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joined the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) in
1983. This professional move, however, signifies
not only the beginning of Chatterjee’s career in
writing but also the source behind much of the
content of his novels.
While in high school, Chatterjee wrote a play
adopted from a Hitchcock story called Dilemma.
It was never published but won the school drama
competition despite its open caricaturing of
school rules and regulations. Since then, he has
written three novels, all of which have received
similar critical and political approval in spite of a
style that parodies the state legal systems, in
which he also holds a job, and its effect on human
behavior.
The novel English, August: An Indian Story
(1988) and its sequel The Mammaries of the
Welfare State (2000) are based on a civil servant’s
experiences working in small-town politics.
The adventures of the protagonist, Augustya,
take him from a position of naïveté to cynicism
after initiation into the politics of the real world.
The sequel continues with the life of Augustya,
further exposing the parasitic nature of civil
servants and the political system of which they
are a part. In addition, mammaries is a common
“Hinglish” (Hindi-English) mispronunciation of
the word memories. Thus, Chatterjee begins with
a joke by teasing the reader from the moment one
encounters the title of his book.
Chatterjee’s novels are told in a relentlessly
satirical style that is intended to broaden the con-
cept of comedy. He wishes to go beyond satire, par-
ody, and burlesque. His intent is to provide comic
relief from the hypocrisies that are inherent in so-
ciety by revealing the idiosyncrasies produced
when idealism meets with reality.
Another Work by Upamanyu Chatterjee
The Last Burden. New York: Penguin, 1997.
Chatterji, Bankim Chandra
See CATTOPADHYAY, B(ANKIM)-C(HANDRA).
Chatterji, Sarat Chandra (Sarat
Chandra Chattopadhyay)
(1876–1938)
novelist
Sarat Chandra Chatterji was born in Bengal, India.
He was born into a very poor family and did not
have the opportunity to pursue a higher education.
As a young adult, he spent a number of years wan-
dering all over India dressed as a beggar. Despite
these trying early years, Chatterji did eventually re-
claim his family responsibilities and started to
work as a clerk. During his posting in Burma, he
began writing and was eventually able to achieve
enough financial stability to return to India.
Chatterji’s writing was influenced by Bengali
renaissance literature by Bankim-Chandra CAT-
TOPADHYAY
and Rabindranath TAGORE. Their focus
on the beauty of human life and nature can be
found in Chatterji’s works. In addition, he was an
early proponent of women’s rights, and many of his
works offer unflinching criticism of the gender in-
equalities of his time. His novel Palli Samaj (Village
Society, 1915–16) caused a sensation because of its
open acknowledgment of a woman’s desire for a
man after the death of her husband. His “feminist”
novels, however, eventually conformed to social
norms despite the revolutionary thoughts ex-
pressed in his prose work. Chatterji continued his
criticism, however, in such essays as “Narir Mulya”
(1922–23) that denounce society’s maltreatment
of women, especially in middle-class Bengal.
Chatterji also wrote numerous political novels.
He wrote Pather Dabi (The Right Way, 1926) while
he was president of the Congress Committee of
Howrah District in West Bengal, India. Based on
the rebel forces in Burma and Singapore, this novel
prescribed violence as the only path for a free India
and upheld anti-British sentiments. Much contro-
versy surrounded this work, especially because
Chatterji then held a post in the Congress Party,
which was then still subject to British authority.
Chatterji’s romance novels were a sensational
success all over India. Much of his national popu-
larity had to do with the fact that his stories were
so often adapted for commercial Hindi (not just
Bengali) movies. His first novel Devadas (1917) in-
88 Chatterji, Bankim Chandra
troduces a new type of character in Chandra-
mukhi, a “noble” prostitute. This is a story about
the suppression of love and desire by those whom
society rejects. Her story also reveals social patri-
archy’s hypocritical views on female chastity. In
Srikanta (1917–33), Chatterji’s most famous work,
the union of a singer-dancer and her lover serves
to criticize the institution of marriage by examin-
ing its social and ethical definition. Srikanta is a
partly autobiographical collection of episodes in
four volumes.
Even today, Chatterji’s Bengali novels are the
most often translated works into almost all main-
stream Indian languages.
Another Work by Sarat Chandra Chatterji
Devdas and Other Stories. Translated by V. S. Nara-
vane. Ottawa: Laurier Press Ltd., 2000.
A Work about Sarat Chandra Chatterji
Naravane, Vishwanath S. Sarat Chandra Chatterji: An
Introduction to His Life and Work. New Delhi:
Macmillan Company of India, 1976.
