Austin, R.E.N.; (2012) Jean Cocteau and the Occupation of France. Masters thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The work of Jean Cocteau continues to be of interest and has been the subject of many studies, with anniversaries relating to the poet’s life and work continuing to prompt new exhibitions of his work and assessments of his work. The fact that the interest in Cocteau so often extends beyond the work itself is a starting point for this study of the poet’s work during the period of the German Occupation of France, 1940-1944, and this will also be explored in this project. The project is divided into three sections which consider ‘l’affaire Breker’, Cocteau’s work for the cinema and his theatre productions of the period. I have worked through the newspaper archives at both the British Library’s collection in Colindale and that of Leeds University, the only two archives in Britain which between them offer a complete collection of the journal Comoedia as well as a number of other newspapers from the period, such as Je suis partout and La Gerbe. I have also read much of Cocteau’s work in parallel with the Journal intime he kept from 1942-1945, which was published posthumously. By examining the article on Breker, Cocteau’s involvement with cinema and the theatre during the Occupation, a view emerges of an artist grappling, not always successfully, with the particular challenges of the wartime context. While on the one hand his efforts to minimize the threat the war posed to the creative endeavour can certainly be criticized as a politically contestable choice of action, I would argue that it is important also to recognize the belief Cocteau strongly held that art was even more vitally important during war than at other times, and indeed that art was in itself a mode of resistance to the destructiveness inherently associated with war.

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