logo
episode-header-image
Apr 2020
53m 22s

Albert Camus

Jacke Wilson / The Podglomerate
About this episode

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was born in Algeria to French parents. After his father died in World War I, when Albert was still an infant, the family was reduced to impoverished circumstances, forced to move in with relatives in an apartment without electricity or running water. From these humble beginnings, Camus became one of the most famous and celebrated writers in the world, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature at the improbably young age of 44. In this episode of the History of Literature, we look at his works, including The Stranger and The Plague; his entanglement with the existentialists (a label he rejected); the analysis of his works by Jean-Paul Sartre, and the three possible philosophical responses to humanity's essentially absurd condition.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com.

Music Credits:

“Parisian” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

⁠Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba⁠” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the ⁠Free Music Archive⁠ / ⁠CC by SA⁠).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Up next
Aug 21
727 Earthly Paradise in Old French Verse (with Jacob Abell) | My Last Book with Victorian Literature Expert Allen MacDuffie | A Dueling Neapolitan Passionate for Poetry
What happened to Eden? While today we might view the story of Adam and Eve as metaphorical, for many generations of Christians, the Earthly Paradise was a vibrant symbol at the heart of the cosmos. In this episode, Jacke talks to Jacob Abell about his book Spiritual and Material ... Show More
1h 4m
Aug 18
726 England vs France - A Literary Battle Royale (with Mike Palindrome) - RECLAIMED
“Our dear enemies,” a French writer once called the English. Englishman John Cleese called the French “our natural enemies” and joked “if we have to fight anyone, I say let’s fight the French.” With the exception of some (very important) twentieth-century alliances, the French an ... Show More
1h 3m
Aug 14
725 The Trial by Franz Kafka (#21 GBOAT) | Edith Wharton and Patrick O'Brian (with Olivia Wolfgang-Smith) | An Uplifting Story
Jacke starts the episode with an uplifting story, then submerges himself into chaos and absurdity for a look at The Trial by Franz Kafka, which lands at #21 on the list of Greatest Books of All Time. Then he welcomes novelist Olivia Wolfgang-Smith to the show for a discussion of ... Show More
1h 18m
Recommended Episodes
Jul 16
Albert Camus: The Absurdity Of It All
Albert Camus was a literary giant of the 20th century, known for his philosophy of absurdity in the human quest for the meaning of life. His personal life and North African roots helped shape his writing. In philosophy circles, many called him a prominent voice of existentialism, ... Show More
47m 11s
Nov 2012
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Born in Paris in 1909 into a wealthy, agnostic Jewish family, Weil was a precocious child and attended the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, achieving the top marks in her cla ... Show More
42m 6s
Mar 2025
Episode #224 ... Albert Camus - The Stranger
Today we talk about the book The Stranger by Albert Camus. We talk about why Camus saw himself as an artist and not a philosopher. We talk about happiness. The absurd and it's full implications. The Mediterranean lifestyle. The sun as a symbol of immanence. Revolt against the abs ... Show More
29m 58s
Dec 2001
W. G. Sebald
Austerlitz (Random House) What Thomas Mann was to the 1940's and Albert Camus to the 1950's probably places the German writer W. G. Sebald in relation to our new century. In this conversation, Sebald describes the source of his rare prose tone and explores the invisible presence ... Show More
29m 39s
May 2017
Episode 18, Albert Camus (Part I)
All the reading can be found at www.thepanpsycast.com! Please tweet us your thoughts at www.twitter.com/thepanpsycast. Albert Camus (1913-1960) is perhaps the most read philosopher of the 20th century. Camus is generally considered to be the father of absurdism, the idea that lif ... Show More
44m 4s
Nov 2023
Dostoyevsky, Camus, existentialism and absurdism
We're here with an episode mixing philosophy and literature, our favorite topics. Today we're talking about existentialism and absurdism, through Fyodor Dostoyevsky's White Nights, and Albert Camus' The Stranger / The Outsider. You're listening to Espresso Epi ... Show More
33m 15s
Jul 2024
Série d'été - Albert Camus. Hubert Védrine
Homme de théâtre, de romans, d'essais, Albert Camus (1913-1960) a marqué ses contemporains par la beauté de sa langue, son enracinement dans sa patrie, ses combats intellectuels. Hubert Védrine retrace, dans un livre hommage à Camus, les lignes de force de l'écrivain. Ancien mini ... Show More
29m 38s
Apr 2025
L'Etranger, d'Albert Camus
L’Étranger, publié en 1942, est sans doute le roman le plus célèbre d’Albert Camus. Œuvre emblématique de la philosophie de l’absurde, il met en scène un personnage indifférent au monde et à ses conventions, dont le destin tragique illustre la condition humaine selon Camus. Ce ro ... Show More
2m 15s
May 28
Close Readings: Nietzsche's 'Schopenhauer as Educator'
In this extended extract from their series 'Conversations in Philosophy', part of the LRB's Close Readings podcast, Jonathan Rée and James Wood look at one of Friedrich Nietzsche's early essays, 'Schopenhauer as Educator'. For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer’s genius lay not in his ideas ... Show More
31m 43s
Jun 2021
A Bengali Polymath and an ‘Accidental Modernist’
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Rosinka Chaudhuri, the author of ‘The Literary Thing: History, poetry and the making of a modern cultural sphere’, to discuss Rabindranath Tagore, who, in 1913, became the first non-white and non-European to win the Nobel P ... Show More
50m 21s