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    A Study Guide for Jean Giraudoux's "The Madwoman of Chaillot"
    A Study Guide for Jean Giraudoux's "The Madwoman of Chaillot"
    A Study Guide for Jean Giraudoux's "The Madwoman of Chaillot"
    Ebook43 pages33 minutes

    A Study Guide for Jean Giraudoux's "The Madwoman of Chaillot"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Jean Giraudoux's "The Madwoman of Chaillot," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 12, 2016
    ISBN9781535838177
    A Study Guide for Jean Giraudoux's "The Madwoman of Chaillot"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Jean Giraudoux's "The Madwoman of Chaillot" - Gale

      11

      The Madwoman of Chaillot

      Jean Giraudoux

      1948

      Introduction

      The play The Madwoman of Chaillot is a satire, dealing with a classic struggle between good and evil and filled with absurd dialogue and humorous word play. It opens at a sidewalk café in the Chaillot neighborhood of Paris, where a group of corrupt and heartless businessmen frankly discuss their plans to destroy Paris to get at the oil that lies beneath the city. When the eccentric Countess Aurelia, the Madwoman of Chaillot, learns of their plans, she takes it upon herself to try them in a mock court and eliminate them.

      The play is a translation of the French play La Folle de Chaillot written by Jean Giraudoux in 1943 and first produced in Paris on December 19, 1945. The English version, translated and adapted by Maurice J. Valency, opened on Broadway in the Belasco Theater on December 27, 1948, and starred Martita Hunt as the Countess Aurelia. Hunt won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play in 1949. Valency's adaptation follows Giraudoux's play closely but removes several references to localities and people in Paris with which American audiences would not be familiar. The Madwoman of Chaillot has been revived often in New York and London and is a staple of regional, college, and high school theater.

      Author Biography

      Giraudoux was born Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux in Bellac, France, on October 29, 1882, the younger of two sons of a civil servant and his wife. Giraudoux was athletic and did well in school; in his teens he received a scholarship to attend a boarding school in Châteauroux, where he studied literature, philosophy, Greek, and Latin. After completing secondary school he completed two more years of pre-college study at a school near Paris and took full advantage of the opportunity to visit the theaters and cafés of the city. In 1903, after completing compulsory military service, he began university study at the Sorbonne and then the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He focused on German literature and spent a year studying in Munich and traveling throughout Europe. He taught French at Harvard for one semester in 1907. During his university years, Giraudoux published his first stories in literary and popular magazines.

      Giraudoux left the academic life in 1909, entering the foreign service. He served in the Foreign Ministry for the next thirty-five years. His work required him to travel extensively but left him time to work on his own writing. Giraudoux served in the military during World War I, was wounded twice, and made seriously ill with dysentery. He never fully regained

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