What Is Literature?

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What Is Literature? (French: Qu'est ce que la littérature?) is a 1947 book by Jean-Paul Sartre. (Alternative title: Literature and Existentialism)

The book is divided into three topics of discussion:

Sartre condemns the bourgeoisie as being devoid of culture.
Sartre claims authors and poets are outside of language and are trapped.
Sartre states that the writer must write for a public which has the freedom of changing everything.

The basic roots of existentialism are left to one side by Sartre in this book, as he devises an understanding of the effect literature has on those who are subjected to it.

The second chapter of this book, entitled 'Why Write?' has been reprinted as a free standing essay.

v t e Works of Jean-Paul Sartre

Novels and short stories	Nausea (1938) The Wall (1939) The Age of Reason (1945) The Reprieve (1945) In The Mesh (1948) Troubled Sleep (1949) Intimacy (1949) Hurricane over Cuba (1961)

Plays and screenplays	Bariona (1940) The Flies (1943) No Exit (1944) Morts sans sépulture (1945) The Respectful Prostitute (1946) The Chips Are Down (1947) Dirty Hands (1948) The Devil and the Good Lord (1951) Kean (1953) Nekrassov (1955) The Condemned of Altona (1959) The Trojan Woman (1965) The Freud Scenario (1984)

Philosophical essays	"Imagination: A Psychological Critique" (1936) "The Transcendence of the Ego" (1936) "Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions" (1939) "The Imaginary" (1940) Being and Nothingness (1943) Existentialism and Humanism (1946) "Search for a Method" (1957) "Critique of Dialectical Reason" (1960, 1985) "Notebooks for an Ethics" (1983) "Truth and Existence" (1989)

Critical essays	"Anti-Semite and Jew" (1946) "Situations I - X (1947–1976) "Black Orpheus" (1948) "Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr" (1952) "The Henri Martin Affair" (1953) "The Family Idiot" (1971–2)

Autobiographical	Sartre By Himself (1959) The Words (1964) Witness to My Life & Quiet Moments in a War (1983) War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phony War (1984)

Related topics	Authenticity Bad faith (mauvaise foi) Existence precedes essence

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