Look up category in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Category, plural categories, may refer to:

Philosophy and Cognitive Science[link]

• Category of being
• Categories (Aristotle)
• Category (Kant)
• Categories (Peirce)
• Category (Vaisheshika)
• Stoic Categories
• For categories in cognitive science, see categorization

Mathematics[link]

• Category (mathematics)
• Abelian category
• Category of abelian groups
• Category of sets
• Category (topology) in the context of Baire spaces
• Category theory
• Equivalence of categories
• Lyusternik–Schnirelmann category, sometimes called LS-category or simply category
• Monoidal category
• Preadditive category

Games[link]

• Category (chess tournament)

Computer programming[link]

• Categories, a programming concept in Objective-C

Network cabling[link]

• Networking Cable: CAT (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5e, 6, 6a)

Other[link]

• Pregnancy category
• Prison security categories in the United Kingdom
• List of boxing weight classes
• List of software categories
• Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale - common categorization of hurricane intensities
• Lexical category
• Categories of New Testament manuscripts

See also[link]

• All pages with titles containing "Category"
• Categorical (disambiguation)
• Categorization
• Category 1 (disambiguation)
• Category 2 (disambiguation)
• Category 3 (disambiguation)
• Category 4 (disambiguation)
• Category 5 (disambiguation)
• Category 6 (disambiguation)
• Category 7: The End of the World
• Category A (disambiguation)
• Category B (disambiguation)
• Category C (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

French is the adjective form of France and usually refers to:

• Something of or related to the nation of France
  • French cuisine
  • French language, a Romance language originating in what is now northern France
  • French people, inhabitants of France or people having family origins in France
• French (surname)
• French Open, one of the four major tennis tournaments
• French defence, a chess opening (1 e4 e6)
• French River, Colchester, Nova Scotia, Canada
• French River, Pictou, Nova Scotia, Canada
• French River (Ontario), Canada
• French River (Massachusetts), Canada
• French's, an American manufacturer of mustard condiment

See also[link]

• French fries
• French kiss
• Frenched rack of lamb
• French dressing
• All pages beginning with "French"
• All pages with titles containing "French"

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

John Ralston Saul CC
John Ralston Saul delivers a lecture at the University of Alberta on 17 November 2006
Born	(1947-06-19) 19 June 1947 (age 65) Ottawa, Ontario
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Novelist, essayist

John Ralston Saul, CC (born June 19, 1947) is a Canadian author, essayist, and President of PEN International.

As an essayist, Saul is particularly known for his commentaries on the nature of individualism, citizenship and the public good; the failures of manager-, or more precisely technocrat-, led societies; the confusion between leadership and managerialism; military strategy, in particular irregular warfare; the role of freedom of speech and culture; and his critique of contemporary economic arguments.

Biography[link]

Born in Ottawa, Saul studied at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and at King's College London where he wrote his thesis on the modernization of France under Charles de Gaulle, and earned his Ph.D in 1972. After helping to set up the national oil company Petro-Canada in 1976, as Assistant to its first Chair, Maurice F. Strong, he published his first novel The Birds of Prey in 1977. Through the late 1970s and 1980s, he travelled regularly with guerrilla armies, spending a great deal of time in North Africa and South East Asia. Out of this time came his novels, The Field Trilogy. It was during those extended periods in Northwest Africa and Southeast Asia that he witnessed fellow writers there suffering government suppression of freedom of expression, which caused him to become interested in the work of PEN International[1]. In 2009 he was elected president of PEN International, only the second North American to hold the position since its creation in 1921, the other being Arthur Miller.

As a novelist[link]

The Birds of Prey, a political novel based in Gaullist France, was an international best seller. He then published The Field Trilogy, which deals with the crisis of modern power and its clash with the individual. It includes Baraka or The Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor of Anthony Smith, The Next Best Thing, and The Paradise Eater, which won the Premio Letterario Internazionale in Italy. De Si Bons Americains is a picaresque novel in which he observes the life of modern nouveaux riches Americans.

As an essayist[link]

[edit] Voltaire's Bastards, The Doubter's Companion and The Unconscious Civilization

His philosophical essays began with the trilogy made up of the bestseller Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, the polemic philosophical dictionary The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense, and the book that grew out of his 1995 Massey Lectures, The Unconscious Civilization. The last won the 1996 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction Literature.

