Rafroidi, Patrick (1930-89), scholar, university professor, and administrator, was born 15 June 1930 in Arpajon, Essonne, France, elder son and second among four children of Gaston Rafroidi, from Arpajon, of middle-class extraction, and his wife Constance (‘Connie’) O’Rahilly, from Listowel, Co. Kerry. His siblings were Maureen, Gérard, and Jacqueline. The fourteen uncles and aunts on his mother’s side included Alfred O’Rahilly, president of UCC, and Thomas Francis O’Rahilly and Cecile O’Rahilly, both Celtic scholars. He was educated in Catholic schools. His studies led him from baccalauréat (Paris, 1949), to agrégation d’anglais (1958) and doctorat d’état (1971). He was successively professeur agrégé d’anglais at Lycée Corneille, Paris, and at école Supérieure des Lettres, Rouen (1958- 60); assistant and maître-assistant, Faculté des Lettres, Lille (1960-65); chargé d’enseignement, Faculté des Lettres, Strasbourg (1965-9); chargé de cours, Faculté des Lettres, Lille (1969-71); maître de conférences (1971) and professeur (1972- 80) at Lille University; nominated directeur de l’UER d’anglais (1970-75), vicepresident (1970-72) and president (1976-80) of Université de Lille 3; research fellow, Australian National University, Canberra (1980-81); director of the Institut Français, London, and cultural attaché (1981-4); professeur, chaire d’études anglo-irlandaises, Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, and chargé de mission aux relations internationales (1984-87); visiting professor, Queen’s College, City University, New York (1985-6); and professeur émérite (1987).

A brilliant scholar, Rafroidi was soon to become a prominent figure in Irish studies. Though his first publications are not related to Ireland, they already bear the stamp of eclecticism, and romanticism emerges as a favourite field for literary analysis: Comédies (1961) and Poèmes (1964), contributions to Œuvres complètes de W. Shakespeare; Steinbeck (1962); Les poètes anglais au XIXe siècle: les romantiques (1968); and English romantic poets (anthology, 1969). His doctoral thesis L’Irlande et le romantisme (1972), a considerable explorative work, opens a new path in Irish studies. It was published in English under the title Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (1980). A man of great learning, unwilling to be restricted by genres or periods, Rafroidi wrote on the Irish novel (The Irish Novel in Our Time, co-ed., 1976), the Irish short story (The Irish short story, ed., 1979), the Irish theatre, the Anglo-Irish tradition, the Irish imagination, and specific writers such as Jonathan Swift, Thomas Moore, W. B. Yeats, Sean O’Casey, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, Brian Moore, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, and Desmond Egan. Irish critics highlight the fact that he offered a non-American and non-English perspective on Irish literature. ‘Patrick Rafroidi has always been Ireland’s permanent literary ambassador to France’ (end of address on the conferring of an honorary doctorate on him by NUI, March 1986) - a mission he fulfilled through his research, his editing of collective works (France - Ireland literary relations (1974) and Ireland at the crossroads (1979), the numerous entries he wrote for literary dictionaries and encyclopedias, the preface to the Guide Bleu, Littérature de notre temps: écrivains anglais et irlandais (1973), his organising symposiums at the University of Lille, in London, or at the Sorbonne, such as ‘Les belles étrangères’, devoted to Ireland (November 1989), which opened a few days after he died, and his meeting a great number of Irish writers whom he asked over to France. Translating Brian Moore, Friel, or Desmond Egan was another way to introduce French readers to contemporary Irish literature and culture. The last chapter of his Irlande, tome II: littérature (1970) offers an early display of his talent as a translator. Rafroidi was also a remarkable teacher whose numerous textbooks helped students throughout their English/Irish studies curricula: Travaux pratiques d’anglais (in collaboration, 1965, 1968, 1972), Manuel de l’angliciste: grammaire (1967), Manuel de l’angliciste: vocabulaire (in collaboration, 1967), Précis de stylistique anglaise (in collaboration, 1978), and Nouveau manuel de l’angliciste (1986).

A detailed bibliography appears in Hayley & Murray, Ireland and France: a bountiful friendship. Rafroidi’s teaching qualities and his commitment to Ireland and literature illuminated his seminars, lectures, and writings. Sometimes provocative, always convincing, he shunned literary snobbery and jargon, using a simple, lively, elegant style. He formed generations of French academics, encouraging young scholars in their research work, founding institutes and societies where Irish studies could develop, national complements to IASAIL (International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature, which he chaired 1976-9); CERIUL (Centre d’Etudeset de Recherches de l’Université de Lille 3, founded 1972, recognised by CNRS) and its library, latterly the Bibliothèque P. Rafroidi; and SOFEIR (Société Française d’études Irlandaises, founded 1981), of which he was vice-president 1981-84, president 1984-87, and honorary president 1988. He also founded (1972) and edited the review études Irlandaises. A man of action as well as a scholar, a musician (he played the organ), and a poet, he went through life, private sphere and career, with energy, generosity, a touch of the baroque, and fiery enthusiasm, looking on the world with humour, a somewhat enigmatic smile flitting on his lips. His volume of poems, Approximations (1980), discloses a part of his inner self. He was awarded the following distinctions: Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Couronne, Belgium (1979), Gold Cross of Merit, Poland (1979), Officier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (1981), Officier de l’Ordre National du Mérite (1981), D.Litt. (Hon.) NUI (1986), D.Litt. (Hon.) University of Stirling (1987). He died in Paris, 15 November 1989. He married first Jeanne Franc; secondly (13 May 1978) Christiane Thilliez, with whom he had two sons, Yvain and Liam (b. 24 September 1970, d. 1 November 1985). He married thirdly (29 May 1981) Anne Brines; they had a son, Pierre Emmanuel, and a daughter, Livia.

—Available at Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA / Cambridge UP 2004) - online; accessed 09.02.2021.

• Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, 2 vols (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980) [infra]; id. & intro., Dubliners [of] James Joyce (Longman 1993).

• with Raymonde Popot & William Parker, Aspects of the Irish Theatre [Université de Lille III Pubs. / Cahiers irlandais, 1] (Paris: Éditions universitaires 1972), 297pp.
• with Maurice Harmon, eds., The Irish Novel in Our Time [Cahiers irlandais, 4-5] (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Publications de l’Universite de Lille III 1976), 424pp.
• with Terence Brown, eds., The Irish Short Story (Lille: Presses universitaires de Lille; Gerrards Cross: Smythe 1979), 3-305pp.

• ‘The Irish Short Story in English: The Birth of a New Tradition’, in The Irish Short Story ed. Terence Brown & Rafroidi (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1979), pp.[27]-38 [see extract].]
• ‘Imagination and Revolution: the Cuchulain Myth’, in Irish Culture and Nationalism, 1750-1950 ed. Oliver MacDonagh, et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan 1983), pp.137-48 .
• ‘Defining the Irish Literary Tradition in English’, Irishness in a Changing Society [Princess Grace Library Ser.] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe; NJ: Barnes & Noble 1988), pp.32-47.
• ‘Pilgrim’s Progress: On the Poetry of Desmond Egan and Others’, in Irish Writers and Religion, ed. Robert Welch [Irish Literary Series; IASIL Transactions] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1992), pp.185-89.

See also Barbara Hayley & Christopher Murray, eds., Ireland and France, A Bountiful Friendship: Literature, History and Ideas: Essays in Honour of Patrick Rafroidi [Irish literary Studies, 42] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1992), x, 221pp.

The remarkable success of the short story in Ireland has been variously explained.

Sociologically. As the echo of a collective consciousness, the immediate mirror of a feeling of alienation, the short story, more than the synthetic form of the novel, can easily become the voice of those whom Frank O’Connor calls “submerged population groups”, [The Lonely Voice, London: Macmillan 1965].

Aesthetically. With some notable exceptions Irish writers are in at ease in the longer genre, especially in so far as it is less open to the suggestion of a face to face relationship between an author and a reader, reminiscent of a storyteller of the past speaking to an audience.

Historically. In the Gaelic nation, where urbanization is so recent, a fundamental place must be assigned to the immemorial tradition of the storyteller, the sgéalaí or seanchaí who every year from Hallowe’en to the night of Saint Patrick’s Day, was the very soul of the ceili, as people gathered around the fireplace in mansions or cottages to enjoy a performance from a repertory of 350 items or more.

Although this last reason, the most inspiring, is not to be understated (the texture of the Irish story often if not always suggests the influence of fireside gatherings) it does nevertheless require qualification. In Ireland as elsewhere an evolutionary shift marks the passage from the legend or the traditional story to the [27] modern short story. The latter is a short narrative based on a single isolated subject, referring to experience in its reality and even in its banality. It is quickly and economically presented and structure is dominated by a privileged moment. At the same time it resembles its ancestor in its frequent reliance on the direct testiimony of its narrator or author.

Furthermore the first Irish practitioners of the new genre not only wrote in a language other than that of the traditional story-tellers, they also preferred themes and structures that, at first sight, at least, seem to mark a major break with those of the Gaelic tradition.

This departure can be seen in the use of the fantastic by such romantic Anglo-lrish writers as Charles Robert Maturin, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Fitzjames O’Brien, Bram Stoker. [...]