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 had “sinned” and therefore could be shunned as a…

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Citation: Block, Marcelline. "Louis Aragon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 October 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=136, accessed 19 March 2024.]

136 Louis Aragon 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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