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Pierre Guyotat
Pierre Guyotat (9 January 1940 – 7 February 2020) was a French literary avant-garde writer who wrote fiction, non-fiction, and plays. He is best known for his 1967 novel ''Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats'' (''Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers''), about his experiences in the Algerian War, and his 1970 novel ', which was banned for its explicit content. Many of his novels are set in imaginary north African war zones. ''Idiotie'' (''Idiocy'', 2018) won the Prix Medicis. Early life and education Pierre Guyotat was born on 9 January 1940 in Bourg-Argental, a small town in a mountainous area near Lyon. His father was a doctor, who aided local partisans during the occupation of France by the Nazis in World War II. Guyotot attended Catholic schools. He wanted to become a painter as a child, and admired Picasso and Matisse, who were still alive then. He also wrote poetry and some prose when he was a school-aged teenager. Career Many of Guyotat's novels are set in imaginary north Af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical Debate and Poetic Practices' (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 64 . It is frequently characterized by aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability.Kostelanetz, Richard, ''A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes'', Routledge, May 13, 2013 The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the '' [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and state socialist reforms were implemented throughout society. Born in Birán, the son of a wealthy Spanish farmer, Castro adopted leftist and anti-imperialist ideas while studying law at the University of Havana. After participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, launching a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. After a year's imprisonment, Castro travel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simone De Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even though she was not considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was known for her 1949 treatise ''The Second Sex'', a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; and for her novels, including ''She Came to Stay'' (1943) and '' The Mandarins'' (1954). Her most enduring contribution to literature is her memoirs, notably the first volume, "Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée" (1958), which has a warmth and descriptive power. She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Genet
Jean Genet (; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels ''The Thief's Journal'' and ''Our Lady of the Flowers'' and the plays ''The Balcony'', ''The Maids'' and ''The Screens''. Biography Early life Genet's mother was a prostitute who raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for adoption. Thereafter Genet was raised in the provincial town of Alligny-en-Morvan, in the Nièvre department of central France. His foster family was headed by a carpenter and, according to Edmund White's biography, was loving and attentive. While he received excellent grades in school, his childhood involved a series of attempts at running away and incidents of petty theft. After the death of his foster mother, Genet was placed with an elderly couple but remained with them less than two years. Accord ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Dac
André Isaac (15 August 1893 Châlons-sur-Marne, France – 9 February 1975 Paris, France), better known as Pierre Dac, was a French humorist. During World War II, Pierre Dac was one of the speakers of the BBC's ''Radio Londres'' service to occupied France. He produced a series of satirical songs which were broadcast on the station. After the war, he participated in a comic duet with the humorist Francis Blanche. A very active freemason, initiated in 1926 at "Les Inséparables d'Osiris" lodge in Paris, he created a parodic and slang masonic rite "Le rite des Voyous" still practiced in some French lodges. Dac is also the creator of the comic term "Schmilblick." Filmography * ''Radio Surprises'' (1940) * ''Good Enough to Eat'' (1951) * ''La Famille Anodin'' (1956) (TV) * ''La Belle Américaine'' (1961) * ''Ne jouez pas avec les Martiens'' (1968) * ''Le Petit Baigneur ''The Little Bather'' (french: Le Petit Baigneur), is a French comedy film from 1968, directed and written by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art movement known as Fluxus and was a key figure in the development of Happenings. Beuys is known for his "extended definition of art" in which the ideas of social sculpture could potentially reshape society and politics. He frequently held open public debates on a wide range of subjects, including political, environmental, social, and long-term cultural issues. Biography Childhood and early life in the Third Reich (1921–1941) Joseph Beuys was born in Krefeld, Germany, on 12 May 1921, to Josef Jakob Beuys (1888–1958), a merchant, and Johanna Maria Margarete Beuys née Hülsermann (1889–1974). Soon after his birth, the family moved from Krefeld to Kleve, an industrial town in Germany's Lower Rhine region, close to the Dutch border. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Montbrison, Loire, Montbrison in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the development of integral serialism (in the 1950s), Aleatoric music, controlled chance music (in the 1960s) and the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time (from the 1970s onwards). His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of work was relatively small, but it included pieces regarded by many as lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, as well as a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to do so. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution." Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, filmmaker, writer and intellectual who also distinguished himself as a journalist, novelist, translator, playwright, visual artist and actor. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italy, influential both as an artist and a political figure. A controversial personality due to his straightforward style, Pasolini's legacy remains contentious. Openly gay and an avowed Marxist, he voiced strong criticism of petty bourgeois values and the emerging consumerism in Italy, juxtaposing socio-political polemics with a critical examination of taboo sexual matters. A prominent protagonist of the Roman cultural scene of the post-war period, he was an established major figure in European literature and cinematic arts. Pasolini's unsolved murder at Ostia in November 1975 during an altercation with a young male prostitute prompted an outcry in Italy, and its circumstances continue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory. Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. Aft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippe Sollers
Philippe Sollers (; born Philippe Joyaux; 28 November 1936) is a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the ''avant garde'' literary journal ''Tel Quel'' (along with writer and art critic Marcelin Pleynet), which was published by Le Seuil and ran until 1982. Sollers then created the journal ''L'Infini'', published first by Denoel, then by Gallimard with Sollers remaining as sole editor. Sollers was at the heart of the period of intellectual fervour in the Paris of the 1960s and 1970s. He contributed to the publication of critics and thinkers such Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Roland Barthes. Some of them were later described in his novel ''Femmes'' (1983), alongside other figures of French intellectualism active before and after May 1968. His writings and approach to language were examined and praised by French critic Roland Barthes in his book '' Writer Sollers''. In 1990, following a televised disagreement between Canadian novelist Denise Bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular culture. His ideas explored a diverse range of fields and influenced the development of many schools of theory, including structuralism, anthropology, literary theory, and post-structuralism. Barthes is perhaps best known for his 1957 essay collection ''Mythologies'', which contained reflections on popular culture, and 1967 essay "The Death of the Author," which critiqued traditional approaches in literary criticism. During his academic career he was primarily associated with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Collège de France. Biography Early life Roland Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in the town of Cherbourg in Normandy. His father, naval officer Louis Barthes, was killed in a battle during ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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