Albert Camus
Albert Camus's signature, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
About the Author
Albert Camus's photograph by United Press International, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Born: November 7, 1913, Dréan, French Algeria
Died: January 4, 1960, Villeblevin, France
Years Active: 1935-1960
Movement:
- Existentialism
- absurdism
- anarchism
Camus and Philosophy
Books on Camus at Colby
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Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity by Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus' contributions to political and cultural analysis make him one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. Camus' writing has been heavily researched and analyzed in academia, with many scholars concentrating on the formal tri-part structure he adhered to in his later work: the cycle that divided his books into stages of the absurd, rebellion, and love. Yet other aspects of Camus' work--his preoccupation with modernity and its association with Christianity, his fixations on Greek thought and classical imagery--have been largely neglected by critical study. These subjects of Camus' have long deserved critical analysis, and Ronald D. Srigley finally pays them due attention in Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity. The straightforward, chronological readings of Camus' cycles perceive them as simple advancement--the absurd is bad, rebellion is better, and love is best of all. Yet the difficulty with that perspective, Srigley argues, is that it ignores the relationships between the cycles. As the cycles progress, far from denoting improvement, they describe experiences that grow darker and more violent. Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity also ventures into new interpretations of seminal works--The Myth ofSisyphus, The Rebel, and The Fall--that illuminate Camus' critique of Christianity and modernity and his return to the Greeks. The book explores how those texts relate to the cyclical structure of Camus' works and examines the limitations of the project of the cycles as Camus originally conceived it. Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity presents the decisive vision of that ultimate project: to critique Christianity, modernity, and the relationship between them and also to restore the Greek wisdom that had been eclipsed by both traditions. In contrast to much current scholarship, which interprets Camus' concerns as modern or even postmodern, Srigley contends that Camus' ambition ran in the opposite direction of history--that his principal aim was to articulate the themes of the ancients, highlighting Greek anthropology and political philosophy. This book follows the trajectory of Camus' work, examining the structure and content of Camus' writing through a new lens. This assessment of Camus, in its unique approach and perspective, opens up new avenues of research regarding the accomplishments of this prominent philosopher and invigorates Camus studies. A thoroughly sourced text, Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity makes a valuable resource for study of existentialism, modernity, and modern political thought.Call Number: PQ2605.A3734 Z73628 2011ISBN: 9780826219244Publication Date: 2011-06-20 -
Albert Camus by "Like many others of my generation, I first read Camus in high school. I carried him in my backpack while traveling across Europe, I carried him into (and out of) relationships, and I carried him into (and out of) difficult periods of my life. More recently, I have carried him into university classes that I have taught, coming out of them with a renewed appreciation of his art. To be sure, my idea of Camus thirty years ago scarcely resembles my idea of him today. While my admiration and attachment to his writings remain as great as they were long ago, the reasons are more complicated and critical."--Robert Zaretsky On October 16, 1957, Albert Camus was dining in a small restaurant on Paris's Left Bank when a waiter approached him with news: the radio had just announced that Camus had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Camus insisted that a mistake had been made and that others were far more deserving of the honor than he. Yet Camus was already recognized around the world as the voice of a generation--a status he had achieved with dizzying speed. He published his first novel, The Stranger, in 1942 and emerged from the war as the spokesperson for the Resistance and, although he consistently rejected the label, for existentialism. Subsequent works of fiction (including the novels The Plague and The Fall), philosophy (notably, The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel), drama, and social criticism secured his literary and