Potty-talk in Parisian plays: Henry Somm's 'La Berline de l'emigre' and Alfred Jarry's 'Ubu roi.'

From: Art Journal | Date: September 22, 1993| Author: Menon, Elizabeth K. | Copyright information

Nineteenth-century French artist/playwright Henry Somm and Alfred Jarry used their plays to defy the bourgeoisie. They endeared their plays to the underprivileged by assaulting conventional rules of taste, and by using scatological imagery. Somm's 'La Berline de l'emigre' offered definite class differentiation on the basis of this imagery. Jarry's 'Ubu roi' used this imagery to represent the upper-middle-class.

When Henry Somm and Alfred Jarry died in Paris in 1907, they were penni...

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