<p>In 1942, Algerian writer Albert Camus published a philosophical essay called The Myth of Sisyphus along with a fictional counterpart, The Stranger, wherein he presumed the human condition to be an absurd one. This, Camus claimed, was the result of the absence of a god, and consequently of any meaning beyond life itself. Without a god, without an entity greater than man, man has no higher purpose than himself and he himself is inevitably transient. As such, man, so long as he lives, is cursed with the inability to create or partake in anything lasting. The absurd is life without a tomorrow, a life of futility. As one of the main precursors of this view of life and of the human experience, Camus mentioned Herman Melville and Captain Ahab’s chase for the white whale - Moby Dick.</p><p>Now, as will be indicated in the following, the most common critical position holds that the white whale of Moby-Dick, Melville’s magnum opus, is to be interpreted as a symbol of God, and thus Ahab’s chase is tragic by virtue of its impossibility for success. As such, the tragedy is entailed by the futility vis-à-vis its impermanence. However, the ambiguity of Moby-Dick allows for the possibility of several alternative interpretations as to the role of the whale: for instance that of the devil, evil incarnate or merely a "dumb brute". As such, Ahab’s quest might as well be the pursuit of a creature which understands nothing of vengeance, thus rendering his objective equally, if not more fruitless, than the pursuit of a god.</p>

In 1942, Algerian writer Albert Camus published a philosophical essay called The Myth of Sisyphus along with a fictional counterpart, The Stranger, wherein he presumed the human condition to be an absurd one. This, Camus claimed, was the result of the absence of a god, and consequently of any meaning beyond life itself. Without a god, without an entity greater than man, man has no higher purpose than himself and he himself is inevitably transient. As such, man, so long as he lives, is cursed with the inability to create or partake in anything lasting. The absurd is life without a tomorrow, a life of futility. As one of the main precursors of this view of life and of the human experience, Camus mentioned Herman Melville and Captain Ahab’s chase for the white whale - Moby Dick. Now, as will be indicated in the following, the most common critical position holds that the white whale of Moby-Dick, Melville’s magnum opus, is to be interpreted as a symbol of God, and thus Ahab’s chase is tragic by virtue of its impossibility for success. As such, the tragedy is entailed by the futility vis-à-vis its impermanence. However, the ambiguity of Moby-Dick allows for the possibility of several alternative interpretations as to the role of the whale: for instance that of the devil, evil incarnate or merely a "dumb brute". As such, Ahab’s quest might as well be the pursuit of a creature which understands nothing of vengeance, thus rendering his objective equally, if not more fruitless, than the pursuit of a god.

Is the Swedish author Stig Dagerman an existentialist? This work takes a close look at Dagerman’s novel Island of the Doomed to see if it is possible to consider it an expression of existentialist thinking and to see if it interacts with any specific existentialist tradition. Dagerman’s novel was compared with select works of five existentialist thinkers – Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Karl Jaspers, all read in the light of the four categories of existentialistic thinking identified by the Swedish scholar Lennart Koskinen. All the four categories appeared to be central themes within the novel and a few subcategories were identified. An analysis based on these subcategories showed that the novel had obvious similarities with all of the five existentialistic thinkers. The main conclusion of my work is thus: it is reasonable to consider Stig Dagerman’s novel Island of the Doomed an expression of existentialist thinking, but it doesn’t match any specific existentialist tradition. Dagerman is therefore to be considered an independent existentialist.

Thèse de doctorat : Littérature : Paris 12 : 2005. / Version électronique uniquement consultable au sein de l'Université Paris 12 (Intranet). Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. : 78 réf. Index.

This essay is a study of the portrayal of the theme of alienation in Eugene Ionesco's novel The hermit. In my study I examine the different ways in which the theme of alienation is portrayed and how the cause of the narrator's experience of alienation can be found in ideological, psychological and existential conflicts that the narrator has to face. The result is an experience of das unheimliche, a Freudian concept, which is a kind of uncanny detachment that the narrator experiences, when he is put up against an invisible force that lurks in the perifery of the world, which is portrayed in the story. The meaning of the ideological conflict is a portrayal of man's situation in a world that is ruled by capitalism, with marxism as a positive leveler and the meaning of the psychological conflict is a conflict in the narrator's own inner reality. The meaning of the existential conflict is a portrayal of man's situation in a world absent of God. The novel by Ionesco points at these conflicts and also offers a solution to the limitations, that are caused by alienation by transcending them. In my study I focus on the function of language, biblical imagery, allegory and the theories that are being used to define the ideological (marxist theory) and existential (Albert Camus' theory of the absurd) conflicts. In my analysis I have also used Camus' The stranger in comparison with Ionesco's novel.