intellectual reputation. And then on January 4, 1960, three years after accepting the Nobel Prize, he was killed in a car accident. In a book distinguished by clarity and passion, Robert Zaretsky considers why Albert Camus mattered in his own lifetime and continues to matter today, focusing on key moments that shaped Camus's development as a writer, a public intellectual, and a man. Each chapter is devoted to a specific event: Camus's visit to Kabylia in 1939 to report on the conditions of the local Berber tribes; his decision in 1945 to sign a petition to commute the death sentence of collaborationist writer Robert Brasillach; his famous quarrel with Jean-Paul Sartre in 1952 over the nature of communism; and his silence about the war in Algeria in 1956. Both engaged and engaging, Albert Camus: Elements of a Life is a searching companion to a profoundly moral and lucid writer whose works provide a guide for those perplexed by the absurdity of the human condition and the world's resistance to meaning.Call Number: PQ2605.A3734 Z97 2010ISBN: 9780801448058Publication Date: 2010-01-05 -
Albert Camus the Algerian by In these original readings of Albert Camus' novels, short stories, and political essays, David Carroll concentrates on Camus' conflicted relationship with his Algerian background and finds important critical insights into questions of justice, the effects of colonial oppression, and the deadly cycle of terrorism and counterterrorism that characterized the Algerian War and continues to surface in the devastation of postcolonial wars today. During France's "dirty war" in Algeria, Camus called for an end to the violence perpetrated against civilians by both France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and supported the creation of a postcolonial, multicultural, and democratic Algeria. His position was rejected by most of his contemporaries on the Left and has, ironically, earned him the title of colonialist sympathizer as well as the scorn of important postcolonial critics. Carroll rescues Camus' work from such criticism by emphasizing the Algerian dimensions of his literary and philosophical texts and by highlighting in his novels and short stories his understanding of both the injustice of colonialism and the tragic nature of Algeria's struggle for independence. By refusing to accept that the sacrifice of innocent human lives can ever be justified, even in the pursuit of noble political goals, and by rejecting simple, ideological binaries (West vs. East, Christian vs. Muslim, "us" vs. "them," good vs. evil), Camus' work offers an alternative to the stark choices that characterized his troubled times and continue to define our own. "What they didn't like, was the Algerian, in him," Camus wrote of his fictional double in The First Man. Not only should "the Algerian" in Camus be "liked," Carroll argues, but the Algerian dimensions of his literary and political texts constitute a crucial part of their continuing interest. Carroll's reading also shows why Camus' critical perspective has much to contribute to contemporary debates stemming from the global "war on terror."Call Number: PQ2605.A3734 Z62647 2007ISBN: 9780231140867Publication Date: 2007-05-01 -
Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd by This book is an attempt to read the totality of Camus's oeuvre as a voyage, in which Camus approaches the fundamental questions of human existence: What is the meaning of life? Can ultimate values be grounded without metaphysical presuppositions? Can the pain of the other penetrate the thick shield of human narcissism and self-interest? Solipsism and solidarity are among the destinations Camus reaches in the course of this journey. This book is a new reading of one of the towering humanists of the twentieth century, and sheds new light on his spiritual world.Call Number: PQ2605.A3734 A613 2002ISBN: 9042012307Publication Date: 2002-01-01 -
Albert Camus, Marguerite Duras, and the Legacy of Mourning by This study examines the complexity of mourning in the works of two of the most widely read, yet rarely compared, contemporary authors in France, Albert Camus, born and raised in Algeria, and Marguerite Duras, originally from the former French Indochina. The book studies the figurative and thematic representations of mourning in these authors' works to show how their depictions of grieving extend beyond classic psychoanalytic theories of bereavement to portray a mourning that is unmitigated and interminable. The text completes this examination by exploring the distinction between individual and collective mourning attempts and by underscoring the pervasive tone of melancholy in the post-World War II writings of both authors.Call Number: STORAGE PQ2605.A3734 Z5495 1998ISBN: 0820430005Publication Date: 1998-04-01 -
