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Part of the book: Sartre's Theory of Literature

Christina Howells

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 14

Modern Humanities Research Association

ModernFrenchPhilosophyopen

Abstract.  Sartre's intention in his preface to the Ecrits intimes was to give a picture of Baudelaire as a totality, a unique and unified whole, consistent even within apparent inconsistency, because motivated by an original choice rather than determined by chance events over which he had no control. Sartre wished therefore to make use of the biographical data, not in the disparate and haphazard way of previous critics, but rather in order to draw from it clues to Baudelaire's basic option, and verification of that option once it was discovered. In this sense his analysis already follows the broad lines of the méthode progressive-régressive which was later to be outlined in Question de méthode.

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