Chattopadhay, Sarat Chandra
See CHATTERJI, SARAT CHANDRA.
Chekhov, Anton (1860–1904) short-story
writer, dramatist
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in Taganrok, a
small provincial town in Russia. His father, Pavel
Yegorovich, owned a small grocery where Anton
worked after school. Taganrok was on an important
commercial route, and Chekhov had an opportu-
nity to meet a variety of people from all walks of
life—an invaluable experience for a developing
writer. In school, Chekhov particularly excelled in
German and scripture. When Chekhov was 16, his
father, facing bankruptcy and imprisonment, es-
caped to Moscow. Eventually, his wife and the
younger children joined him, leaving Chekhov be-
hind in Taganrok, where he worked as a tutor and
sent most of his money to help his family.
In 1879, Chekhov rejoined his family in
Moscow. In that same year, he entered Moscow
University to study medicine. While there,
Chekhov began to write to help support the family.
His first story appeared in 1880 in a comic maga-
zine called Fragments. While working for Frag-
ments, Chekhov developed a keen ability to
capture the speech patterns of characters from all
levels of society. Chekhov’s characters ranged from
thieves to wealthy landowners and every type in
between. Chekhov also honed his narrative tech-
nique during the five years he worked for Frag-
ments. In the typical Chekhov story, the narrative
begins in the present, and the characters’ motives
are seldom explicitly explained. Everyday life is not
simply background in Chekhov’s fiction; it forms
the dynamic center of the narrative.
Chekhov graduated in 1884 and began to prac-
tice medicine. He also continued to write. In 1886,
New Time, one of the most prestigious and popu-
lar newspapers in Russia, began to publish his
work. Chekhov developed a warm relationship
with the editor of New Time, Alexey Suvorin, who
encouraged Chekhov and often helped him finan-
cially.
In 1887, Chekhov received the prestigious
Pushkin Prize for At Dusk, a collection of short
stories, and completed his first play, Ivanov, the
story of a young man, very like Chekhov himself,
who commits suicide. Chekhov’s second play, The
Wood Demon, was a failure and caused him to stop
writing for a period. His first great success in the
theater came with The Seagull (1896), a tragic tale
of love gone awry.
The popularity of his works was such that
Chekhov finally achieved financial independence
and was able to buy a country estate in Melikhovo
and spend money on philanthropic pursuits, such
as a free medical clinic he ran between 1892 and
1893 during a devastating outbreak of cholera. In-
stead of fully concentrating on his writing career,
Chekhov extended his medical practice and treated
as many as 1,500 patients a year.
In 1897, Chekhov was diagnosed with tuber-
culosis, and his health deteriorated rapidly. On
Chekhov, Anton 89
doctor’s orders, Chekhov moved to the small
tourist town of Yalta on the Black Sea where the
salt air was supposed to help his lungs recover. He
found Yalta to be dull and depressing; however, it
was there that he created some of his most fa-
mous works, including the The Cherry Orchard.
In Yalta, Chekhov was often visited by his famous
friends, such as the writer Maxim GORKY, the poet
Ivan BUNIN, and the composer Sergey Rakhmani-
nov, which helped alleviate his loneliness and
sense of isolation. Despite his doctors’ warnings,
Chekhov continued to work throughout his long
illness. He died on July 14, 1904, at a German
health resort.
Critical Analysis
In most of Chekhov’s work, one notices a complete
absence of an authorial view. A contemporary critic,
Aleksandar Chudakov said that other “Critics called
into question his narrative patterns in the short sto-
ries, the absence of extended introductions, of defi-
nite conclusions, of the elaborately detailed
pre-histories for his characters, or clear-cut motives
for their actions.” Chekhov’s short-story technique
was thus innovative not only in terms of subject
matter but also style. Eventually, most critics came
to recognize the genius of Chekhov’s prose, al-
though belatedly, and he was ranked among the gi-
ants of Russian literature during his lifetime.
Chekhov’s ground-breaking dramatic tech-
niques were not very well received in 1896, and The
Seagull, one of his most famous plays, was essen-
tially a failure the first time it was performed. When
it was later performed by the Moscow Art Theater,
however, the play was a critical and popular suc-
cess because this troupe used realistic acting tech-
niques and an ensemble cast, which were perfectly
suited to Chekhov’s drama. The Moscow Art The-
ater eventually staged all of Chekhov’s plays. Unlike
his fiction, Chekhov’s major dramatic work fo-
cused on the politics and psychology of bourgeois
life. One often finds the same feeling of hopeless-
ness and claustrophobia in the conflicts of the mid-
dle-class families in Chekhov’s plays as one does in
the works of French naturalist writer Emile ZOLA.