These books deal with themes such as the dictatorship of reason unbalanced by other human qualities, how it can be used for any ends especially in a directionless state that rewards the pursuit of power for power's sake. He argues that this leads to deformations of thought such as ideology promoted as truth; the rational but anti-democratic structures of corporatism, by which he means the worship of small groups; and the use of language and expertise to mask a practical understanding of the harm this causes, and what else our society might do. He argues that the rise of individualism with no regard for the role of society has not created greater individual autonomy and self-determination, as was once hoped, but isolation and alienation. He calls for a pursuit of a more humanist ideal in which reason is balanced with other human mental capacities such as common sense, ethics, intuition, creativity, and memory, for the sake of the common good, and he discusses the importance of unfettered language and practical democracy.

[edit] Reflections of a Siamese Twin

He expanded on these themes as they relate to Canada and its history and culture in Reflections of a Siamese Twin. In this book, he coined the idea of Canada being a "soft" country, meaning not that the nation is weak, but that it has a flexible and complex identity, as opposed to the unyielding or monolithic identities of other states.

He argues that Canada's complex national identity is made up of the "triangular reality" of three nations that compose it: First Peoples, francophones, and anglophones. He emphasizes the willingness of these Canadian nations to compromise with one another, as opposed to resorting to open confrontations. In the same vein, he criticizes both those in the Quebec separatist Montreal School for emphasizing the conflicts in Canadian history and the Orange Order and the Clear Grits traditionally seeking clear definitions of Canadian-ness and loyalty.

[edit] On Equilibrium

Saul's next book, On Equilibrium (2001), is effectively the conclusion to his philosophical trilogy. He identifies six qualities as common to all people: common sense, ethics, imagination, intuition, memory, and reason. He describes how these inner forces can be used to balance each other, and what happens when they are unbalanced, for example in the case of a "Dictatorship of Reason".

[edit] The Collapse of Globalism

In an article written for Harper's magazine and published in the magazine's March 2004 issue under the title The Collapse of Globalism and the Rebirth of Nationalism, he argued that the globalist ideology was under attack by counter-movements. Saul rethought and developed this argument in The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World (2005). Far from being an inevitable force, Saul argued that globalization is already breaking up into contradictory pieces and that citizens are reasserting their national interests in both positive and destructive ways. Following the economic collapse he had predicted, The Collapse of Globalism was re-issued in 2009 with a new epilogue that addressed the current crisis.

[edit] A Fair Country

A Fair Country (2008) is Saul's second major work on Canada. It is organized into four subsections.

"A Métis Civilization"

This section picks up on the argument that Saul makes in Reflections of a Siamese Twin about the 'triangular reality of Canada'. Drawing on the work of scholars like Harold Innis and Gerald Friesen,^[1] Saul argues that contemporary Canada has been deeply influenced and shaped by Aboriginal ideas and the experience of both Francophone and Anglophone immigrants over the 250 years, from 1600 on, during which Aboriginals were either the dominant force in Canada, or equal partners. He argues that Aboriginals are making a rapid “comeback”, and that their fundamental influence needs to be recognized in order for non-Aboriginal Canadians to understand themselves.

"Peace, Fairness, and Good Government"

In this section Saul argues that instead of the phrase "peace, order, and good government", which appears in and has become a touchstone of the 1867 Canadian Constitution, the phrase that dominated previous Canadian documents was "peace, welfare, and good government". Saul suggests that the ensuing emphasis on "order" has not truly represented Canadian origins.

"The Castrati"

This sections echoes Saul's more general critiques of technocratic and bureaucratic regimes. He also suggests that while current Canadian elites reflect a "disturbing mediocrity" this was not always the case.^[2]

"An Intentional Civilization"

Saul uses the final section of the book to argue for a return to an understanding of Canada as a unique response to particular historical circumstances.

[edit] Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin

Saul's contribution to Penguin Canada's Extraordinary Canadians series, of which he serves as General Editor, is a double biography of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin. In it, he argues that Canada did not begin in 1867, but that in fact its foundations were laid by LaFontaine and Baldwin much earlier. The two leaders of Lower and Upper Canada, respectively, worked together after the 1841 Union to lead a reformist movement for responsible government run by elected citizens instead of a colonial governor. But it was during the "Great Ministry" of 1848—51 that the two politicians implemented laws that Saul argues created a more equitable country. They revamped judicial institutions, created a public education system, made bilingualism official, designed a network of public roads, began a public postal system, and reformed municipal governance. Faced with opposition, and even violence, Saul contends that the two men united behind a set of principles and programs that formed modern Canada.

