TRACES OF EXISTENTIALISM IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Keywords:
Jean Paul Sartre; existentialism; reception history; American periodicals; Cold War culture; translation; canon formation; Hazel E. Barnes; Walter KaufmannAbstract
This article examines how Jean-Paul Sartre and “existentialism” were presented to U.S. audiences between 1944 and 1963. Using qualitative reception analysis, it compares three arenas that mediated Sartre for Americans: mass and general-interest magazines, elite literary-intellectual journals shaped by Cold War cultural politics, and universities that made existentialism teachable through translation, reviewing, anthologies, and educational broadcasting. Across these settings, U.S. commentary repeatedly relied on three competing frames: moral resistance (Sartre as an ethical witness of occupation and responsibility), personality/fad (existentialism as spectacle, fashion, or caricature), and domestication (existentialism stabilized as a canon and classroom topic). The study argues that “Sartre in America” was not a simple import of French philosophy but an institutional construction shaped by editorial incentives, political pressures, and pedagogical needs.
References
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