The Seagull focuses on such diverse themes as
family life, suicide, love, and the mother–son rela-
tionship in the context of middle-class dynamics.
The action of the play revolves around Arkadina, a
famous actress with an established household in
the country, whose son, Konstantin, kills a seagull
one day. The plot is complicated by the presence
of Trigorin, a novelist who is writing a story about
Arkadina’s household.
Chekhov’s last play, The Cherry Orchard, was a
tremendous success when it was first staged in
1904. The play delineates the tragic downfall of the
Ranevskaya family. Madame Ranevskaya, driven by
financial despair, reluctantly decides to cut down
the cherry orchard on her family estate. In Cherry
Orchard, Chekhov explores the results of social
change on the Russian aristocracy and on the freed
serfs. A major theme of the play is independence
and the meaning of freedom as it applies to each of
the characters.
Chekhov’s legacy as a writer and dramatist ex-
tended beyond the borders of Russia. His innova-
tive narrative techniques, which contributed to the
development of MODERNISM, influenced later gen-
erations of writers. His plays, still widely popular
today, are produced all over the world. Chekhov
taught future generations of writers to present life
without authorial commentary—in all its com-
plexity, and in all of its absurdity—and to avoid
omniscient explanations and pat answers to life’s
dilemmas.
Other Works by Anton Chekhov
Five Plays: Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sis-
ters, and Cherry Orchard. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1998.
Forty Stories. New York: Vintage Press, 1991.
Works about Anton Chekhov
Gottlieb, Vera, and Paul Allain, eds. The Cambridge
Companion to Chekhov. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000.
Rayfield, Donal. Anton Chekhov: A Life. Chicago:
Northwestern University Press, 2000.
90 Chekhov, Anton
Chen Yuan-tsung (1932– ) novelist
Chen Yuan-tsung was born in Shanghai, China, was
raised in a wealthy household, and received a West-
ern-style education at a missionary school. During
the Sino-Japanese War, she lived in Chongqing but
returned to Shanghai, where she lived in 1949, the
year of the Communist takeover. Chen stayed in
China because of her idealistic belief in the revolu-
tionary cause.
In 1950, at age 18, she acquired her first job at the
Film Bureau of Beijing, but this did not last long.
The Communist Party leadership began to “send
down” young people from cities to the countryside
to participate in the so-called agrarian revolution. In
1951, Chen left Beijing for Gansu province in north-
western China to join this revolution and manually
work the land. She became a young revolutionary,
known as a cadre. She worked at land reform and
endured extreme hardships, such as starvation, dur-
ing Mao Zedong’s failed industrial and agrarian ini-
tiative known as the Great Leap Forward. She wrote
and read as much as possible during this time but
suffered during the Cultural Revolution when the
oppressive regime persecuted writers, artists, and
intellectuals as counter-revolutionaries.
Chen immigrated to the United States in 1972
with her husband, Jack Chen, an artist and writer,
and their son and later taught at Cornell. She de-
termined to publish her story from writings she
had hidden during her cadre years, which was the
tale of millions of young people who came of age
in Communist China. She fictionalized her life in
her only work—the 1980 novel, The Dragon’s Vil-
lage. The novel follows Guan Ling-ling, a young
woman from a wealthy family who becomes swept
up in the revolutionary fervor of pre-Communist
China and joins the Red Guards. She encounters
both corrupt officials and cadres, but she finds
kindness among comrades and endures the same
hardships that Chen herself did. Chen lives with
her husband in El Cerrito, California.
Works about Chen Yuan-tsung
Grunfeld, A. Tom. “The Dragon’s Village: An Autobi-
ographical Novel of Revolutionary China.” In
Focus (Spring 1993).
Stone, Judy. “A Talk with the Author/An Author’s
Ordeal.” New York Times Book Review, May 4,
1980.
Chernyshevsky, Nikolay (1828–1889)
essayist, fiction writer
Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was born in
Saratov, Russia. At first educated by his father, a
priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, Cherny-
shevsky was admitted into a seminary, an institu-
tion that prepared students for careers in the
clergy. While in the seminary, he demonstrated
great ability as a scholar, and his parents decided to
send him to a university in St. Petersburg, where he
enrolled in the department of philology.
Socially awkward and financially destitute,
Chernyshevsky isolated himself from his fellow
students. He was an avid reader and dreamed of
becoming a great social reformer and philosopher.
