Customer Reviews

Allegories of the Purge: How Literature Responded to the Postwar Trials of Writers and Intellectuals in France

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This remarkable study explores the complex interaction which took place in France, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, between the purge trials and literary theory. As French collaborationist writers were tried for treason and intelligence with the ennemy, prosecutors and defenders debated over the role of literature, and the role of the intellectual, in modern societies. After presenting and explaining the stakes of these debates, Phil Watts analyzes how novelists and poets have echoed (and sometimes anticipated) either side of the arguments in their literary works. Celine, Sartre, Blanchot, Eluard are interpreted in a new and powerful perspective which also offers the reader invaluable insights into the literary and intellectual debates held in France during the 1960s and 1970s, all the way to recent events like the Paul De Man affair.

Should civilized nations kill their poets? Certainly not. Should these poets be above the law for the sake of the autonomy of literature, even after they fed and led the anti-Semitic hysteria? "Allegories of the Purge" raises a whole set of fascinating questions at the crossroads of history, literary theory, politics and ethics, without ever succumbing to the temptation of providing oversimplified answers, but avoiding with equal mastery all the traps of escapism. A brilliant and stimulating book!

A clearly written work on the difficulty of separating art and literature from reality. How far should "art for art's sake" be allowed to go? How far can anyone distance himself from reality? Watts has done an excellent job of analyzing the works of four authors in relation to the reality of the postwar purge, and of dealing with the difficulty of remembering that in this century, in a democratic country, authors could be - and were - executed for their writings. Allegories of the Purge is a very intelligent, well-written work which gives the reader a new and important view of post-war France.

Anyone who wants to understand the history of "French theory" would be well advised to start with Philip Watts's important study of French writers and intellectuals (Sartre, Celine, Duras, Blanchot, and Eluard) caught up in the period known as the Purge, when some 350,000 French citizens were judged for acts of collaboration with the Nazi occupier. Sartre calls for a commited, responsible literature, while Celine clings defensively to style over ideas, and so the stage is set for a debate over the role of the writer that is still raging. Watts reminds us that the literary and philosophical classics we read today were born in a period when words could cost you your life. This is a brilliant essay, elegant and probing. I recommend it not only to students of France but to anyone interested in the interplay of politics, literature, and justice.