Speaker[link]

In addition to his selection as the 1995 Massey lecturer, Saul has delivered other notable lectures. He gave the Harold Innis Lecture in 1994. In 2000 he gave the inaugural LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture. Saul delivered the J.D. Young Memorial Lecture “A New Era Of Irregular Warfare?” at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario on February 4, 2004.^[3] He gave the 2005 IDEAS lecture in Brisbane, Australia, the 2007 Captive Mind Lecture in Kraków, Poland, and in 2008 gave the 33rd Sir Winston Scott Memorial Lecture in Barbados. He also delivered the 2009 McGill Law Journal Annual Lecture at the McGill Faculty of Law in Montreal on February 3, 2009.^[4]

Activities[link]

John Ralston Saul is co-Chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, which encourages new Canadians to become active citizens.. He is Patron and former president of the Canadian Centre of PEN International. He is also Founder and Honorary Chair of French for the Future, which encourages bilingual French-English education, Chair of the Advisory Board for the LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium lecture series, and a Patron of Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network (PLAN — a cutting edge organization tied to people with disabilities). A Companion in the Order of Canada (1999), he is also Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France (1996). His 14 honorary degrees range from McGill University and the University of Ottawa to Herzen University in Saint Petersburg, Russia. From 1999 until 2006 when his wife Adrienne Clarkson was Governor General of Canada he was Canada's vice-regal consort, during which he devoted much of his time to issues of freedom of expression, poverty, public education and bilingualism.

PEN International[link]

Saul was elected as the International President for a three year term at the PEN Annual Congress in Linz, Austria in October 2009. He campaigned on the need to pay attention to smaller and endangered languages and cultures, arguing that the ultimate removal of freedom of expression was the loss of a language. He put a specific emphasis on endangered indigenous languages. He called for a further decentralization of PEN, which has 144 centres in 102 countries. He argues that literature and freedom of expression are the same thing; that you cannot have one without the other. Saul has testified before the European Parliament Human Rights Commission on the loss of freedom of expression in Tunisia, has spoken before European Council on Refugees in Exile, and has published an essay on writers in exile, which has been translated into several languages.

Bibliography[link]

Fiction[link]

• The Birds of Prey (1977)
• Baraka (1983)
• The Next Best Thing (1986)
• The Paradise Eater (1988)
• De si bons Américains (1994)

Non-fiction[link]

• Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992)
• The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (1994)
• The Unconscious Civilization (1995)
• Le Citoyen dans un cul-de-sac?: Anatomie d'une société en crise (1996)
• Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century (1997)
• On Equilibrium: Six Qualities of the New Humanism (2001)
• The John W. Holmes Memorial Lecture (2004)
• The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World (2005)
• Joseph Howe and the Battle for Freedom of Speech (2006)
• A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (2008)
• Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin (2010)

Honours[link]

• Italy's Premio Letterario Internazionale, for The Paradise Eater (1990)
• Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres de France (1996)
• Gordon Montador Award, for The Unconscious Civilization (1996)
• Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction, for The Unconscious Civilization (1996)
• Gordon Montador Award, for Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1998)
• Companion of the Order of Canada (1999)
• Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal (2002)
• Pablo Neruda International Presidential Medal of Honour (2004)
• Manhae Literary Prize (2010)

References[link]

1. ^ Friesen, Gerald. Citizens and Nation: An Essay on History, Communication, and Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
2. ^ Saul, John Ralston. A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada. Toronto: Viking, 2008 : 174
3. ^ His Excellency John Ralston Saul J.D. Young Memorial Lecture “A New Era Of Irregular Warfare?” Lecture Delivered To Faculty And Cadets Royal Military College Kingston, Ontario
4. ^ The McGill Law Journal Annual Lecture

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Ralston Saul

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Ralston Saul

• PEN International
• Institute for Canadian Citizenship
• Interview with Mother Jones, 9 November 2005
• John Ralston Saul's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia

• Interview with Stuart Jeffries The prophet of anti-globalism, The Guardian, 9 June 2005
• Good governance as the Key to Gross National Happiness, keynote speech by John Ralston Saul at Rethinking Development (GNH2) in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, June 23, 2005.
• A review of Saul's book "The Doubter's Companion"
• Inaugural Joseph Howe Lecture, by John Ralston Saul at University of King's College School of Journalism, Halifax, Nova Scotia, March 20, 2004
• The Collapse of Globalism MP3, 11 June 2005
• Saul's Harper's Magazine Essay: The Collapse of Globalism March 2004 (index only, not full text)
• Interview with Scott London from the radio series "Insight and Outlook"
• Full text and streaming audio and another transcript of Citizenship vs the Reigning Linear Trap, a public lecture given at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, 29 August 1999
• Full text and streaming audio and another transcript of Globalisation and Democracy, a public lecture given at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, January 1999
• French for the Future / Le Français Pour L'Avenir
• The Annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium Lecture
• PEN Canada

