Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Imagination

David Lethbridge (Okanagan College)

Ed. by Benedict Paul O'Donohoe, University of Sussex
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

Philosophy (any)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1936

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

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The Imagination

was the first book published, in 1936, by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. What if, shortly after its publication, Sartre had stepped off a Parisian curb and been struck dead by a bus? Would we still read

The Imagination

? Would it still retain any significance? Or do we read it now only because it is a book by Sartre, the indisputably brilliant writer who gave us such masterpieces as

Being and Nothingness

(1956),

The Critique of Dialectical Reason

(1976), and

The Family Idiot

(1981-1993)? An idiotic question, you might retort. Or is it? The question is not entirely irrelevant. There are texts which are simply one of a series, each of which merely follows the next without any necessary internal connection or development between them, and there are texts which mark a…

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2399 words

Citation: Lethbridge, David . "L'Imagination". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 December 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11100, accessed 25 November 2024.]