ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with Alfred Jarry's oblique and ambivalent comment on contemporary political issues. Almanachs du Pere Ubu's Almanacs were written at a highly politicized moment in French cultural life. The Third Republic was plagued by political scandals during the 1890s, and by ever-changing governments. The Dreyfus Affair was at its peak in 1898 which was the year of Emile Zola's J'accuse. The focus on the Dreyfus Affair in the first Almanac was inspired by events and fuelled by Jarry's direct literary and social environment. Earlier in 1898, Ubu had already been associated with the Affair in a drawing by E. Couturier in l'Omnibus de Corinthe. Ubu, in a much more human form than in Jarry's own work, scolding Ernest Judet, director of Le Petit Journal and responsible for a violent campaign launched against Zola and other supporters of Dreyfus. The collaborators of the second Almanac probably shared M. Pierre Quillard's anti-colonial position.
