Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus lived the life of the

committed writer, the écrivain engage. Like

Sartre and, later, Michel Foucault, Camus did

not hesitate to enlist in humanitarian causes

and take sides in social conflicts. Often influ-

ential and effective in his interventions, Camus

had to endure one great disappointment: the

progressive unravelling of Algeria, his native

land. Camus sought an accommodation be-

tween the French colonial establishment and

its revolutionary opponents, espousing the

peaceful creation of a middle ground, but he

died two years before Algerian independence,

an embittered outsider in a progressively es-

calating conflict.

Camus began his writing career with two

slender volumes entitled The Wrong Side and

the Right Side (L’Envers et l’endroit) and Nup-

tials (Noces), written in 1937 and 1938 re-

spectively. The collected stories of L’Envers et

l’endroit are the first of Camus’s works to de-

velop the theme of the absurdity of human

existence, notably in ‘La Mort dans l’âme’

(Death in the Soul), an autobiographical piece

on the author’s encounter with an unknown

person’s death in Prague. The central subject

of the collection as a whole is the irresolvable

contradiction between the beauty of nature

and the reality of human misery and death.

Nuptials emphasizes uniquely the first of these

polarities, and can be read as an exalted prose

poem to the luminous setting of Algeria.

Written for the most part in 1939 and 1940

in Algeria and published in 1942, The Out-

sider (L’Étranger) is the first of Camus’s works

to achieve notoriety in French intellectual cir-

cles. In the first part of this short novel, the

hero (or, better, anti-hero), a man of French

extraction named Meursault, kills an Arab on

the beach without apparent motive, urged on

in his act by the blinding rays of the sun. The

second part of the narrative relates his trial, in

which he is accused more for not crying at his

mother’s funeral than for killing a fellow-hu-

man. Like The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe

de Sisyphe), a 1942 essay which tells of the

cyclical travails of a mortal condemned to roll

an immense rock up a steep cliff, only to watch

it roll down again, L’Étranger sets the absurd-

ity of the human condition against the back-

drop of a Greek mythical universe.

Camus’s fame continued to spread with the

appearance of his plays in Paris theatres, espe-

cially Caligula, a consummate study of cru-

elty and evil first performed in Paris in Sep-

tember 1945 with Gérard Philipe in the title

role. In 1947 came The Plague (La Peste), an

allegorical novel whose protagonist, Dr Rieux,

emblematizes a distinctly non-heroic, modest

mode of action in the face of the plague’s de-

struction. The plague is itself a multilevelled

symbol of massive and meaningless death

which, among other things, no doubt refers to

World War II—the ‘art’ of total warfare and

the building of concentration camps.

Camus’s meditations on the war and its af-

termath led to the publication of his most con-

troversial work, The Rebel (L’Homme

révolté), in 1951. In this long and sometimes

ponderous treatise, Camus criticizes both

Christianity and Marxism and proposes his

own conception of ‘Mediterranean thought’

(based on moderation, on the Greek golden

mean). The work was attacked by Sartre for

its philosophical naivety, and this attack seems

to have had a profound effect on Camus, who

for five years wrote virtually nothing of note.

In 1956. however, he published The Fall (La

Chute), perhaps his most brilliant work. As

concise as L’Étranger but much more ironical

in tone, La Chute is a masterful condemna-

tion of the moral evasions and deluded self-

satisfaction that characterize the contempo-

rary human being. It is also probable that the

protagonist of La Chute, a ‘fallen’ lawyer

named Jean-Baptiste Clamence, is in part an

unflattering self-portrait of Camus himself.

The final works of Camus’s career are the

elegant short stories entitled Exile and the

Kingdom (L’Exil et le royaume), published in

1957, the year in which he received the Nobel

Prize for literature, and The First Man (Le Pre-

mier Homme), a fragmentary autobiographi-

cal novel set in Algeria and published for the

first time thirty-four years after the author’s

death.

Now that the postwar debates surround-

ing existentialism have lost their immediacy,

Camus, Albert

now that the quarrel between Sartre and

Camus has faded into the shadows of anecdo-

tal oblivion, what remains is Camus’s talent

as a stylist, especially in the novel and short

story. His spare descriptions and cogent char-

acterizations, his sense of rhetorical effect (es-

pecially his considerable gift as an ironist), will

ensure him a place of distinction in twentieth-

century French literary history.

DAVID ELLISON

See also: autobiography; decolonization; exis-

tentialist theatre

Further reading

Brée, G. (1959) Camus, New Brunswick, NJ:

Rutgers University Press (the best early

overview of Camus’s literary works).

Ellison, D. (1990) Understanding Albert

Camus, Columbia: University of South

Carolina Press (synthetic study of Camus’s

novels, plays and philosophical essays).