Alain Soral
Born	(1958-10-02) October 2, 1958 (age 53) Aix-les-Bains, France
Occupation	Essayist, journalist, film maker
Nationality	France
Alma mater	École des hautes études en sciences sociales
Subjects	Capitalism, communitarianism, feminism

Alain Soral (born October 2, 1958) is a French essayist, and film maker, as well as being the author of several polemical essays. He is the brother of the actress Agnès Soral. Soral lives in the French Basque Country. Since June 2004, he has been a boxing coach. Alain Soral considers himself to be in the political "avant garde" of French society, claiming that his remarks and comments are always at first condemned and later widely accepted by the mainstream French public.^[1]

Life and career[link]

Soral was born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie and grew up in the suburbs of Annemasse (department of Haute-Savoie), where he attended a local primary school. When Soral was about 12, his family moved to Meudon so that he could go to a reputable private Catholic high school, the Collège Stanislas de Paris.^[2] Soral spent two years doing small jobs before being accepted into the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts at 20, where he studied for two years. Soral was then taken in by a family of academics, who encouraged him to enrol at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he attended lectures given by Cornelius Castoriadis.

Following his studies, and working with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche, Soral wrote a book on the sociology of trendiness: Les mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, as well as a fictionalised autobiography: Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien. The latter work sold badly, and this led Soral to turn away from writing for a time.

Soral then focussed on cinematic techniques, and after 2 promotional films, wrote and directed his first short film: Chouabadaballet, une dispute amoureuse entre deux essuie-glaces. After a stint as a reporter in Zimbabwe, Soral wrote and directed his second short film: Les Rameurs, misère affective et culture physique à Carrière-sur-Seine.

In the mean time, Soral had joined the French Communist Party. He became interested in the works of Karl Marx and other Marxist thinkers such as Georg Lukács, Henri Wallon, Lucien Goldmann and Michel Clouscard. He published Sociologie du Dragueur ("sociology of the womaniser"), his most successful^{[citation needed]} sociological essay to date.

Soral performed in Catherine Breillat's 1996 film Parfait Amour !, in the role of Philippe.

He then published another polemical essay: Vers la féminisation ? - Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique ("Towards feminisation? analysis of an antidemocratic plot"), and spent the following couple of years writing and directing his first full-length movie: Confession d'un dragueur ("Confessions of a womaniser"), which was a commercial and critical failure^{[citation needed]}. Disgusted by what he called "a lynching"^{[citation needed]}, Soral gave up cinema altogether and returned to writing. He published Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre? - Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante ("Down to where are we descending? ABC of ambient stupidity"), followed by Socrate à Saint-Tropez (2003), and Misères du désir (2004).

Soral's penultimate book, CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce (subtitled Roman (novel)), was published in France on 6 April 2006.

In the 2007 he became part of the central committee of Front National, trying to place social issues in the program of the party. He left the party in the 2009.

His latest essay Comprendre l'Empire^[3] will be published in France on February 10, 2011.

Views[link]

Besides the sociological marxist analysis of the modern-day society, Soral's books tend to focus on seven main themes^{[citation needed]}:

• criticism of communitarianism
• criticism of feminism, especially neo-feminist movements
• criticism of the media and the society of spectacle in general
• criticism of capitalism and USA imperialism
• criticism of the mainstream culture
• the Arab-Israeli conflict
• the dismembering of Yugoslavia, and possibly of France

Notably, Soral has written:

Soral's analysis of society focuses on what he terms "desire society",^[5] promoted by the media and the cult of celebrity^{[citation needed]}. He has especially criticised monthly women's publications, which he believes alter the conscience and relegate women to the status of "objects".^[6]

As part of the debate on 'laïcité' in French schools, Soral claimed to prefer the Muslim veil to thong underwear.^[7]

Soral defined himself as a Marxist, and was a member of the French Communist Party in the early 90's. He left the PCF because of his opposition to the party's renunciation of revolutionary content^{[citation needed]}. Soral supported left-wing dissident candidate Jean-Pierre Chevènement during the 2002 presidential election^{[citation needed]}.