Between 1855 and 1862, Chernyshevsky worked for
a political publication, The Contemporary, where he
published translations, criticism, and political
articles. He was greatly influenced by European
socialist thinkers, such as Hegel. Chernyshevsky
advocated agrarian reform, emancipation of the
serfs, and establishment of communal agrarian
communities, which he viewed as a transition to so-
cialism. His politically radical thinking and attacks
on government policies, particularly on the institu-
tion of serfdom, resulted in almost 20 years of exile
to Siberia, where he was sent in 1864. He continued
to attack government policies relentlessly and
became a member of several underground radical
organizations that wanted to reform Russia by any
means necessary, including violence against repre-
sentatives of the government.
Although Chernyshevsky is remembered as a
forerunner of the Russian revolutionary move-
ment, he is also noted for his novel, What Is To Be
Done? (1863). This polemical novel explores the
social inequalities of Russian society. The plot con-
cerns a group of young, idealized intellectuals who
go to the countryside to ease the lives of peasants
through scientific means. The novel condemns
Chernyshevsky, Nikolay 91
moderates for their seeming inability to engage in
social transformation and calls for a swift, radical
movement. The novel was generally praised by the
radical reformers but was condemned by govern-
ment officials.
Chernyshevsky left a radical legacy for Russian
socialism. His works influenced a number of his-
torical figures, including Vladimir Lenin, who par-
ticipated in the Russian Revolution. Chernyshevsky
is considered to be one of the greatest social
philosophers of Russia.
Other Works by Nikolay Chernyshevsky
Prologue: A Novel for the 1860’s. Translated by Michael
J. Katz. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
Press, 1995.
Selected Philosophical Essays. Moscow: Foreign Lan-
guages Publishing House, 1953; reissued 2002.
A Work about Nikolay Chernyshevsky
Paperno, Irina. Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
Chughtai (Chugtai), Ismat (1915–1991)
poet, dramatist, novelist, short-story writer,
scriptwriter
Ismat Chughtai was born in Aligarh, India.
Though she was one of 10 children, Chughtai
spent most of her time alone, climbing trees, run-
ning after chickens in her backyard and watching
the world go by. From an early age, Chughtai col-
lected mental pictures of everyday life whose sim-
plicity underlies the complex emotional portraits
of her characters.
Her father worked at court and played a semi-
nal role in allowing Chughtai to pursue a freedom
in thought and deed that was denied to most
women of her time. In her autobiographical essay,
“My Autobiography,” she calls herself “Ismat the
rebel,” perhaps the best description of both her
personality and her work. Her unflinching, inter-
rogative look at social rules helped to pave the way
for much of the Indian fiction that was written by
women in the second half of the 20th century.
Chughtai constantly used the freedoms allowed
to her brothers as the model for her own rights.
When her parents decided that she would get mar-
ried when she turned 13, she threatened to re-
nounce Islam. Her father sent her to school, which
she entered in fourth grade and received a double
promotion immediately. She then left her home to
continue her education in Lucknow and finally
gained financial independence by becoming a
headmistress of a school for girls.
All of Chughtai’s work is written in Urdu. The
quality and success of her poems changed the pre-
viously held conception that only men could write
good Urdu poetry. After Munshi PREMCHAND,who
is considered the father of the Urdu short story
(“Afsara”), Chughtai is one of the most popular
and prodigious writers of Urdu fiction. She wrote
about the lives of the middle class, national poli-
tics, and gender at a time when such topics were
not explored in popular fiction, especially by
women writers. Her works confuse the private
realm of a person’s mind with the moral codes of
the social world. The story The Quilt (1942) uses
the context of a loveless marriage to question as-
sumptions surrounding female sexuality. The quilt
becomes a metaphor for all that is hidden behind
the words society uses to construct meaning.
Chughtai’s legacy is not limited to the book
world. Her husband, a film producer, took her sto-
ries to directors and producers who adopted her
work for cinema. Chughtai won several National
Awards for her Hindi films. She wrote for 11 films
and is one of the few female scriptwriters ever to
have written for Hindi cinema.
Another Work by Ismat Chughtai
The Quilt and Other Stories. Translated by Tahira
Naqvi. New York: Sheep Meadow Press, 1994.
Cixous, Hélène (1937– ) poet, nonfiction
writer
A feminist and theorist, Hélène Cixous was born in
the French colony of Oran, Algeria, and grew up
in a German-Jewish household. She received a de-
92 Chughtai, Ismat
gree in English from the Lycée Bugeaud in Algiers
in 1959 and a doctorate in 1968. After graduation,
Cixous held teaching posts at several French uni-
versities, including the University of Bordeaux, the
Sorbonne, and Nanterre, before finally establishing
herself at the University of Paris VIII–Vincennes.