Freeman, E. (1971) The Theatre of Albert

Camus: A Critical Study, London: Methuen

(the best account to date of the entirety of

Camus’s theatrical production).

Lottman, H. (1979) Albert Camus: A Biogra-

phy, Garden City, NJ: Doubleday (by far

the most detailed account of Camus’s life).

Camus, Renaud

b. 1946, Chamalières

Writer, also writes under the names of

Jean-Renaud Camus, Denis Duparc,

Tony Duparc and Denis Duvert

One of the most interesting of the writers to

be heavily influenced by Barthes’s theories,

Camus’s most important book is Tricks, a vol-

ume of ‘autobiographical’ memoirs of gay

cruising, prefaced by Barthes. He has also pub-

lished many gay-centred texts and ‘trav-

elogues’ in which he plays with intertextuality

in its myriad forms: allusion, parody, plagia-

rism, quotation, reference, rewriting. His

project is a writing of the self which renders

obsolete the distinction between the novelistic

and the autobiographical.

MICHAEL WORTON

Further reading

Cairns, L. (1992) Marie Cardinal: Mother-

hood and Creativity, Glasgow: University

of Glasgow French and German Publica-

tions (a comprehensive, gender-oriented ex-

amination of Cardinal’s writing).

Carrière, Jean-Claude

b. 1931, Colombières sur Orb

Scenarist, dramaturg and adaptor

Best known for his screenplays for famous

directors such as Louis Malle and Luis Buñuel,

whom he worked with for nineteen years,

Carrière is renowned in the theatre for his

work as a dramaturg and adaptor, especially

for Jean-Louis Barrault and Peter Brook,

whose Mahabharata he translated and

adapted in 1985.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Laville, P. (1989) ‘Maria Casarès, une vie de

théâtre’, Acteurs, November/December

(analysis of her career).

Casarès, Maria

Catholicism and Protestantism

France’s Catholic culture stretches back some

1,500 years to the baptism of Clovis, King of

the Gauls (the ancestors of the French), who

embraced Catholicism in AD 496. For centu-

ries the nation was officially Catholic, defined

as la fille aînée de Rome (the elder daughter of

Rome); the Catholic church was all-powerful,

and other religions (such as Protestantism)

were persecuted. However, these close ties be-

tween the Catholic church and the French state

were weakened after the 1789 French Revolu-

tion: first, the 1801 Concordat demoted Ca-

tholicism from its status as the official reli-

gion of France to the religion of the majority;

and second, in 1905, the Law of Separation of

Churches and State formalized the principle

of laïcité (secularism), according to which the

state publicly neither recognizes nor subsidizes

any religion, but yet guarantees the freedom

of all private religious expression.

The diversification of France’s religious

framework is now recognized and accepted; it

reflects the nation’s increasingly mixed and

complex society, and is characterized both by

religions long-established in France (such as

Protestantism and Judaism) as well as by those

of more recent implantation (especially Islam,

France’s second religion in terms of the number

of faithful). Religion today no longer enjoys

the same status or the same degree of power

and influence as in previous times, but this is

not to say that it no longer has any impact on,

or any role to play in, contemporary society.

Indeed, expectations of religion (in whatever

form) remain significant in a nation faced with

an ever-increasing list of social problems and

moral issues, for which successive political

voices seem to have found no real solution.

Catholicism in France is in decline in terms

of both its institutional structures and its tra-

ditional religious practice. Ordinations of new

priests have fallen far below the number who

retire or die in office each year, with just 171

ordinations in 1994 in contrast to 1,033 in

1950, a crisis of recruitment which means that

around 60 per cent of priests are aged over

60. The total number of priests fell from

43,000 in 1948 to 25,000 in 1994, the most

significant decline occurring after the events

of May 1968, and only a third of France’s

38,200 parishes have their own priest, with

many priests required to oversee several par-

ishes at once. With fewer priests to call on, the

church has placed increasing responsibilities

on France’s deacons, of whom some 1,000

have been ordained since 1969, and who, un-

like priests, are not required to be celibate,

while lay Catholics also are now more widely

employed in ceremonial celebration. But this

has only provided the church with a small pool

of additional workers and mass can still only

be celebrated by a priest.

Religious practice has declined considerably

since 1945, even in those regions which tradi-

tionally constitute the bedrock of French Ca-

tholicism, including Brittany, the Vendée, the

Pyrenees, the Basque country and Savoy. Over-

all, 80 per cent of French people declare them-

selves Catholics, but the number regularly at-

tending Sunday mass fell from 30 per cent of

Catholics in 1950 to just 10 per cent (equating

to four million faithful) in 1994, while many

French are Catholic in name but never attend

church. Furthermore, the number of those who

turn to the church largely on ceremonial or

seasonal occasions is also in decline: Catholic

baptisms fell from 91 per cent of births in 1958

to 51 per cent in 1990, while Catholic mar-

riages fell from 79 per cent of ceremonies in

1958 to 51 per cent in 1990; and few take com-

munion at Easter, the yardstick by which

Catholic practice is generally measured.

