Ubu Roi
The character of Ubu, created by Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), deserves to be better known. The Wikipedia entry on Jarry’s 1896 play Ubu Roi (Ubu the King) explains:
According to Jane Taylor, “the central character is notorious for his infantile engagement with his world. Ubu inhabits a domain of greedy self-gratification”. Jarry’s metaphor for the modern man, he is an antihero — fat, ugly, vulgar, gluttonous, grandiose, dishonest, stupid, jejune, voracious, greedy, cruel, cowardly and evil …
“There is”, wrote Taylor, “a particular kind of pleasure for an audience watching these infantile attacks. Part of the satisfaction arises from the fact that in the burlesque mode which Jarry invents, there is no place for consequence. While Ubu may be relentless in his political aspirations, and brutal in his personal relations, he apparently has no measurable effect upon those who inhabit the farcical world which he creates around himself. He thus acts out our most childish rages and desires, in which we seek to gratify ourselves at all cost”.
The derived adjective ubuesque is recurrent in French and francophone political debate.
An English translation of the play can be found here. The original French text (two versions of it) is available here.
Eiffel Software
Home page at ETH
Informatics Europe
LASER summer school
Propulsion Academy