Abstract

This dissertation argues that Sartre's literary criticism has not been properly situated within a study of the effects that Sartre's writings are designed to have on their reader. The main effect examined in the dissertation is a call for the reader to create his or her forms of freedom through a renewed understanding of literature's power. Consequently, the aim of Sartre's writings on literature is to allow the reader to experience in a practical way that we are all empowered to act and to extend the limits of human freedom. ;My study is divided into four parts. In the first part, "What Literature Is Not," I examine the reasons for which Sartre considers that literary criticism needs to be rethought in terms of its performative effects on the reader. The works used are What is Literature? and Notebooks for an Ethics. ;In the second part, "A First Sketch of an Existentialist Ethic, Sartre on Ponge," I locate a fundamental belief from which Sartre attempts to free his readers. This is the belief that human beings can be as inert as objects. I then examine the techniques by which Sartre seeks to free the readers from this belief. ;In the third part, "Material Freedom, Sartre on Genet," I examine Saint Genet, Comedian and Martyr. I demonstrate that the structure of this text is designed to give performative power to statements about freedom and action which might otherwise be considered as formal descriptions. ;In the last part, "Towards Praxis, Sartre on Flaubert," I maintain that in The Family Idiot Sartre thematizes the previously implicit concept of active passivity. This concept serves to counter the belief that a human being could ever be totally passive. I also demonstrate that the illocutionary force of certain statements which, in Saint Genet, Comedian and Martyr, required the support of an elaborate structure, is achieved successfully in The Family Idiot, by embedding that structure within the work's very statements