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
What Is a Nation? French citizen has to have forgotten the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, or the massacre that took place in the South in the thirteenth century. While many nations, such as France, begin with a feudal regime such as a monarchy, others, such as the United States and Switzerland, are formed by acts of consensual aggregation. France and many others, however, survived their feudal roots while maintaining their identity. Renan inquires what is the organizing principle? It can't be race, because France is "Celt, Iberian, German...The most noble countries, England, France and Italy, are the ones where the blood is most mixed."