However, what better lens and perspective to observe Occupied France and the effects of this occupation than from a writer and statesmen who lived in this societal prison.īefore the War, Sartre asserted: “Literature was about the world, readers were in the world the question was not whether to be but how to be, and this was best answered by carefully analyzing language’s symbolic enactments of the various existential possibilities available to human beings (Foster, “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community” 139,). There are hundreds of books written about this horrific time in France’s history Sartre was no longer attacking the bourgeoisie as an outsider he now became an ‘insider’ of French literary culture. This, of course, would change over the next decade.Īccording to Priscilla Parkhurst Clark in Literary France: “The war confronted Sartre with a palpable enemy of a different order than the bourgeoisie…Sartre entered the ‘socialistic’ stage of his life (174). Ironically, before the war, Sartre was heavily influenced by German philosophy and created a particular style for his writings which challenged French philosophy and the French language itself ( Literary, 167). Sartre became a voice of the people, changing French literary culture. However, I have recently uncovered a fresh perspective in of the evolving concept of littérature engage in What is Literature” by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80), concerning the Occupation of Paris, of which he lived through, and the aftermath of WWII. Again, this historical perspective could be fifty, one-hundred, or even thousands of years after the events. Historians argue what the facts are as well as how they should be interpreted. ![]() In my experience of reading this history, most of the arguments about what happened, and perspectives of what people recorded were written after the events. Over the years, I have read many historical texts and biographies about the German occupation of France, particularly Paris, from May 1940 to June 1944. How does a major World War and subsequent Occupation change the way a writer views literature? How significant is a fiction novel after this event? Does literature engage directly or by implication? Why write?
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