L'Amour Chez Jarry: Rupture, Ridicule, and Theatre

Abstract

Alfred Jarry, best known for his scandalous 1896 play Ubu Roi, wrote an equally scandalous work in 1898: L'Amour en visites (Visits of Love). This hybrid novel/play dramatizes several of Alfred Jarry's battles with the Symbolist movement, literary form, and inherited traditions. It is a work about rupture on all levels. In this article Kimberly Jannarone investigates the text and its backstory to give a greater understanding of Jarry's work and the last days of the Symbolist movement. Tracing the life of a central character, Lucien, who plays different roles as he travels through naturalistic and fantastic realms in a deviant coming-of-age story, L'Amour en visites condenses Jarry's formal and personal rejection of the worlds around him, especially that of the Symbolist literary scene. Culminating in a sensational coup de théâtre – a pair of lovers being flushed down the toilet – L'Amour en visites marked the closure of one part of Jarry's work and a chapter of his life. Kimberly Jannarone is the author of Artaud and His Doubles (University of Michigan Press, 2010). As well as two earlier essays on Jarry in New Theatre Quarterly – in NTQ 98 (May 2009) and NTQ 67 (August 2001) – she has published essays on avant-garde literature and performance in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, French Forum, TDR, Modernism/Modernity, and a book chapter on The Exquisite Corpse. Jannarone is Associate Professor of Theater Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz.