Alfred Jarry was a French symbolist writer best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), often cited as a forerunner of the Dada, Surrealist, and Futurist movements of the 1920s and 1930s, and later the theatre of the absurd in the 1950s and 1960s. He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics'.

Born in Laval, Mayenne, France, Jarry's mother was from Brittany. He wrote in a variety of hybrid genres and styles, prefiguring the postmodern, including novels, poems, short plays, opéras bouffes, absurdist essays, and speculative journalism. His texts are considered examples of absurdist literature and postmodern philosophy.