Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, he wrote in both French and English.
Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi was a Scottish novelist.
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
The Theatre of the Absurd is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work focused largely on the idea of existentialism and expressed what happens when human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. The structure was in a round shape and the finishing point was the same as the starting point. Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.
Absurdist Fiction is a genre of literature that arose in the 1950s and 1960s predominantly in France and Germany, prompted by post-war disillusionment. The background of Absurdist Fiction is founded on influences from the surge in Romanticism in Paris in the 1830s, the collapse of religious tradition in Germany and the societal and philosophical revolution lead by the expressions of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche Absurdist fiction takes form most commonly in a novel, play, poem, or film, that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. Common elements in absurdist fiction include satire, dark humor, incongruity, the abasement of reason, and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being "nothing." Absurdist fiction in play form is known as Absurdist Theatre. Both genres are characterised by a focus on the experience of the characters, centred on the idea that life is incongruous, irreconcilable and meaningless The integral characteristic of Absurdist fiction involves the experience of the struggle to find an intrinsic purpose in life, depicted by characters in their display of meaningless actions in the futile events they take part in. The Absurdist movement is known to be an extension of the Existentialism movement that focuses on the pointlessness of mankind and specifically, the emotional angst and anxiety present when the existence of purpose is challenged Existentialist and Agnostic perspectives are explored in Absurdist novels and theatre in their expression of plot and characters. Absurdist Fiction is central to the work of Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco.
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in the French language, by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature. France itself ranks first on the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country.
Christopher Logue, CBE was an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival, and a pacifist.
Jean Hyppolite was a French philosopher known for championing the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of France's most prominent post-war thinkers. His major works include Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Studies on Marx and Hegel.
The Paris Review is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, The Paris Review published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Terry Southern, Adrienne Rich, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Jean Genet, and Robert Bly.
The Age of Reason is a 1945 novel by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. It is the first part of the trilogy The Roads to Freedom. The novel, set in the bohemian Paris of the late 1930s, focuses on three days in the life of philosophy teacher Mathieu who is seeking money to pay for an abortion for his mistress, Marcelle. Sartre analyses the motives of various characters and their actions and takes into account the perceptions of others to give the reader a comprehensive picture of the main character.
Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs) is the debut novel of French writer Jean Genet, first published in 1943. The free-flowing, poetic novel is a largely autobiographical account of a man's journey through the Parisian underworld. The characters are drawn after their real-life counterparts, who are mostly homosexuals living on the fringes of society.
Maurice Girodias was a French publisher who was the founder of the Olympia Press. At one time he was the owner of his father's Obelisk Press. He spent most of his productive years in Paris.
The Evergreen Review is a U.S.-based literary magazine. Its publisher is John Oakes and its editor-in-chief is Dale Peck. The Evergreen Review was founded by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press. It existed in print from 1957 until 1973, and was re-launched online in 1998, and again in 2017. Its lasting impact can be seen in the March–April 1960 issue, which included work by Albert Camus, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bertolt Brecht and LeRoi Jones, as well as Edward Albee's first play, The Zoo Story (1958). The Camus piece was a reprint of "Reflections on the Guillotine", first published in English in the Review in 1957 and reprinted on this occasion as the magazine's "contribution to the worldwide debate on the problem of capital punishment and, more specifically, the case of Caryl Whittier Chessman."
20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts. For more on this, see French art of the 20th century.
What Is Literature?, also published as Literature and Existentialism,) is an essay by French philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre, published by Gallimard in 1948. Initially published in freestanding essays across French literary journals Les Temps modernes, Situations I and Situations II, essays "What is Writing?" and "Why Write?" were translated into English and published by the Paris-based literary journal Transition 1948. The English translation by Bernard Frechtman was published in 1950.
Shakespeare and Company is the name of two independent English-language bookstores that have existed on Paris's Left Bank.
Les Temps modernes is a French journal, founded by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. It first issue was published in October 1945. It was named after the 1936 film by Charlie Chaplin.
Exiled in Paris is a 1994 book by James Campbell, a Scottish cultural historian specialising in American Literature and culture. He is the former editor of the New Edinburgh Review and works for the Times Literary Supplement. The book is a study of Left Bank cafe society in post-war Paris, particularly the influence of American expatriates, as indicated by its subtitle: Richard Wright, LOLITA, Boris Vian and others on the Left Bank 1946–1960.
Richard Woodward Seaver was an American translator, editor and publisher. Seaver was instrumental in defying censorship, to bring to light works by authors such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Eugène Ionesco, E.M. Cioran, D.H. Lawrence, Jack Kerouac, Robert Coover, Harold Pinter and the Marquis de Sade.
Iris Owens (1929–2008), also known by her pseudonym Harriet Daimler, was an American novelist.
