Mondovi, a working-class town in French Algeria, to a mother who was deaf and illiterate and a father he…
- Le CorbusierLe Corbusier insisted that "a house is a machine to live in," a maxim that would unsettle architects for a century. The man who wrote it was born…
- Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault was born on the 15th of October 1926 in Poitiers, France, into a family where a surgeon father expected his son to follow in his footsteps.
- François TruffautFrançois Truffaut was once called "The Gravedigger of French Cinema." In 1958, he was the only French critic not invited to the Cannes Film Festival.
- Jean GenetJean Genet spent his first seven months in the care of a prostitute mother before she placed him for adoption, and from that beginning he built one of the…
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard once said: "A film consists of a beginning, a middle and an end, though not necessarily in that order." That line, delivered with the offhand…
- Alfred CobbanAlfred Cobban walked into his inaugural lecture as Professor of French History at University College London in 1954 and proceeded to dismantle one of the…
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died on the 30th of October 2009, at the age of 100, and for four days the world did not know. When French President Nicolas Sarkozy…
- Louis-Ferdinand CélineLouis-Ferdinand Céline completed the second draft of his final novel on the 30th of June 1961. He died at home the very next day, of a ruptured aneurysm.
- Jean CocteauJean Cocteau called himself a poet, and only a poet, even after he had written novels, staged plays, drawn erotica, and directed films that critics still…
- Jean AnouilhJean Anouilh was born on the 23rd of June 1910 in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux. His father pressed fabric and thread into shape for…
- Jean GiraudouxJean Giraudoux died in Paris on the 31st of January 1944, at the age of 61, under circumstances that have never been fully explained.
- Georges BatailleGeorges Bataille was born on the 10th of September 1897 in Billom, a small town in the Auvergne region of France, and by the time he died on the 8th of July…
- Henri PoincaréHenri Poincaré was born on the 29th of April 1854 in the Cité Ducale neighborhood of Nancy, and by the time he died on the 17th of July 1912, he had touched…
- Louis AlthusserLouis Althusser was born on the 16th of October 1918 in Birmendreïs, a town near Algiers in French Algeria, and he died on the 22nd of October 1990 in a…
- Raymond QueneauRaymond Queneau once calculated that a reader working through his book A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, around the clock every day without stopping, would…
- Jean-Pierre MelvilleJean-Pierre Melville died on the 2nd of August 1973 while eating dinner with writer Philippe Labro at the Hôtel PLM Saint-Jacques restaurant in Paris.
- Gabriel MarcelGabriel Honoré Marcel was born on the 7th of December 1889 in Paris, and by the time he died on the 8th of October 1973 he had written more than a dozen…
- Jean WahlJean André Wahl was born on the 25th of May 1888, and for most of the twentieth century he stood at the center of French philosophical life as a teacher…