Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for "Existentialism"
    A Study Guide for "Existentialism"
    A Study Guide for "Existentialism"
    Ebook50 pages56 minutes

    A Study Guide for "Existentialism"

    By Gale and Cengage

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for "Existentialism," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literary Movements for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literary Movements for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9781535822947
    A Study Guide for "Existentialism"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for "Existentialism"

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Sylvere Lotringer, Intellectual Who Infused US Art Circles With French Theory, Dies At 83

      Nov 11, 2021

      In November of 1975, a French literary scholar at Columbia University by the name of Sylvere Lotringer, along with a student, John Rajchman, organized a four-day colloquium that was intended to bring together a wave of avant-garde French theorists wi

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Study In Radical Rhetoric

      Jan 26, 2023

      A Study In Radical Rhetoric
      6 min read

    • Article

      Love After an Apocalypse

      Jan 22, 2019

      Love After an Apocalypse
      4 min read

    • Article

      Thought Experimenters

      Sep 1, 2023

      We tend to think of philosophers as solitary creatures. Whether it be Diogenes or Socrates, Spinoza or Rousseau, Thoreau or Nietzsche, the philosopher is by necessity a loner. Several recent books, however, remind us that philosophers can also travel

      4 min read

    • Article

      Changing Perceptions

      Sep 1, 2022

      Changing Perceptions
      2 min read

    • Article

      France Begins To Reckon With The Dark Side Of Its Cultural Elite

      Feb 24, 2020

      For decades, the cultural elite of France have played by their own set of rules. But in the #MeToo era, bad behavior may no longer be tolerated.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Image Is Not Everything

      Sep 3, 2019

      Image Is Not Everything
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Reckoning Is Yet to Come

      Apr 11, 2022

      The Reckoning Is Yet to Come
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Soul of W. E. B. Du Bois

      Feb 14, 2018

      The Soul of W. E. B. Du Bois
      15 min read

    • Article

      The Late Bloomer

      Sep 1, 2023

      “An eccentric woman deserves an eccentric biography.” So writes Willard Spiegelman in this first biography of the poet Amy Clampitt. If there was anything eccentric about the genteel bohemian Amy Clampitt, it was that she was extremely private about

      5 min read

    • Article

      TS Eliot’s Women: The Unsung Female Voices Of The Waste Land

      Oct 30, 2022

      A red lever-arch folder, well-loved and battered, sits near me in my office. Throughout my adult life, it has teetered on shelves in various homes, my university dissertation about the women in TS Eliot’s best-known poem, The Waste Land, lying inside

      9 min read

    • Article

      Salvaging Their Stories

      Oct 9, 2021

      Salvaging Their Stories
      4 min read

    • Article

      Literature’s Year Zero

      Jan 27, 2022

      Literature’s Year Zero
      8 min read

    • Article

      Traveling (at Last)? Take Along The 10 Best Books Of May.

      May 18, 2021

      When travel beckons, be sure to pack the 10 best books of May. Any journey feels more meaningful with a good novel or nonfiction title at hand.

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Lost Piece of Trans History

      Jan 15, 2019

      A Lost Piece of Trans History
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for "Existentialism"

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for "Existentialism" - Gale

      09

      Existentialism

      c. 1960

      Movement Origin

      Existentialism is a philosophical approach that rejects the idea that the universe offers any clues about how humanity should live. A simplified understanding of this thought system can be found in Jean-Paul Sartre's often-repeated dictum, Existence precedes essence. What this means is that the identity of any one person— their essence—cannot be found by examining what other people are like, but only in what that particular person has done. Because no one can claim that his or her actions are caused by anyone else, existentialist literature focuses on freedom and responsibility.

      Existentialism attained the height of its popularity in France during World War II. While the German army occupied the country, the philosophers and writers who gathered to discuss and argue their ideas at the cafeś in Paris captured the attention of intellectuals around the world. The oppressive political climate under the Nazis and the need for underground resistance to the invading political force provided the ideal background for Existentialism's focus on individual action and responsibility.

      Although the French war-era writers are most frequently associated with Existentialism, its roots began much earlier. Existentialism can be seen as the response to the frightening loneliness that prompted Friedrich Nietzsche to pronounce in the 1880s that God is dead. People's loss of faith in religious and social order created an understanding of personal responsibility, which led to literary works that reflect the existentialist's loneliness, isolation, and fear of the uncaring universe. Fyodor Dostoevsky's novels, written in the 1860s and 1870s, show existential themes, as do twentieth-century works by Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, and Nathaniel West. The French existentialists were so influential on writers elsewhere in Europe and in the United States that many contemporary philosophical works show some influence of their thought.

      Representative Authors

      Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

      Beauvoir was born in Paris on January 9, 1908, and lived there most of her life. She was educated at the Sorbonne, where she met Jean-Paul Sartre in 1929. They began a personal and intellectual relationship that continued for fifty years. Mostly known for her 1949 book The Second Sex, a two-volume examination of the roles of women throughout history, Beauvoir was also a prolific writer of fiction. Her novels, mostly based on events of her own life, provide readers with fictionalized versions of the vibrant intellectual scene in Paris throughout the forties and fifties. They include She Came to Stay (1949), based on the romantic complication between her and Sartre and a young student who lived with them; The Blood of Others (1946), about a young man's struggle to remain uninvolved in the political situation around him; and The Mandarins (1954), about the dissolution of the Parisian intellectual community after the war. The Mandarins won the prestigious Prix Goncourt. Beauvoir also wrote plays and philosophical texts. Her death from pneumonia on April 14, 1986, marked the end of the first generation of existentialists.

      Albert Camus (1913-1960)

      Albert Camus was one of the most influential figures in the existentialist movement that emerged in Paris in the years before and during the Second

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1