Giraudoux, Jean

Giraudoux, Jean (1882–1944),
French novelist, playwright, and critic. Strongly influenced by German romantics, he wrote Ondine (1939), a play based on a tale by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué ( Undine , 1811), which was itself a version of a 14th‐century poem. Through the unsuccessful union of a nymph and a knight, Giraudoux suggests the difficulty of reconciling the natural and the human worlds.

Lewis C. Seifert