Professor of Modern Literature
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences – French Studies
University of Windsor
Born in Northern Africa of French and Swiss parents, Jean-Pierre de Villers grew up in southern France. He later went to study at University of Paris and then, while living with his father in Nice, went to the University of Aix-en-Provence where he obtained two licences in English and Lettres françaises modernes. He is married to French fashion designer, Anne de Villers.
“My ties with Switzerland are important to me even if I never really had the opportunity to live in the country” explains Jean-Pierre de Villers. “I had a great-aunt living in the Evian area on the southern side of Lake Geneva and therefore I have had many opportunities to travel to Switzerland, which is actually my father’s country of origin. I have always enjoyed visiting the Geneva and Lausanne areas, which are very well known to me. I even tried to ski in Verbier but I had to admit that at some points the slopes there were too steep for a skier used to practicing on the smooth Ontario hills, so that I had to gave up skiing in the Swiss Alps”, he adds jokingly.
Now a Professor of Modern Literature at Windsor University, Jean Pierre de Villers came to Canada in the seventies. He had previously spent seven years as a Fulbright Scholar in Connecticut and at Boulder University in Colorado where he obtained his Ph.D. with a dissertation dealing with the Surrealist theatre of Roger Vitrac. Before coming to Windsor he taught at the University of Colorado, the University of Notre Dame, the U.S. Air Force language school at Sacramento and the University of California.
“I came to this side of the border to settle a minor visa problem with the US immigration and actually I never went back to work there”, explains Jean-Pierre de Villers in a perfect French.
Today Professor de Villers is a world specialist of Avant-gardism and Futurism in literature and art.
“ I started to study and research Dadaism but I soon realized that nothing was really new in that cultural movement which finds much of its roots and influence in the Futurist movement created two decades earlier by Filippo Marinetti, the Italian writer. I then decided to dedicate my research time to Marinetti and to the Futurist movement instead of Dadaism”, says de Villers.
Since then, Jean Pierre de Villers has published many books and articles about Marinetti – who passed away in 1944 – and Futurism. With the time he became very close to Marinetti’s three daughters Alba, Vittoria, and Luce who provided him with valuable documents and information for his research and study of their father’s work.
But Futurism is only one topic of interest for Jean-Pierre de Villers who also dedicates part of his time in researching the life and story of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the aviation pioneer and writer, author of “The Little Prince”.
De Villers likes to explain that in 1993 while in New York he visited a book and drawing exhibition dedicated to the French pilot and writer at the Pierpont-Morgan Library. There, he met an old man who introduced himself as one of the two German pilots who participated in the air battle that ended up with Saint-Exupéry’s plane being shot down above the Mediterranean sea, near Nice on July 31, 1944. The pilot’s name was Wilhelm von Stadde. Jean-Pierre de Villers tells the story of his serendipitous meeting with von Stadde in his book “The Last Flight of the Little Prince”, which was published in 2000. The book has been translated in many foreign languages.
Research on an author’s work or fragments of life is not always easy and requests a lot of patience and dedication. But it can also bring some very intense moments, and no doubt that the two never published manuscripts written by the French writer that Jean-Pierre de Villers, was able to locate while going through the files of the Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin are part of the rewarding side of the searches to which Jean-Pierre de Villers is dedicating much of his time.
And last but not least, in a very rare gesture, our compatriot has been allowed by Saint-
Exupéry’s heirs to access the original manuscript of “The Little Prince” in order to write an upcoming critical edition of the manuscript which is kept at the Morgan Library in New York.
Jean-Pierre de Villers can be reached at the University of Windsor: www.uWindsor.ca and soon at www.Jeanpierredevillers.com, his personal site.
Bibliography: (main publications)
Les drames de Roger Vitrac et le théâtre d’avant-garde Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Colorado, 1967
Futurism And the Arts – Le Futurisme et les Arts – II e le Arti. University of Toronto Press , 1975
F.T. Marinetti et le Premier Manifeste du Futurisme. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1986
Guns of Babylon Docudrama-novel. Toronto: Lugus Publishing, November 1993
Futurist Manifestoes / Manifestes Futuristes, Mellen Press, New York, 2007
The Last Flight of the Little Prince/ Le Dernier vol du Petit Prince. Editions du Vermillon, Ottawa. 2000
Tendre comme le souvenir. Ottawa: Editions du Vermillon, 2005
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