• Psychoanalysis
• Freudian repression
• Literary Theory
• Parody
• Nihilism
• French modernism
• Classical reception
• André Gide
• Jean Cocteau
• Jean Giraudoux. Interwar-period literature
• Retour au classicisme
• Greek myth
• Greek tragedy
• Modern theatre

I aim to point out the inner tensions of the French literature of the inter-war period. Despite the most widely held critical positions, tending to read French modernism as a humanistic movement, the plays of the '20s and '30s display nihilistic patterns which are repressed by their authors. Yet, they still come to the light through the irony which pervades these texts. This dissertation therefore offers a psychoanalitical reading of André Gide's, Jean Cocteau's and Jean Giraudoux's "classical" plays in order to highlight their nihilist elements and their struggle against the pervasive humanistic discourse. In this view, humanism is thus a compromise formation between nihilism and the need for social order in the aftermath of the war. Consequently, literature - and the classical tradition in particular - is held as a powerful way to restore and reshape social values in accordance to contemporary needs.