What is Literature?

What is Literature is one of the iconic books of the late 1940s by Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most influential thinkers and writers of the 20th century. Sartre, who combined the qualities of a man of theory and action and made a widespread impact with his identity as a writer-intellectual, discusses the concept of literature in three separate categories: 'author', 'the duty of the author' and 'the position of the reader' in this book, which caused controversy in his time. He sees the author as an intellectual who does not turn his back on the world of his age and determines his attitude and actions by being inspired by the realities and dead ends of the period in which he lives. This great spokesman of existentialism, which defends the radical freedom of the individual, defines the duty of the intellectual, who should also carry his readers into the process of liberation, as 'to change while writing, to liberate while writing'. While approaching literature from the perspective of the concept of 'attachment', he praises the intellectuals of the Age of Enlightenment and lashes out at the realist writers who imposed the bourgeois morality of the 19th century. This cult text of Sartre, which questions the author as well as the literature, confirms the words of Dostoyevsky, who said, "Every person is responsible for everything before everyone else."



Number of Pages: 173

Year of Printing: 2015


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Can Yayınları

Number of Pages: 173

First Printing Year: 2005

Language Turkish