Over a period of some thirty years Antonin Artaud worked as a theatre director and theorist, poet, actor, visual artist, translator and critic. The uncompromising sincerity with which he expressed his vision of the world, coupled with recurrent psychological problems, led to several periods of hospitalization including a forcible detention lasting nine years. The details of his work are inextricably linked with those of his life, and the extraordinary qualities of both make him one of the most compelling and complicated figures of twentieth-century French literature.

Artaud was born in Marseilles on 4 September 1896 to a Greek mother and a French father. His childhood was marked by a number of traumatic events, including an atta

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First published 28 February 2007

Citation: Gillan, Robert. "Antonin Artaud". The Literary Encyclopedia. 28 February 2007.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=159, accessed 21 November 2009.]