Louis Aragon

Marcelline Block (Princeton University)

Ed. by David Houston Jones, University of Exeter
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 3 Oct 1897
Died 24 Dec 1982
Activity 1917-1982

Places

Born in France
Active in France

Activities

Primary

Essayist
Novelist
Poet

Resources

Aragon's Works

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Louis Aragon (a.k.a François La Colère, Albert de Routisie) was born in Paris in 1897 to a bourgeois family who ran a

pension

in the prestigious 16th arrondissement. Louis Andrieux, Aragon's biological father, a married former senator, committed an indiscretion with an adolescent girl who was approximately thirty years his junior and subsequently he refused to recognize his son. Aragon was therefore raised by his unmarried 17-year-old mother, Marguerite Toucas-Massillon, and her family. In what was not an unusual scenario in the Catholic France of those days, an illegitimate child unrecognized by his/her father was often raised by the grandparents and his true identity disguised so as to protect the good name of the mother who had “sinned” and therefore could be shunned as a…

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2158 words

Citation: Block, Marcelline. "Louis Aragon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 October 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=136, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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