The complexity and modernity of the plague

Aurélie Palud

pp. 19-33

in: Emmanuelle A. Vanborre (ed), The originality and complexity of Albert Camus's writings, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

In his article "La réception critique immédiate de La Peste en 1947," Paul-F. Smets explains that The Plague has suffered critiques from Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, or even Georges Bataille. Nowadays, some French intellectuals still have a slighting judgment on the novel.¹ For instance, Jean d"Ormesson—member of the French Academy—wrote, "The moralism, the nobility of the ideas, the will to defend a thesis and to make reflections on life, death, the human condition have something laborious and heavy."² As for the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, he explains in Le Magazine littéraire in May 2006, "I think this novel is sententious and heavy even if I was touched," and "I have never been convinced by the metaphor."³

Cited authors

Sartre Jean-Paul

Bataille Georges

Barthes Roland

Finkielkraut Alain