La guerre dans l'espace littéraire français de 1935 à 1945

Abstract

In this Master Thesis, my goal was to analyze a few war representations in 20th Century French literature and its complex functions. Therefore I have chosen three different genres, i.e. the historical novel, poetry and the sociopolitical novel.

André Malraux's writing is adequate for the study of the clashes of Spanish ideologies in the frame of the conflict. The plot of L'Espoir gives a clear image of the war at the dimension of a nation, and the importance of the Latin Catholic religion within the relationship between antagonists. Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard developed another type of poetry during this period. Their aim wasn't only to divulge the citizens' sentimental states of mind in the middle of a political crisis, but also creating a reaction with both metaphorical corollaries of evil and sibylline message included in it. Jean-Paul Sartre well-known tendency for introspection is slightly used in the first chapter of his story, Le Mur, in order to analyze the mind and soul of a man in the situation of a triple sequestration; the physical and mental state imposed by the enemy, and the risk of self-inflicted mental seclusion.

All these works are qualified as 'oeuvres de situation', meaning they explore a given event in a specific time frame, in this case the period of conflict between fascists and anti-fascists, without stressing on their origins put insisting on the problematic loss of freedom of choice and civilizations during the Spanish War 1936-38 and the Second World War.

I tried to examine the phenomenology of these two conflicts, as well as the sociopolitical impact of these writings, therefore the two methodological directions of my thesis could be read as derived from Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception and from Lucien Goldman's socio criticism. Meanwhile, my thesis certainly aimed to analyse - in conjunction with the war - some fundamental values of existentialism such as the respect of the freedom of one individual extending up to the limit of the freedom of the other.