At the Sorbonne, Cixous participated in the 1968
student uprisings. Later, at Vincennes, she insti-
tuted several courses in experimental literature,
particularly the significance to women of the rela-
tionship between psychoanalysis and language. She
also established a center for women’s studies at the
University at Vincennes and cofounded the struc-
turalist journal Poétique.
Cixous was greatly influenced by the progres-
sive ideologies of such intellectuals as Heinrich von
Kleist, Franz KAFKA, Arthur RIMBAUD,Clarice
LISPECTOR, Jacques Derrida, Jaques Lacan, Sigmund
FREUD, and Heidegger. In the 1970s, Cixous, along
with other theorists, such as Kristeva, Barthes, and
Derrida, began to explore the complex relation-
ships that exist between sexuality and writing.
From this study, she produced several influential
feminist texts, including “Sortie” (1975) and “The
Laugh of the Medusa” (1975).
Critical Analysis
The essay “Sortie” is of particular importance in
that she uses it to establish a basic understanding
of the hierarchy of opposites, such as in
culture/nature; head/heart; colonizer/colonized;
and speaking/writing. She then proceeds to link
these opposites to the differences that exist be-
tween the male and the female genders in a dis-
cussion that calls for the abolition of such
dichotomies as a means of empowering women.
“The Laugh of the Medusa” discusses feminine
repression as a direct result of male-dominated
cultural discourse. Cixous depicts this repression
through the image of a dark, unexplored room
that stands, metaphorically, for the largely unex-
plored area of female language and sexuality. It is
Cixous’s belief that women do not explore these
areas of the self out of a deep-rooted fear that has
been placed in them by a language deeply rooted in
male dominance. She goes on to theorize that
women can shed light on this darkened existence
simply by questioning their fears. Through this
questioning, they will come to find that there is
nothing about which to be frightened and that all
of their preconceived fears were created by male
images and standards that must be viewed as ob-
stacles that can and must be overcome. Cixous also
insists that the only way in which women can over-
come the obstacles placed before them is to learn
to speak with their bodies, using the body as a
medium from which they can regain their inner
voice. In the absence of a true feminine discourse,
as language itself is historically the realm of the
masculine, the language of the body takes on sig-
nificance in its power to change and to reclaim.
In both “The Laugh of the Medusa” and “Com-
ing to Writing” (1977), Cixous tackles many diffi-
cult ideas. She explains the idea of feminine
discourse, a concept that eludes definition, by ar-
guing convincingly that any attempt to define the
term using the language of masculinity would de-
stroy its inherent beauty; therefore, it must be left
undefined. She relies heavily on Freudian concepts
mingled with certain feminist ideas, such as a
rereading of the Medusa myth as an analogy for fe-
male empowerment, rediscovered from Greek
mythology. She also fervently expresses the idea
that the only escape from masculine discourse is to
understand and use the link between language and
sexuality. Freedom of language results directly
from freedom of sexuality. This freedom leads to
what Cixous refers to as jouissance, a term that re-
lates to a fulfillment of desire that fuses the erotic,
the mystical, and the political in a way that goes
beyond mere physical satisfaction. It is through
this fulfillment, which can be found specifically in
writing, that feminine discourse is discovered.
Since her emergence as a strong voice on the lit-
erary scene in the 1970s, Cixous has developed
even greater complexity in her style and has be-
come somewhat more mysterious in her thinking;
however, her radical feminist ideology has softened
somewhat as she seeks to explore the idea of col-
lective identities. Cixous continues to lecture at the
Cixous, Hélène 93
University of Paris VIII–Vincennes, where she is
active in women’s studies. Her major contribution
to world literature lies in her advancement of fem-
inist ideas.
Other Works by Hélène Cixous
Cixous and Jacques Derrida. Veils. Translated by Ge-
offrey Bennington with drawings by Ernest
Pignon-Ernest. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2001.
The Third Body. Translated by Keith Cohen.
Evanston, Ill.: Hydra Books/Northwestern Univer-
sity Press, 1999.
A Work about Hélène Cixous
Penrod, Lynn. Hélène Cixous. Boston: Twayne, 1996.
classicism
Classicism as a term is generally accepted as indica-
tive of clarity in style, adhering to principles of el-
egance and symmetry, and created by attention
and adherence to traditional forms. It has often
been used synonymously with generic terms such
as excellence or artistic quality. The term has its
basis in the study, reverence for, and imitation of
Greek and Roman literature, art, and architecture.