Albert Camus: A Life by In this enormously engaging, vibrant, and richly researched biography of Albert Camus, the French writer and journalist Olivier Todd has drawn on personal correspondence, notebooks, and public records never before tapped, as well as interviews with Camus's family, friends, fellow workers, writers, mentors, and lovers. Todd shows us a Camus who struggled all his life with irreconcilable conflicts--between his loyalty to family and his passionate nature, between the call to political action and the integrity to his art, between his support of the native Algerians and his identification with the forgotten people, the poor whites. A very private man, Camus could be charming and prickly, sincere and theatrical, genuinely humble, yet full of great ambition. Todd paints a vivid picture of the time and place that shaped Camus--his impoverished childhood in the Algerian city of Belcourt, the sea and the sun and the hot sands that he so loved (he would always feel an exile elsewhere), and the educational system that nurtured him. We see the forces that lured him into communism, and his attraction to the theater and to journalism as outlets for his creativity. The Paris that Camus was inevitably drawn to is one that Todd knows intimately, and he brings alive the war years, the underground activities that Camus was caught up in during the Occupation and the bitter postwar period, as well as the intrigues of the French literati who embraced Camus after his first novel, L'Etranger, was published. Todd is also keenly attuned to the French intellectual climate, and as he takes Camus's measure as a successful novelist, journalist, playwright and director, literary editor, philosopher, he also reveals the temperament in the writer that increasingly isolated him and crippled his reputation in the years before his death and for a long time after. He shows us the solitary man behind the mask--debilitated by continuing bouts of tuberculosis, constantly drawn to irresistible women, and deeply troubled by his political conflicts with the reigning French intellectuals, particularly by the vitriol of his former friend Sartre over the Algerian conflict. Filled with sharp observations and sparkling with telling details, here is a wonderfully human portrait of the Nobel Prize-winning writer, who died at the age of forty-six and who remains one of the most influential literary figures of our time.Call Number: PQ2605.A3734 Z76513 1997ISBN: 0679428550Publication Date: 1997-11-25
Camus en Français
Vous pouvez cliquer sur les liens ci-dessous pour trouver des livres de Camus en Français à Colby
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La Symbolique d'Euphemisation dans l'Univers Fictif d'Albert Camus by Au centre de l'oeuvre de Camus, jaillit un besoin urgent de lutter contre l'absurde, d'échapper au désespoir et de «réduire ø...! la douleur dans le monde» (II 706). Ce livre analyse la symbolique d'euphémisation chez Camus, en s'inspirant du modèle de l'imaginaire de Gilbert Durand. De cette approche, émerge une géographie des univers imaginaires camusiens. A l'intérieur, de chacun de ces univers, apparaissent certaines constantes, certains mécanismes de l'imaginaire: l'antithèse, l'inversion et la simultanéité des contraires, celle-ci étant la structure fondamentale de la pensée de Camus, ancrée dans la complexité.Call Number: STORAGE PQ2605.A3734 Z662 1998ISBN: 0820436836Publication Date: 1998-03-01 -
Lire Les Carnets d'Albert Camus by "Ces contributions sont issues des travaux du colloque "Les carnets d'Albert Camus : écrire ma joie profonde!" qui s'est tenu à l'Université catholique de l'Ouest, à Angers, les 4 et 5 novembre 2010"--P. [7]Call Number: E-BookPublication Date: 2012 -
L'Étranger by Le livre classique en français.Call Number: PQ2605.A3734 E8 1942Publication Date: 1942
Important Works
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The Stranger by Arguably Camus's most famous and provocative work of absurdist literature, THE STRANGER (L'ÉTRANGER) tells the story of a young French Algerian man who commits a pointless murder, only to face the cold hand of the law.Call Number: PQ2605.A3734 E813 1954Publication Date: 1942 -
The Plague by THE PLAGUE (LA PESTE) tells the story of a mysterious plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. Often read as an Existentialist reaction to French occupation by Nazi troops during World War II, THE PLAGUE offers philosophical insight into mankind's response to sudden terror.Call Number: PQ2605.A3734 P413Publication Date: 1947 -
The Myth of Sisyphus by In this essay, Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd, and touches on man's futile quest for meaning in a world devoid of God and truth.Call Number: PQ2605.A3734 M93 1955bPublication Date: 1942