Charles Maurras

French writer and political theorist, poet, and critic, a major intellectual influence in early 20th-century Europe whose “integral nationalism” anticipated some of the ideas of fascism.

At age 14 Maurras contracted an illness that left him permanently deaf, and he took refuge in books.

In 1891, soon after his arrival in Paris, Maurras founded, with Jean Moréas, a group of young poets opposed to the Symbolists and later known as the école romane. The group favoured classical restraint and clarity over what they considered to be the vague, emotional character of Symbolist work. After the “Dreyfus affair,” which polarized French opinion of the right and left, Maurras became an ardent monarchist. In June 1899 he was one of the founders of L’Action française, a review devoted to integral nationalism, which emphasized the supremacy of the state and the national interests of France; promoted the notion of a national community based on “blood and soil”; and opposed the French Revolutionary ideals of liberté, égalité, and fraternité(“liberty,” “equality,” and “fraternity”). In 1908, with the help of Léon Daudet, the review became a daily newspaper, the organ of the Royalist Party. Over a period of 40 years, its causes were often reinforced by public demonstrations and riots, spectacular lawsuits and trials.

Maurras also acquired a reputation as the author of Le Chemin de paradis (1895), philosophical short stories. He was a prolific writer. He lost some of his political influence when on 29 December 1926, the Roman Catholic Church placed some of his books and L’Action française on the Index, thus depriving him of many sympathizers among the French clergy. The reason given for the ban was the movement’s subordination of religion to politics.

Maurras was received into the Académie Française on 9 June 1938. During the German occupation in World War II, he became a strong supporter of the Pétain government.