Because the principles of classicism are deeply
rooted in the history, rites, rituals, and practices of
specific ancient cultures, the term also came to
apply to specific cultural, literary, artistic, and aca-
demic canons.
The first full-scale revival of classicism occurred
during the Renaissance when intensified interest in
Greek and Roman culture, especially the literary
works of Plato and Cicero, influenced a renewal of
classical standards in literature. In the 18th and
19th centuries, following the archaeological dis-
covery of the remains of Pompeii and Hercula-
neum, there was again a revival of interest first in
the culture of Rome and later in the ideas of an-
cient Greece. This period, generally referred to as
neoclassicism, was actually the start of the larger
romantic movement (see
ROMANTICISM). The re-
vival was closely linked to the American and
French Revolutions and draws parallels between
ancient and modern forms of government.
In Central Europe, during the early part of the
20th century, there was again a spirit of revolution
that coincided with a revival of interest in Greek
literature. The classical models were somewhat
reinvented. This was particularly apparent in the
renewed interest in Greek literature and in a ten-
dency among many Greek writers to look to the
past—to history, myth, and folklore—as a means
of understanding the present situation.
The Greek poet and Nobel laureate George
SE-
FERIS was particularly interested in awareness of the
past and the ways in which history can be used to
understand the present. His collection of poems,
Mythistorema (1935; translated 1960) applied the
Odyssean myths to modern situations and circum-
stances. Homer’s Odyssey became the symbolic
basis for many of his works.
Other poets and novelists, such as Tudor
ARGHEZI and Nikos KAZANTSAKIS, based elements of
their works on principles of classicism and turned
their attention to myth as an allegory for modern
times. Although his writing was modern in its sense
of restlessness and was bold and innovative in its
use of often crude, forceful language, Arghezi
leaned toward the traditional elements of classicism
in his tendency to rely on folklore and mythology.
Kazantsakis’s epic poem Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
(1938) picks up Ulysses’ tale where Homer leaves
off and brings it to a more solid conclusion.
Although classicism cannot be said to have ever
been abandoned completely during any period of
literary history, its resurgence is cyclical and re-
sponsive to historical circumstances. As a result of
the early 20th-century interest in revolution and
change, similar to the spirit of Greek and Roman
times as well as that of the Renaissance, classicism
experienced a literary resurgence throughout 20th-
century Central Europe.
Works about Classicism
Buxton, John. The Grecian Taste: Literature in the Age
of Neo-Classicism 1740–1820. New York: Barnes &
Noble, 1978.
94 classicism
Knox, Bernard. Backing into the Future: The Classical
Tradition and its Renewal. New York: Norton,
1994.
Claudel, Paul (1868–1955) poet, playwright,
essayist
A prominent figure in the early 20th-century
French Catholic renaissance, Paul Claudel was
born in Villeneuve-sur-Fère-en-Tardenois, in
Aisne, France. He came from a family of farmers,
Catholic priests, and landed gentry. A profound re-
ligious experience at the age of 18 changed not
only his view of the world but also impacted his fu-
ture as a writer. On Christmas day, during services
at Notre Dame cathedral, he heard a distinct voice
above him proclaim, “There is a God.” He became
a fervent Catholic and turned to the Bible as his
source of inspiration.
As a poet, Claudel’s most influential work is his
Five Great Odes (1910). Claudel uses this poem in
five parts to relate poetic inspiration as a gift from
God, describing the mystery and wonder of the
universe.
As a journalist and literary critic, Claudel also
based his beliefs and impressions in his strong reli-
gious faith. He regularly attacked musician
Richard Wagner, stating that, while he admired
Wagner’s music, he disliked what it expressed in
Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. He also wrote
on the subject of French literature, particularly ad-
miring
BAUDELAIRE and RIMBAUD.
Claudel debuted as a playwright with Tête d’or
(1889), a drama largely influenced by his own reli-
gious experiences. This work was followed by the
trilogy of plays, L’otage (The Hostage, 1911), Le
Pain dur (Crusts, 1918), and Le Père humilié (The
Humiliation of the Father, 1920), which trace the
degeneration the nobility. Another dramatic work,
Break at Noon (1906), dealt with the theme of
adultery and was based on an experience in
Claudel’s own life in which, for a four-year period
in the early 1900s, he had engaged in a passionate
affair with a married Polish woman. This episode
caused him to contemplate the complexities inher-
ent in the theme of forbidden love. One of
Claudel’s best-known dramas is The Satin Slipper
(1924), about the epic adventures of Rodrique and
the woman he loves.
