The Stranger

Place on List:

II. Literary Genre: The Novel

4. How do elements of irony work in the novel?

Albert Camus. The Stranger. (1942, France)

Key Terms (tags): French, novel, existentialism

Supporting References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_%28novel%29

2. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/stranger/
3. http://www.camus-society.com/the-stranger-summary.html
4. informal review: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/apr/12/books.comment
5. NY Times review: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/14/home/camus-stranger.html
6. Blog: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/04/15/why-christians-should-read-camus/
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8. "Camus, Albert." Who's Who in the Twentieth Century. : Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford Reference. 2003. Date Accessed 16 Aug. 2013 .

The article offers an overview of Camus and less a discussion on the above-cited text.

“Camus, Albert (1913–1960) French novelist, essayist, and dramatist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.

“Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria. His father, a farm labourer, was killed in World War I, leaving his wife to bring up Albert and his elder brother on her meagre income as a charwoman. Despite the deprivations of his childhood, Camus won a scholarship to the lycée in Algiers and went on to study philosophy at the university there. Prevented by tuberculosis from pursuing an academic career, he followed a variety of occupations, including those of journalist with the Alger-Républicain and amateur theatrical director at the left-wing Théâtre du Travail. He was to retain a patriotic bond with his native North Africa throughout his life; the strength of this attachment is revealed in his early essays L'Envers et l'endroit (1937) and Noces (1938).

“In France during World War II, Camus rose rapidly to fame on the publication of his essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942; translated as The Myth of Sisyphus, 1955) and his first novel L'Étranger (1942; translated as The Outsider, 1946), both of which convey his conception of the absurdity of human existence. In L'Étranger, a young man who has killed an Arab is condemned to death, apparently for his refusal to conform with bourgeois society rather than for the murder itself. Camus joined the French Resistance in 1942 and edited the movement's journal, Combat (1944–47). His experiences at this time provided the basis for his next novel, La Peste (1947; translated as The Plague, 1948). Set in Oran, North Africa, during a plague epidemic, it is an allegory of the German occupation of France and the Resistance movement. In L'Homme révolté (1951; translated as The Rebel, 1953), Camus discussed in philosophical terms the ideology of revolution, denouncing communism for more humanistic ideals; this led to a fierce public dispute with Jean-Paul Sartre in 1952. Camus's humanism led him also to write a condemnation of the death penalty, in collaboration with Arthur Koestler.

“Camus never lost his early interest in the theatre. His plays include Le Malentendu (1944; translated as Cross Purpose, 1948), Caligula (1945; translated in 1948), and Les Justes (1950). He also adapted for the theatre William Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun (1956) and Dostoevski's The Possessed (1959). His other works include the semiautobiographical La Chute (1956; translated as The Fall, 1957), the collection of short stories L'Exil et le royaume (1957; translated as Exile and the Kingdom, 1958), and three volumes of his journalistic articles, Actuelles (1950–58). Since his premature death in a car accident at the age of forty-six, three volumes of his Carnets have been published (1962, 1964, and 1966), covering the years from 1935 to 1959.”

9. Birch, Dinah. "Camus, Albert." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 29 Aug. 2013 .

“Camus, Albert (1913–60). French novelist, playwright, and essayist. He was born in Algeria, which provides the setting for many of his works. His first and most successful novel L'Étranger (1942: The Outsider), in which the young white Algerian narrator Meursault recounts his killing of an Arab, and his essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942: The Myth of Sisyphus) established him as a philosopher of the ‘absurd’ nature of the human condition. While careful to distance himself from the existentialism of Jean‐Paul *Sartre, he continued to explore the human condition in fiction (La Peste, 1947: The Plague; L'Exil et le royaume, 1957: Exile and the Kingdom), plays (Caligula, 1945; Les Justes, 1949; see also Absurd, Theatre of the), and several adaptations for the stage, including one from William *Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun (1956). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. See O. Todd, Camus (1997)”

10. Birch, Dinah. "existentialism." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 29 Aug. 2013 871.001.0001/acref-9780192806871-e-2647>.

“existentialism. A European philosophical tendency that flourished in the mid‐20th century, although partly prefigured in the 19th by Søren *Kierkegaard and Friedrich *Nietzsche, achieving some influence upon English writers in the 1950s and 1960s. It was not a school with an agreed doctrine, but a broad current with divergent atheist and Christian versions, Martin *Heidegger and Jean‐Paul *Sartre leading the former camp, Gabriel *Marcel the latter. It emphasized individual uniqueness, freedom, and responsibility in opposition to various forms of determinism, its name deriving from the principle that ‘existence precedes essence’: that is, human choices are not dictated by a determining essence or fixed human nature. The most influential literary exponents of this position were Sartre and Albert *Camus, whose impact can be felt especially in the early poems of Thom *Gunn and in the novels of Iris *Murdoch (who wrote a study of Sartre) and John *Fowles. Independently of such influences, the writings of W. H. *Auden from the 1940s onward echo idiosyncratically the themes of Christian existentialism.”