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

“Four authors—Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Eluard, Maurice Blanchot, and Louis-Ferdinand Celine—whose works confront and respond to the purge of collaborationist intellectuals in postwar France are the subjects of this volume. . . . To understand their views on the trials, it is useful to read their texts as allegories of the purge. . . . The book won the Modern Language Association of America’s 2000 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for the best book in French and Francophone Literary Studies.”—Coastlines
“[Watts’s] arguments are original, he takes risks, and the stakes are significant.”—South Central Review

This book is about four writers—Sartre, Eluard, Blanchot, and Celine—whose works confront and respond to the purge of collaborationist intellectuals in postwar France.

Philip Watts is Assistant Professor of French at the University of Pittsburgh.