On May 1, 1950, as a result of his contributions
to literature in the form of religion, Claudel was
honored by the pope. He died five years later in
Paris on February 23.
Another Work by Paul Claudel
Claudel on the Theatre. Translated by Christine Trol-
lope. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami
Press, 1972.
Works about Paul Claudel
Caranfa, Angelo. Claudel: Beauty and Grace. Lewis-
burg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1989.
Knapp, Bettina L. Paul Claudel. New York: Ungar,
1982.
Cliff, Michelle (1946– ) novelist, poet,
short-story writer, teacher, critic, editor
Michelle Cliff was born in Kingston, Jamaica. As
a young child, she moved to New York City with
her family. After attending public schools and
graduating from Wagner College in 1969 with a
B.A. in European History, she worked for the New
York publisher W. W. Norton from 1970 to 1971.
Then she studied at the Warburg Institute in Lon-
don, earning a master of philosophy degree in
1974. She returned to W. W. Norton as a copy ed-
itor and then as a manuscript and production ed-
itor. She resigned in 1979 to focus on writing, and
in 1980, she published her first book, the prose
poem Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to De-
spise.
Themes of race, gender, and power run
through Cliff’s internationally known poetry,
novels, essays, articles, lectures, and workshops. In
“Clare Savage as a Crossroads Character” (1990),
Cliff acknowledges the autobiographical strands
present in her prose poem and earliest novels,
Abeng (1984) and No Telephone to Heaven (1987).
Abeng, the African word for “conch shell,” alludes
Cliff, Michelle 95
to Caribbean, United States, and world history.
The novel narrates how two runaway slaves,
Nanny and Cuffee, lead raids to liberate other
slaves. Both Abeng and its sequel, No Telephone to
Heaven, were critically acclaimed for their dexter-
ous linguistic shifts from Jamaican creole to stan-
dard English.
Critics name Free Enterprise (1993) her
strongest novel. In it, female protagonists Annie
Christmas and Ellen Pleasant work with freedom
fighters to liberate slaves. To quote Booklist, “In tall
tales and legends, cherished memories, and regret-
table misunderstandings, Free Enterprise explores
the multiple meanings of freedom and enterprise
and of a society that enshrines selected meanings
of both.”
In Writing in Limbo Simon Gikandi claims,
“The uniqueness of Cliff’s aesthetics lies in her re-
alization that the fragmentation, silence and re-
pression that mark the life of the Caribbean
subject under colonialism must be confronted not
only as a problem to be overcome but also as a
condition of possibility—as a license to dissimu-
late and to affirm difference—in which an identity
is created out of the chaotic colonial and postcolo-
nial history.”
Other Works by Michelle Cliff
Bodies of Water. New York: Dutton, 1990.
The Land of Look Behind: Prose and Poetry. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Firebrand Books, 1985.
The Store of a Million Items: Stories. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Works about Michelle Cliff
Berrian, Brenda F. “Claiming an Identity: Caribbean
Women Writers in English.” Journal of Black Stud-
ies 25 (December 1994): 200–16.
Edmonson, Belinda. “Race, Privilege, and the Politics
of (Re)Writing History: An Analysis of the Novels
of Michelle Cliff.” Callaloo 16, no. 1 (1993):
180–91.
Gikandi, Simon. Writing in Limbo: Modernism and
Caribbean Literature. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 1992.
Schwartz, Meryl F.“An Interview with Michelle Cliff.”
Contemporary Literature 34, no. 4 (Winter 1993):
595–619.
Cocteau, Jean (1889–1963) poet, novelist,
dramatist
Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Lafitte, France.
His father, a lawyer and amateur painter, commit-
ted suicide when Cocteau was nine. This experi-
ence left him with an intense awareness of human
frailty and an almost uncanny ability to identify
with the world of the dead, as is seen in his earlier
poetry such as L’Ange Heurtebise (1925).
A mediocre student who failed several attempts
to pass the secondary-school graduation exami-
nation, poetry was Cocteau’s first artistic outlet. He
published his first volume of poems, Aladdin’s
Lamp, at the age of 19. Influenced by surrealism,
psychoanalysis, cubism, and Catholicism, coupled
with a frequent use of opium, Cocteau promoted
the avant-garde in his works. He counted among
his closest friends prominent artists such as Pablo
Picasso, composer Erik Satie, and Russian stage di-
rector Sergey Diaghilev.