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This study carries out both a technical and a thematic analysis of the novels by Albert Camus, L&amp / #8217 / Etranger, La Peste, and La Chute, and Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. In the technical analysis of the novels, the study explores the differences in characterization and narrative technique. It argues that the differences in these two issues mainly emerge from the difference in the two authors&amp / #8217 / views of art. In the thematic analysis, on the other hand, the study focuses on the recurring themes in the two authors&amp / #8217 / novels. It argues that Camus and Beckett explore similar themes in their novels because both writers belong to the absurd tradition. In other words, although their notions of art are different, their views of the human condition are quite similar, which is reflected in the common themes they explore in their novels.

The basic question underlying this thesis concerns the identification of the fundamental elements constituting the Western religious tradition and the way in which these elements manifest themselves in the writings of French writers and philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, authors chosen as the subject of this work not only because of their historical and biographical resemblance to one another but also because both are inscribed within the same existentialist and pseudo-existentialist literary tradition emerging in post-war Europe during the nineteen-forties. In the case of both Sartre and Camus, this tradition is particularly characterised by a literature seeking to affirm itself as resolutely atheist on the one hand yet infused with an unshakeable moral imperative on the other, obliging not only an active engagement by their readers in the cause of those less fortunate, but also a continuous effort by the two authors themselves to justify this imperative in the face of their maintained conviction that the universe has neither creator, nor existential reason, nor inherent meaning. It is precisely the contradiction between these two characteristics, and particularly the fact that the first cannot be logically derived from the second, which leads me to propose that the atheism affected by both writers might not be as absolute, as natural or as real as it seems, and that, despite their efforts throughout their work to show to what extent they reject the notion of divine existence, the moral imperative both support with such fervour is actually derived from a lingering religious faith so psychologically primal that neither of them ever manages to rid himself of it entirely. Of course this faith is not based on any true intellectual conviction, but rather the result of two distinct factors: firstly, the adherence of both authors to a cultural and intellectual tradition wholly constructed on religious thought, thus forcing their art to reflect this thought and its constituent elements despite their own conscious objectives and desires, and secondly the irresistible influence of such personal and particularly psychological factors as prohibits either from partaking of an authentic atheist conviction. However, as both continue throughout their lives to deny the existence of this faith whose influence neither is capable of escaping, I also propose that this influence on their writing is necessarily opaque, and the god itself on which it is based, a hidden god. / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Modern European Languages / unrestricted

Traversée, selon Barthes, en tant que mathesis par tous les types de savoirs, la littérature réalise de constants transferts entre ces savoirs et l’imaginaire. Parmi ceux-ci figurent des savoirs non littéraires. Ma thèse consiste à étudier le savoir médical dans trois romans, publiés à trois moments distincts (1947 pour La peste, 1995 pour La quarantaine et 2005 pour Les trois médecins) et écrits par des écrivains appartenant à trois générations différentes (Albert Camus est né en 1913, J. M. G. Le Clézio en 1940 et Martin Winckler en 1955). Dans la première partie de ma thèse, je présente brièvement les deux bases théoriques sur lesquelles s’appuie mon travail. Il s’agit tout d’abord de l’intertextualité, moins dans sa première acception, présentée notamment par Julia Kristeva à la suite de Mikhaïl Bakhtine, que dans sa reformulation plus productive qu’en ont faite notamment Laurent Jenny, Gérard Genette et Marc Eigeldinger, lequel ouvre la voie à l’épistémocritique, ma seconde base théorique, telle qu’elle est produite en particulier par Michel Pierssens. Dans la seconde partie de ma thèse, l’étude des occurrences du savoir médical dans chacun des trois romans du corpus me conduit à en présenter les différentes fonctions qu’y remplit ce savoir. Je regroupe celles-ci autour de deux grands axes : les fonctions du savoir médical qui interviennent en relation avec l’auteur d’une part (fonctions autobiographique, narrative, diégétique et axiologique) et, d’autre part, celles qui mettent en jeu le lecteur (fonctions thématique, informative, didactique et herméneutique).

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