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First published in 1996. This text provides an introduction to the historical and cultural context of Sartre and his work. It explores and explains the conflicting critical reactions to Sartre's work. A glossary of critical terms and cultural references provides background information.
A general study of Queneau in English, originally published in 1985, which offers a straightforward introduction to his novels and short stories.
Since his death in October 1970, Jean Giono's reputation as a major French novelist has steadily increased. In order to treat most powerfully the essential nature of modern man confronted with the worst problems of the twentieth century, he adapted into prose the tried and true literary modes: the epic, the pastoral, Greek tragedy, Shakespearean tragedy, and autobiography. In Giono's work the old modes and familiar forms continue to fulfill the age-old functions of great literature: we see the Christian epic suddenly made relevant to everyday life or the pagan epic re-explain modern male savagery. In Giono's hands the novel explains man to himself, shows man more clearly the world about him,...
Here David Ellison explores the problems encountered by France's best experimental authors writing between 1956 and 1984, when faced with the question: "What should my writing be about?" These years are characterized by the rise of the "new novelists," who questioned the representational function of writing as they created works of imagination that turned in upon themselves and away from exterior reality. It became fashionable at one point to affirm that literature was no longer about the world but uniquely about the words on a page, the signifying surface of the text. Ellison tests this assumption, showing that even in the most seemingly self-referential fictions the words point to the world from which they can never completely separate themselves. Through close readings Ellison examines the novels and theoretical writings of authors whose works are fundamental to our perception of contemporary French writing and thought: Camus, Robbe-Grillet, Simon, Duras, Sarraute, Blanchot, and Beckett. The result is a new understanding of the link between the referential function of literary language and the problematic of the ethics of fiction.
Why do artists, poets, philosophers, writers, and others who are usually classified as intellectuals leave the ivory tower to "dirty their hands" in the political arena? In an effort to illuminate the intellectual's struggle to come to grips with the issues raised by political involvement, David Schalk examines the life and thought of five intellectuels engagés in France during the period between 1920 and 1945. From communist to fascist, these figures—Paul Nizan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Mounier, Julien Benda, and Robert Brasillach—cover the full political spectrum, and Professor Schalk studies their diverse reactions to the social, political, and economic tensions of the interwar per...