- Martin du Gard, Roger
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born March 23, 1881, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Francedied Aug. 22, 1958, BellêmeFrench novelist and dramatist.Originally trained as a paleographer and archivist, he brought to his literary works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for detail. He first attracted attention with the novel Jean Barois (1913), the story of an intellectual torn between the Roman Catholic faith of his childhood and the scientific materialism of his maturity. He is best known for the eight-novel cycle Les Thibault (1922–40), the record of a family's development that chronicles the social and moral issues facing the French bourgeoisie in the pre-World War I era. He received the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature.
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▪ French authorborn March 23, 1881, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Francedied Aug. 22, 1958, BellêmeFrench author and winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature. Trained as a paleographer and archivist, Martin du Gard brought to his works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for details. For his concern with documentation and with the relationship of social reality to individual development, he has been linked with the realist and naturalist traditions of the 19th century.Martin du Gard first attracted attention with Jean Barois (1913), which traced the development of an intellectual torn between the Roman Catholic faith of his childhood and the scientific materialism of his maturity; it also described the full impact of the Dreyfus affair on French minds. He is best known for the eight-part novel cycle Les Thibault (1922–40; parts 1–6 as The Thibaults; parts 7–8 as Summer 1914). This record of a family's development chronicles the social and moral issues confronting the French bourgeoisie from the turn of the 19th century to World War I. Reacting against a bourgeois patriarch, the younger son, Jacques, renounces his Roman Catholic past to embrace revolutionary socialism, and the elder son, Antoine, accepts his middle-class heritage but loses faith in its religious foundation. Both sons eventually die in World War I. The outstanding features of Les Thibaults are the wide range of human relationships patiently explored, the graphic realism of the sickbed and death scenes, and, in the seventh volume, L'Été 1914 (“Summer 1914”), the dramatic description of Europe's nations being swept into war.Other works by Martin du Gard include Vielle France (1933; The Postman), biting sketches of French country life, and Notes sur André Gide (1951; Recollections of André Gide), a candid study of the author, who was his friend. Martin du Gard also wrote a somber drama about repressed homosexuality, Un Taciturne (1931; “A Silent Man”), and two farces of French peasant life, Le Testament du père Leleu (1914; “Old Leleu's Will”) and La Gonfle (1928; “The Swelling”). In 1941 he began work on Le Journal du colonel de Maumort, a vast novel that he hoped would prove to be his masterpiece, but it was still unfinished at his death.Additional ReadingDavid L. Schalk, Roger Martin du Gard: The Novelist and History (1967), examines the life and works of Martin du Gard.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