In 2005, Soral turned to the far-right, joining the National Front's campaign committee; he was given responsibility for social issues and for the suburbs under the authority of Marine Le Pen. Soral's personal journey has led some to compare him with Jacques Doriot, one of the neo-socialists in the early 1930s and Collaborationist under Pétain.^[8] He supported the Bloc identitaire's distribution of food in January 2006.^[8]

Since 18 November 2007, Soral has been a member of the central committee of the National Front which he left in early 2009 because of some ideas he was in conflict with (especially the menace of Islam which is not an actual threat for him).

In 2007, he founded the group "Egalité et Réconciliation",^[9] a think tank led by the ideas he developed in his books and his several interviews (an innovative mix between social and economical ideas from Left, and Values like Nation or morality from Right).

Controversy[link]

Alain Soral and "gay communitarianism"[link]

Alain Soral has denounced communitarianism as a "poison".^[10] He has been especially critical of the rise of communitarianism in the gay community, a term that he has sharply criticised, arguing that many homosexuals have nothing to do with Gay Pride ideology^{[citation needed]}. For Soral, Gay Pride involves promotion of the "Gorgeous Guy" model, youth, parties, drag queens, etc., and obscures homosexuality as experienced by older or working-class homosexuals.

The association Act Up rounded on his publisher,^[11] Éditions Blanche. Act Up stated that through books like those of Alain Soral or Éric Rémès, Éditions Blanche spread negative feelings and even hatred towards homosexuals. Act Up asked the director of publication at Éditions Blanche to stop publishing books by Soral and Rémès, and vandalised Éditions Blanche's offices^{[citation needed]}. The head of Éditions Blanche claimed that members of Act Up physically assaulted his executive assistant, and threatened to press charges. Act Up denied those accusations.^[12] No legal action has so far been pursued.

Alain Soral and feminism[link]

In his book Vers la féminisation ? Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique, Alain Soral argues that women have always worked (in trade or agriculture, for example). To him, they would have invented feminism by tiring of their role as mothers. Soral distinguishes two types of feminism: that of the "flippées" ("freaked-out") such as Simone de Beauvoir, and that of the "pétasses" ("bitches") like Élisabeth Badinter. Soral claims that the most problematic inequality is not between men and women, but between rich and poor, and that feminists, who generally come from the upper classes of society, attempt to distract attention from this struggle.^[13]

Accusations of anti-Semitism[link]

In a report on the television programme Complément d'enquête (in its episode devoted to the controversial French humorist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala), broadcast on the French television channel France 2 on 20 September 2004, Alain Soral said:

These comments sparked much controversy and Soral estranged himself from his show-bizz friends like Thierry Ardisson, a French TV host and producer, though they knew each other for more than 25 years.^[15] Anti-Semitism is the subject of Soral's latest book: CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce. Soral defended himself some days later on the website oumma.com, claiming that his words had been taken out of context.

Following this programme, on 29 September 2004, Soral and several others were the victims of an attack by about twenty people wielding baseball bats, while he was signing copies of his book Misères du désir in a book shop called Au Pays de Cocagne in Paris's IIIe arrondissement. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the police investigation has found no leads so far^{[citation needed]}. Soral himself believes the act to have been the work of an extremist Jewish group such as the Betar or the Jewish Defense League.^[16]

In a 2005 interview given to the magazine VSD, Soral announced his intellectual support for the equally controversial Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, with whom he worked on the Euro-Palestine list for the European elections of 2004, before his withdrawal led Dieudonné to do likewise. During the France 2 programme mentioned above, Dieudonné is visible in the background, listening to Soral.

Break-up of Yugoslavia and France[link]

Alain Soral believes that Yugoslavia was dismembered by the USA, which saw an opportunity to gain political ground and influence in South-Eastern Europe by arming Albanian separatist movements in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Soral believes that community-ism in France could have a similar effect, if the French Republic fails to apply its prestigious 1905 Law of Separation of Church and State, which is enshrined in the French constitution.^[17]

According to a recent TV interview (Direct 8 / 88 minutes), Alain Soral stated; "that today, no-one was surprised to see French presidents, prime ministers and other high French political figures meet elusively with the Jewish representing body every year in Paris, meetings that go against the laws of France and send mixed signal to the Republic".^[17]

Soral finished by stating that such a course could only push other minorities to form political religious movement in order to be heard.^[17] According to Soral, this would be a step likely to divide France into its various religious communities, which would then weaken the independence of the country.

