The third term: literature between philosophy and critical theory

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Introduction In 1948, the philosopher and rising star of Parisian existentialism, Jean- Paul Sartre, recast a series of essays into book form as Qu'est-ce que la litterature? (What is Literature?) The question Sartre raised in the title introduced a set of concerns he deemed central to the programme of committed writing ( litte rature engagee ) he and his colleagues sought to implement through the literary monthly, Les Temps modernes , they had launched in October 1945. Sartre's postwar ambitions for philosophy and literature were pragmatic and activist. Above all, he sought to mobilise the writer into an historical agent, a 'bad conscience' who spoke out in public - as often in speech as in writing - on the social and political issues of the moment. But while Qu'est-ce que la litterature? was a manifesto for litterature engagee , Sartre also saw the need to ground his programme in terms that addressed the nature of literature and of literary activity: what literature was , so to speak, aswell as what he wanted it to do . It was, then, no small irony that much as Sartre sought to mobilise the writer of prose within a broad public sphere represented by mass media such as the daily press, theatre, film, the foundational questions he addressed in the opening chapters of Qu'est-ce que la litte rature? - what is writing? why write? for whom does one write? - drew openly on a philosophical tradition whose origins in Greek antiquity included Aristotle's Poetics and Plato's Republic .