What Is Literature? What Is Literature? 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. Sartre attempts to devise an understanding of the effect literature has on those who are subjected to it. In the foreword Sartre addresses his critics
Capital punishment in France row to life imprisonment. The last execution took place by guillotine, being the main legal method since the French Revolution; Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian citizen convicted of torture and murder on French soil, who was put to death in September 1977 in Marseille. Major opponents to the death penalty in French history include philosopher Voltaire, poet Victor Hugo, politicians Léon Gambetta, Jean Jaurès and Aristide Briand, and writers Alphonse de Lamartine and Albert Camus. Prior to 1791, under the Ancien Régime, there existed a variety of means of capital punishment in France, depending on the crime and the status of