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"L'Étranger" and the Messianic Myth, or Meursault Unmasked.

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 06:35 authored by Benedict O'Donohoe
This paper attacks received ideas about Camus’s iconic hero as honest, modest, innocent, and even messianic. Reviewing these notions, first, as collated in Édouard Morot-Sir’s critical conspectus, ‘Actualité de L’Étranger’ (1996), I trace them back to Sartre’s seminal critique (1943), then to Camus’s characterisation of Meursault as ‘the only Christ we deserve’, in 1955. By close reading of the text, I show that, far from being the modern messiah of authenticity, Meursault is in fact a monster of male chauvinism and an unreconstructed misogynist, whose much-vaunted indifference and amorality only thinly disguise a psychopathology of autism, egotism, paranoia and sadism.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

PhaenEx Journal of Existenial and Phenomenological Theory and Culture

ISSN

19111576

Publisher

University of Windsor

Issue

1

Volume

2

Page range

1-18

Pages

18.0

Department affiliated with

  • Sussex Centre for Language Studies Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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