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Louis Aragon
(1897-1982)

Active: 1917-1982 in France, Continental Europe

By Marcelline Block (University of Princeton)

Indexing Data:

  • Active In: France, Continental Europe
  • Born In: France, Continental Europe
  • Activity: Poet, Novelist, Essayist, Critic

Life, Works and Times

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Louis Aragon (a.k.a François La Colère, Albert de Routisie) was born in Paris in 1897 to a bourgeois family who ran a pension in the prestigious 16th arrondissement. Louis Andrieux, Aragon’s biological father, a married former senator, committed an indiscretion with an adolescent girl who was approximately thirty years his junior and subsequently he refused to recognize his son. Aragon was therefore raised by his unmarried 17-year-old mother, Marguerite Toucas-Massillon, and her family. In what was not an unusual scenario in the Catholic France of those days, an illegitimate child unrecognized by his/her father was often raised by the grandparents and his true identity disguised so as to protect the good name of the mother who

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First published 13 October 2008

Citation: Block, Marcelline. "Louis Aragon". The Literary Encyclopedia. 13 October 2008.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=136, accessed 21 November 2009.]