Although traditional religious practice is in

decline, the French do retain a degree of reli-

gious culture characterized by their knowledge

of a scale of religious references. France re-

spects the Christian calendar alongside Repub-

lican and secular festivals such as the 14 July

celebrations, and surveys reveal that 20 per

cent of French overall possess a bible, missal,

crucifix and rosary, while significant numbers

can recognize and define the principal Chris-

tian figures and feast days and recite the ma-

jor prayers. Secularism, it seems, has not eradi-

cated religious culture; recognition of its

Catholicism and Protestantism

importance in the complete socialization of the

nation’s children is evidenced by increasing

calls for the teaching of religious history (but

not theology) within the state education sys-

tem. Moreover, Catholicism’s pre-eminence in

French religious culture was clearly illustrated

in January 1996, when the secular state turned

to the Catholic church for its celebration of

the life of former President François

Mitterrand.

The changing typology of French society,

characterized by the effect of immigration and

by an increase in the number of non-standard

family structures, must be taken into account

in any assessment of the impact of the Catho-

lic church in France. The church’s appeal has

been particularly affected by its attitude to

modern society. In some respects, it has

evolved considerably: the church now accepts

that it operates within a secular, multicultural

society and many have welcomed its instru-

mental role in the defence of human (and es-

pecially immigrant) rights in the post-1945

period, in which it has joined with France’s

other representative religions. But, for many

Catholics, the church operates within struc-

tures which remain too rigid, hierarchical and

male-dominated, and considerable support is

voiced for the ordination of married priests,

the full integration of divorcees into the church

and an increase in the role and powers granted

to women. Moreover, many Catholics believe

that the church retains an outdated social lan-

guage and does not sufficiently respect indi-

vidual conscience in the moral sphere, particu-

larly on matters of sexual health and welfare

where dogma continues to reject assisted fer-

tility, abortion and artificial contraception,

even when this may prevent AIDS. Two-thirds

of Catholics (including 80 per cent of those

under 25) reject the church’s declarations on

sexuality, preferring to regard the church’s

voice as simply one form of guidance among

many, rather than the sole moral authority.

The institutional and practical decline of

the French Catholic church is tempered, how-

ever, by evidence of a resurgence of spiritual

enquiry and faith. Sixty-three per cent of the

French claim to believe in God, although this

cannot be taken to represent identification

with a religion. But what is certain is that

many Catholics (especially the young) now

choose to express their faith privately or dif-

ferently, and to find a religious identity and a

way to God other than through the traditional

church. In particular, France’s forty or so

Catholic charismatic movements (numbering

some 200,000 active members) represent rare

examples of a religious revival, of Catholicism

in expansion. The faith therefore survives, in

spite of the institution’s decline.

Although the Protestant church in France has

also seen a fall in religious practice, it has not

experienced the same rate of decline as the

Catholic church and enjoys a relatively stable

existence. A persecuted religion before 1789,

Protestantism has become France’s third reli-

gion, with about one million practising faithful

(representing 1.8 per cent of the French popu-

lation), variously distributed across France but

particularly established in Alsace-Moselle, the

Cévennes, the Rhône valley and the Paris re-

gion. The French Protestant church operates as

a decentralized and democratic federal struc-

ture. Its principal structure is the French Prot-

estant Federation, created in 1905 at the time

of the formal secularization of the French state,

which groups fifteen churches, including the

Reform church (by far the largest Protestant

group in France) and the Lutherans, and ac-

counts overall for nine out of ten Protestants.

Churches within the Federation remain autono-

mous, but unite to promote their common in-

terests and a shared message on social, ethical

and political matters. Evangelical Protestants

(principally Baptists) have their own umbrella

organization, the French Evangelical Federation,

created in 1969.

Protestantism does not dismiss the notion

of free will or the individual moral responsi-

bility of its believers and, unlike Catholicism,

does not condemn or retreat into authoritar-

ian dogma in the sexual domain. Moreover,

as an institution, the Protestant church’s struc-

tures correspond more closely to the everyday

lives of its members than those of the Catholic

church. For example, it operates within a less

rigid hierarchical structure within which 15 per

Catholicism and Protestantism

cent of its priests are women and 20 per cent

are divorced, a degree of flexibility which ex-

plains why the Protestant church has not suf-

fered the same crisis of recruitment as the

Catholic church. Furthermore, the Protestant

church gives greater recognition to the role and

status of lay members than the Catholic church,

including them in the decision-making proc-

ess. Such flexibility and openness is clearly at-

tractive, as illustrated by the 3 per cent of the

population (1.8 million people) who declare

an affinity with Protestantism, among whom

are some 450,000 Catholics disenchanted with

the Vatican’s dialogue. Many originally Prot-

estant values have passed into the public do-

main to the extent that contemporary French

society, through its promotion of secularism,

liberalism, individualism and tolerance of oth-

ers, now generally adheres to values inherited

from the Reformation. In this respect, it can

be argued that France has become ‘Protestant’,

in attitude if not in religious practice.

