| French playwright and poet,
born in Laval. His savagely funny dramas as well as his dissolute and
eccentric way of life won him much notice. Ubu roi (1896; trans. 1951),
Jarry's first play, lambastes traditional views of authority by presenting
the rise to power of a grotesque and pompous king, Ubu, who symbolizes
greed, ignorance, and the bourgeois attitudes that Jarry found ridiculous.
The farce, which caused a scandal at its opening, is considered the first
work of the theater of the absurd; it was followed by two sequels. Jarry
also wrote symbolist poetry and a surrealistic novel, The Supermale (1902;
trans. 1968). |