Jean-Paul Sartre's influence on modern literature is based, not only on his remarkable philosophy and his stature as a playwright and novelist, but on his weight as a literary critic. First in France, and later abroad, his original and trenchant analysis of contemporary letters have sown the seeds from which a whole school of criticism sprung up. In these sparkling essays he brings his unique viewpoint to bear upon a significant group of twentieth-century writers – men who are not only of first importance to the Existentialists, but who may be among the creative giants of our time: William Faulkner, Francois Mauriac, John Dos Passos, Jean Giraudoux, Albert Camus and Franz Kafka. These fascinating studies extend still further the range of Sartre's ideas, as well as clarifying the aesthetic theories laid down in Being and Nothingness. They make provocative reading for anyone whose ears are not closed to the more controversial issues of the day. -from jacket 1957
Author
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre, was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. He was a leading figure in 20th century French philosophy. He declined the award of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age." In the years around the time of his death, however, existentialism declined in French philosophy and was overtaken by structuralism, represented by Levi-Strauss and, one of Sartre's detractors, Michel Foucault.