Bibliography[link]

• Les Mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche, Robert Laffont, 1984

reissued by France Loisirs and Le Livre de Poche

• Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien, roman, Calmann-Lévy, 1991

reissued under the title La vie d'un vaurien, Éditions Blanche, 2001

• Sociologie du dragueur, Éditions Blanche, 1996
• Vers la féminisation ? Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique, Éditions Blanche, 1999
• Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre ? Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante, Éditions Blanche, 2002

reissued under the title Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante, Pocket, 2003

• Socrate à Saint-Tropez : Texticules, Éditions Blanche, 2003
• Misères du désir, Éditions Blanche, 2004
• CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce, Éditions Blanche, 2006
• Comprendre l'Empire, Editions Blanche, 2011.
• Pour en finir avec l'antisémitisme Éditions Blanche, 2012

Filmography[link]

Actor[link]

• 1996 : Parfait Amour ! de Catherine Breillat : Philippe.
• 2012 : L'antisémite de Dieudonné

Director[link]

• 1990 : Chouabadaballet, une dispute amoureuse entre deux essuie-glaces (5 minutes)
• 1993 : Les Rameurs, misère affective et culture physique à Carrière-sur-Seine (10 minutes)
• 2001 : Confession d'un dragueur, avec Saïd Taghmaoui et Thomas Dutronc

References[link]

External links[link]

• www.alainsoral.com - Site officiel - Official site (in French)
• Alain Soral at the Internet Movie Database

Jean Giraudoux
Portrait of Giraudoux in 1927
Born	(1882-10-29)29 October 1882 Bellac, Haute-Vienne
Died	31 January 1944(1944-01-31) (aged 61) Paris, France
Occupation	Dramatist
Nationality	French
Notable work(s)	The Madwoman of Chaillot, Ondine, Duel of Angels, The Trojan War Will Not Take Place
Spouse(s)	Suzanne Boland
Influenced Jean Anouilh

Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux (29 October 1882 – 31 January 1944) was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II.^[1] His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy. Giraudoux's dominant theme is the relationship between man and woman—or in some cases, between man and some unattainable ideal.

Biography[link]

Giraudoux was born in Bellac, Haute-Vienne, where his father, Léger Giraudoux, worked for the Ministry of Transport. Giraudoux studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Paris 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.^[2]

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.^[3] But it is 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.^[4]

He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris.^[5]

Works[link]

English language collections[link]

• Giraudoux, Jean (1963), Three Plays, Translated by Christopher Fry. New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 21419365.
• Giraudoux, Jean (1964), Three Plays, vol. 2, Translated by Phyllis La Farge and Peter H. Judd. New York: Hill and Wang. OCLC 751419.
• Giraudoux, Jean (1967), Plays, vol. 2, Translated by Roger Gellert. London: Oxford University Press. OCLC 656767230.
• Giraudoux, Jean (1958), Four Plays, Adapted by Maurice Valency. New York: Hill and Wang, Inc. OCLC 807008.

Trivia[link]

• Giraudoux's name is graffitied on a Parisian wall in François Truffaut's 1959 film The 400 Blows as a reference to the writer.
• A famous quote by Giraudoux is "only the mediocre are always at their best".

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Cohen, Robert (1968), Giraudoux; Three Faces of Destiny, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, ISBN 0-226-11248-9.
• Fletcher, John (1972), Forces in Modern French Drama, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York, ISBN 0-8044-2199-4.
• Fowlie, Wallace (1967), Dionysus in Paris; A Guide to Contemporary French Theater, Meridian Books, Inc, New York, ISBN 0-452-00092-0.
• Grossvogel, David I. (1958), 20th Century French Drama , Columbia University Press, New York.
• Inskip, Donald, (1958), Jean Giraudoux, The Making of a Dramatist, Oxford University Press, New York.
• Knowles, Dorothy (1968), French Drama of the Inter-War Years, 1918–39, Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York.
• LeSage, Laurent (1959), Jean Giraudoux; His Life and Works, The Pennsylvania State University Press.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jean Giraudoux

• Jean Giraudoux at the Internet Broadway Database
• Jean Giraudoux at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Jean Giraudoux at the Internet Movie Database
• Jean Giraudoux at doollee online guide to theatre
• Jean Giraudoux at Find a Grave
• Works by Jean Giraudoux (public domain in Canada)