"What is Literature?" and Other Essays - Softcover

Sartre, Jean-Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674950844 ISBN 13: 9780674950849

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1988

Synopsis

"What is Literature?" remains the most significant critical landmark of French literature since World War II. Neither abstract nor abstruse, it is a brilliant, provocative performance by a writer more inspired than cautious. "What is Literature?" challenges anyone who writes as if literature could be extricated from history or society. But Sartre does more than indict. He offers a definitive statement about the phenomenology of reading, and he goes on to provide a dashing example of how to write a history of literature that takes ideology and institutions into account. This new edition of "What is Literature?" also collects three other crucial essays of Sartre's for the first time in a volume of his. The essays presenting Sartre's monthly, Les Temps modernes, and on the peculiarly French manner of nationalizing literature do much to create a context for Sartre's treatise. "Black Orpheus" has been for many years a key text for the study of black and third-world literatures.

About this title

About the Author:

Jean-Paul Sartre, the great figure of French literary and philosophical culture at mid-century, was the author of numerous works.

Language Notes:

Text: English, French (translation)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0674950844
• ISBN 13: 9780674950849
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 368