SOURCE: Anderson, Kirsteen H. R. “Imagination and Ideology: Ethical Tensions in Twentieth-Century French Writing.” Modern Language Review 96 (January 2001): 47-60.

In the following essay, Anderson traces the development of the French ethical imagination in the twentieth century, noting that as the century progressed, French intellectuals moved away from forms of thought that were morally accountable to their historical and cultural context.

Four prophetic presences could be taken to represent stages in the development of the French ethical imagination in the course of the twentieth century. Valéry's Hamlet, questioning the very ground on which European intellectual identity stands and the precariousness of its continuing existence (La Crise de l'Esprit, 1919); Camus's Clamence, denouncing yet simultaneously affirming the guilt-ridden hypocrisy of European bourgeois consciousness (La Chute, 1956); Tournier's Ogre, poised on the Franco-German frontier as he sifts the debris of Nazi totalitarianism for any redeeming shards of meaning (Le Roi des Aulnes...