André Gide summary

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André Gide, oil painting by P.A. Laurens, 1924; in the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris.

André Gide, (born Nov. 22, 1869, Paris, France—died Feb. 19, 1951, Paris), French writer. The son of a law professor, Gide began writing at an early age. His early prose poem Fruits of the Earth (1897) reflects his increasing awareness of his homosexuality. The novellas The Immoralist (1902) and Strait Is the Gate (1909) showed his mastery of classical construction, and Lafcadio’s Adventures displayed his gift for mordant satire. In 1908 he cofounded La Nouvelle Revue Française, the literary review that would unite progressive French writers for 30 years. The autobiographical If It Die… (1924) is among the great works of confessional literature. Corydon (1924), a defense of homosexuality, was violently attacked. The Counterfeiters (1926) is his most complex novel. He become a champion of society’s victims and outcasts and was for a time attracted to communism; with the outbreak of World War II he gained a greater appreciation for tradition. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947.

The Poor Fisherman, oil on canvas by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, 1881; in the Louvre, Paris.

Symbolism Summary

Symbolism, a loosely organized literary and artistic movement that originated with a group of French poets in the late 19th century, spread to painting and the theatre, and influenced the European and American literatures of the 20th century to varying degrees. Symbolist artists sought to express

Nobel Prize Summary

Nobel Prize, any of the prizes (five in number until 1969, when a sixth was added) that are awarded annually from a fund bequeathed for that purpose by the Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel. The Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards given for intellectual

satire Summary

Satire, artistic form, chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, parody, caricature, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to inspire social reform. Satire is a

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and