Cocteau met Pablo Picasso and Sergey Di-
aghilev in 1915. They challenged Cocteau to write
a ballet, which is the collaborative work Parade
(1917), produced by Diaghilev, with scenic design
by Picasso and music by Erik Satie. Cocteau went
on to firmly establish himself as a writer with the
prose fantasy Le Potomak (1919) about a creature
trapped in an aquarium.
Another close and influential friend was the
poet and novelist Raymond Radiguet, whose death
from typhoid fever caused Cocteau to experiment
with opium. Under influence of the drug, he began
to write psychological novels such as Thomas the
Impostor (1923) and his masterpiece, Les Enfants
terribles (The Incorrigible Children, 1929) about a
group of children trapped in their own scary
world.
In 1929, Cocteau was hospitalized for opium
addiction, the experience of which he recounts
in Opium (1930). On his release, he began to
96 Cocteau, Jean
work on a series of films that often depicted mir-
rors as doors to alternate realities. He also be-
friended the young actor Jean Marais in 1937 and
thereafter designed and wrote roles especially for
him, producing such works as Orphée (Orpheus,
1950), a one-act tragedy about death’s connection
to inspiration, and Le Testament d’Orphée (The
Testament of Orpheus, 1961), whose theme was
death.
Branded a decadent during World War II,
Cocteau continued to lead an active literary life.
Always seeking to shock, he had a facelift and
began to wear leather trousers and matador’s capes
in his declining years. He died on October 11,
1963.
Another Work by Jean Cocteau
Tempest of Stars: Selected Poems. Translated by Je-
remy Reed. Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour Editions,
1992.
Works about Jean Cocteau
Knapp, Bettina L. Jean Cocteau. Boston: Twayne,
1989.
Saul, Julie, ed. Jean Cocteau: The Mirror and the Mask:
A Photo-Biography. Introduction by Francis Steeg-
muller. Boston: David Godine, 1992.
Coetzee, J(ohn) M. (1940– ) novelist and
essayist
John M. Coetzee was born to a middle-class fam-
ily in South Africa. His parents were of African and
German heritage, but he writes only in English.
Like the narrator of his 1997 memoir, Boyhood, he
spoke both Afrikaans and English fluently as a boy
but was an outsider in both communities.
J. M. Coetzee studied undergraduate English in
Cape Town but found old, canonized British lit-
erature dull. He turned to mathematics for com-
fort and worked for IBM as a computer systems
designer in England in the early 1960s. He re-
turned to literature, however, and came to the
United States to study at the University of Texas
at Austin, where he received his doctorate in liter-
ature in 1969. Coetzee’s graduating thesis studied
the work of Irish playwright Samuel
BECKETT,a
major influence on his own writing. Also while at
the university, he started historical research into
the life of explorer and ancestor Jacobus Coetzee,
the results of which became his first novel,
Dusklands (1974).
Critical Analysis
Dusklands simultaneously tells the stories of two
main characters, an American bureaucrat in 1970s
war-torn Vietnam and an Afrikaner explorer mov-
ing into 18th-century South Africa. The book
compares America’s involvement in Vietnam with
the Dutch colonization of South Africa. Coetzee, in
essence, explores the imperialist mentality of be-
lieving one’s own culture superior to others.
In his next novel, In the Heart of the Country
(1976), Coetzee uses a woman’s point of view to
tell the story of Magda, who cannot recover from
the tragedy of her father’s death and her own rape.
The book ends with Magda in a state of hysterical
loneliness. In his 1980 book, Waiting for the Bar-
barians, Coetzee turns the colonial experience into
allegory, telling the story of an imaginary country
being overrun by barbarians.
Coetzee received worldwide recognition with
The Life and Times of Michael K., which won
England’s Booker Prize in 1983. The story intro-
duces another important subject matter of Coet-
zee’s works: the relationship between parents and
their children. The narrator, Michael K., escapes
from the civil strife and violence of apartheid Cape
Town to his mother’s farm. He is a simple-minded
gardener who lives with his dying mother until
their farm is destroyed in the ongoing civil war.
Michael and his mother are innocent victims of
their political surroundings, but Michael has a
simple attitude: He says,“one can live.”
Coetzee wrote three more works of fiction in
the late 1980s and early 1990s before taking home
the Booker Prize again for his 1999 Disgrace. In
two of these, Foe (1986) and The Master of Peters-
burg (1994), he responds to and rewrites great
works of European literature. Foe is the story of an
Coetzee, J(ohn) M. 97