The secularization of public life in France

has changed how the Catholic and Protestant

churches see both themselves and each other.

Secularism has not forced the churches into

the background, but has granted them a voice

unobstructed by state interference and left them

free to pronounce on a wide range of social

and political issues. The two churches will

regularly co-operate in such activity (alongside

France’s other religious groups), believing that

they have a right and a duty to comment on

governmental projects particularly where hu-

man rights are at stake. For instance, in 1991

the Gulf War prompted a joint statement of

opposition to conflict and to the proliferation

of weapons, while the churches’ involvement

in the 1993 debate on immigration and na-

tionality law led indirectly to the modification

of some of the more restrictive legislation. Both

churches also work with the state, acting as

advisers on its ethical committees. Such ecu-

menical activity is to be welcomed, although

it is much less visible in the theological do-

main where, despite the creation of Catholic-

Protestant mixed groups (such as the ecumeni-

cal community at Taizé), the two churches re-

main poles apart on certain issues (for exam-

ple, the ordination of women priests). In a

quantitative sense, then, Christianity in France

is in decline; but in a qualitative and symbolic

sense there is evidence of an enduring religious

sentiment and interest, and even of a new re-

ligiosity. Only 12 per cent of the French de-

clare themselves committed atheists, which

suggests that, for the remainder, there is still

room for some degree of religious focus in their

lives, although this may not necessarily be

channelled through any institution. The future

for Catholicism and Protestantism as indi-

vidual religions is difficult to gauge. What does

seem likely, however, is that ‘God’ will acquire

many new faces as the churches implode and

religions proliferate.

KAY CHADWICK

See also: abortion/contraception; Croix, La;

education, the state and the church

Further reading

Cholvy, G. (1994) La Religion en France de la

fin du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, Paris:

Hachette (an excellent and accessible thematic

overview of France’s principal religions).

Gisel, P. (1995) Encyclopédie du

protestantisme, Paris: Cerf (an extensive

survey, clearly written in the form of short

but comprehensive articles).

Imbert, J. (1990) L’Église catholique dans la

France contemporaine, Paris: Economica (a

general introduction to the structures, role

and ideology of the French Catholic church).

Makarian, C. (1996) ‘Les Catholiques de

France’, Le Point 1252 (an analysis of the

evolution of French Catholic identity and

attitudes).

Michelat, G. (1995) Les Français sont-ils en-

core catholiques?, Paris: Cerf (an analysis

of surveys and statistics relating to Catho-

lic religious practice and culture).

Richardot, J.-P. (1992) Le Peuple protestant

français, Paris: Laffont (a classic study of

Protestantism in France).

Secrétariat général de l’Épiscopat (1994)

L’Église catholique en France: documents

Catholicism and Protestantism

pour la presse, Paris: Bayard (a collection

of short thematic articles describing the

structures and social ideas of the French

Catholic Church).

Caubère, Philippe

b. 1950, Marseille

Playwright, director and actor

An improviser and actor at the Théâtre du

Soleil—roles included Molière in

Mnouchkine’s 1979 film and Abdallah in

L’Age d’or (The Golden Age)—he left to pur-

sue his own creative projects during the 1980s.

His 1993 production of Les Marches du palais

(Steps of the Palace) incorporated seven years’

improvisation and creation.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Rouanet, P. (1974) Le Cas Chaban, Paris:

Laffont (a biography which focuses on his

relations with de Gaulle and on his pre-

miership.)

Chabrol, Claude

b. 1930, Paris

Director

With sixty-five films between 1958 and

1993, Chabrol is one of the more prolific

(and less discerning) directors to have

emerged from the Nouvelle Vague (New

Wave), where he made key films, e.g. Le

Beau Serge (1959) and Les Cousins (1959).

His best early film is the Hitchcockian Le

Boucher (1970). His later 1970s films are

lacklustre, but Les Fantômes du chapelier

(1982) was the beginning of a renewal, fol-

lowed by Cop au vin (Poulet au vinaigre) in

1984, L’Inspecteur Lavardin (1986), the un-

derestimated Masques (1987), starring

Noiret, and La Cérémonie (1995).

PHIL POWRIE