Aragon's speciality is a kind of internal rime-calembour, a device which he has never abandoned. The echoes have sometimes a largely musical value, but they often produce a comic juxtaposition which … [makes the words] parody and deflate each other…. (p. 221)

This kind of dislocation requires a sense of location: in Feu de joie we find not an absence of logical structure but a parody of structure, as well as an acute verbal intelligence which revitalises both meaning and form.

It would appear so far that by choosing to renew the familiar instead of destroying it, Aragon has taken in his stride the reconciliation of liberty and tradition. However, in Le Libertinage (1924), Aragon's preface seems ready to equate liberty with anarchy. He affirms his belief in a love which is destructive of social and intellectual norms and of order, being entirely non-rational…. The central theme of his book is...