Question 1

What is the political meaning of La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu?

Accepted Answer

The play opened in November 1935, four years before the Second World War, with Hitler's rearmament already underway and the French and British governments pursuing appeasement. Hector's attempt to prevent the Trojan War — his rational arguments, his agreement with Ulysses, his return of Helen — and the way each argument is undermined by vanity, irresponsibility, and accident directly allegorizes the French situation. The play does not claim that war is preventable by rational argument; it shows that the mechanisms of human vanity and political irresponsibility are too powerful to be overcome by intelligence alone. Giraudoux did not draw the conclusion that war was therefore inevitable — he drew the conclusion that intelligence had a duty to resist even when resistance was futile.

Question 2

Who was Jean Giraudoux and what is his literary significance?

Accepted Answer

Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944) was a French novelist and playwright who served in both World Wars and was the leading figure of French literary theatre in the 1930s. His literary significance is twofold: as a novelist, he was a pioneer of what became known as the 'new novel' avant la lettre, with a highly stylized, elliptical prose style; as a playwright, he revitalized French theatre through the collaboration with the director Louis Jouvet, who staged all his major plays at the Théâtre de l'Athénée. The Giraudoux-Jouvet collaboration was the most important in French theatre history after Molière-La Thorillière, and the plays were written to be staged in Jouvet's specific theatrical idiom.

Question 3

What is the role of fate in Giraudoux's theatre?

Accepted Answer

Giraudoux's theatre is organized around a distinctive vision of fate: his characters understand — often with great lucidity — exactly what is happening and exactly why it is happening, but this understanding does not give them power over events. The Trojans know the war is coming; Hector knows that his careful rational argument with Ulysses will not prevent it; the audience knows from the title that it will not. This is not Greek fate in the sense of divine determination; it is something more modern and more pessimistic — the recognition that human vanity, political irresponsibility, and the desire for dramatic events are more powerful than rational goodwill. The play's fatalism is political rather than theological.

Question 4

How does Giraudoux use language?

Accepted Answer

Giraudoux's theatrical language is the most literary of any twentieth-century French playwright: elaborate, metaphorical, full of paradox and wordplay, with long speeches that are almost set pieces of rhetoric. This is simultaneously the plays' greatest strength (the prose is beautiful) and their greatest weakness (the beauty can become self-regarding, and the plays sometimes seem more interested in elegance than in drama). The contrast with Anouilh — whose language is deliberately functional and colloquial — or with Beckett — whose language is stripped to the point of reduction — shows how distinctive Giraudoux's position is: the playwright as poet-stylist rather than dramatist.

Question 5

What is Tiger at the Gates?

Accepted Answer

Tiger at the Gates is the English title of La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu — the Christopher Fry translation that premiered in London in 1955 and New York in 1955 with Michael Redgrave as Hector and was one of the major British theatrical events of the mid-1950s. The Fry translation is brilliant, capturing the paradox and wit of Giraudoux's language, but it is also an adaptation — Fry anglicizes the play's cultural atmosphere and makes cuts for performance. The French title is significantly more ironic than the English one: 'Tiger at the Gates' suggests a threatened siege, while 'The Trojan War will not take place' tells you the outcome with savage irony.

La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu Reading Order

Complete La Guerre de Troie Book List