Introduction: Existentialism as a Theory of Crisis
Existentialism occupies a singular position in the history of modern literary theory. It is neither fully humanist nor fully poststructuralist, neither committed to metaphysical foundations nor ready to abandon meaning altogether. Instead, existentialism emerges at a historical and intellectual threshold: the moment when essence, morality, and narrative coherence cease to function as guarantees, yet the subject has not entirely dissolved into discourse. For this reason, existentialism should be understood less as a philosophy of despair or freedom and more as a theory of subjectivity under conditions of radical uncertainty.
Within the architecture of modern literary theory, existentialism functions as a transitional paradigm. Marxism reveals the subject as socially determined; psychoanalysis fractures it psychologically; narratology exposes the constructedness of coherence. Existentialism isolates the subject at the point where none of these frameworks offers consolation. Meaning is no longer given, but it is not yet fully deferred. Literature becomes the privileged site where this crisis is dramatized rather than resolved.
To read existentialism as a literary theory is therefore to read it as a meditation on what remains of meaning, action, and responsibility once metaphysical, religious, and narrative assurances have collapsed.
Existence Precedes Essence: The Undoing of Classical Character
The existentialist rupture is most famously articulated by Jean-Paul Sartre in the claim that existence precedes essence. This assertion is not merely philosophical; it has far-reaching implications for literary representation. Classical literature presupposes that characters embody moral, psychological, or social essences. Their actions reveal what they already are. Existentialist literature reverses this logic. Characters act first, without justification, and whatever meaning emerges does so retrospectively—if at all.
From a literary-theoretical perspective, this marks the collapse of typological characterization. Existentialist protagonists are not heroes, villains, or moral exemplars. They are contingently situated beings who confront freedom as burden rather than privilege. Their actions do not fulfill destiny; they expose the absence of destiny.
This shift destabilizes traditional narrative teleology. If characters have no essence, then plot can no longer be understood as the unfolding of inherent meaning. Narrative becomes episodic, provisional, and often circular. Existentialism thus undermines not only metaphysical certainty but also the very logic of narrative development.
Existentialism and the Crisis of Narrative Meaning
Existentialist literature frequently appears resistant to plot in the conventional sense. Events occur, but they do not accumulate meaning. Causes do not reliably produce effects; actions do not guarantee transformation. From the perspective developed in your narratology chapter, existentialism can be read as a dramatization of narrative failure.
Narrative traditionally imposes order on experience. It links events through causality, orients time toward resolution, and produces coherence through closure. Existentialist texts expose the fragility of this process. Time appears empty, repetitive, or absurdly linear. Endings fail to justify beginnings. Closure, when it occurs, feels arbitrary rather than necessary.
This resistance to narrativization aligns existentialism with modernism’s broader suspicion of meaning-making systems. Yet existentialism differs from later poststructuralist thought in one crucial respect: it still assumes that meaning ought to exist, even if it cannot be guaranteed. The pain of existential literature arises from this tension—the desire for meaning in a world that refuses to provide it.
Being-in-the-World: Anxiety, Finitude, and Situation
While Sartre foregrounds freedom and responsibility, Martin Heidegger reframes the existential problem in ontological terms. Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world dismantles the Cartesian separation of subject and object. Human existence is always already situated, finite, and temporal. Anxiety (Angst) is not an emotion but a disclosure of being’s groundlessness.
For literary theory, this reconceptualization has significant implications. Existentialist texts are less concerned with inner psychology than with situated existence. Characters are embedded in environments that do not reflect their intentions or values. Space is indifferent; time moves without purpose; language often fails to articulate experience adequately.
Existential anxiety manifests formally as silence, repetition, and understatement. Dialogue becomes sparse; description is stripped of symbolic depth. Literature does not explain existence; it exposes its opacity. In this sense, existentialism anticipates later theoretical skepticism toward language, even while continuing to rely on it.
Choice, Responsibility, and the Ethics of Uncertainty
One of existentialism’s most distinctive claims is that freedom is inescapable. Even inaction is a choice. This radicalization of responsibility marks existentialism’s ethical core. There are no external authorities—God, tradition, reason, or narrative destiny—to which responsibility can be deferred.
In literary terms, this produces protagonists who act without moral scripts. Their decisions cannot be evaluated against universal norms; they must be judged within the uncertainty of their situations. Literature becomes an ethical laboratory where choice is enacted without assurance of meaning.
This is where existentialism briefly retains a humanist residue. Despite the collapse of essence, existentialism still believes that meaning can be made, even if it is not found. This belief distinguishes existentialism sharply from poststructuralism, which will later question the very possibility of meaning-making.
From your perspective, this makes existentialism historically poignant and theoretically unstable: it is the last attempt to salvage meaning without metaphysics.
Absurdity and the Silence of the World
With Albert Camus, existentialism reaches its most literary articulation. Camus’s concept of the absurd names the disproportion between humanity’s demand for meaning and the world’s indifference. The absurd is not despair but lucidity—the refusal of false consolation.
Camus’s literary style reflects this philosophical stance. Language is restrained, description is concrete, symbolism is minimized. Events are narrated without moral commentary. The world does not respond to human interpretation. Silence becomes a thematic and formal principle.
At this point, existentialism approaches the limits of language. Meaning is not deconstructed linguistically, as it will be in poststructuralism, but exhausted existentially. The world does not conceal meaning; it simply does not provide it. Literature registers this absence rather than explaining it.
Existentialism and the Limits of the Subject
Existentialism retains the subject, but only precariously. The existential subject is free, responsible, and conscious—but also isolated, finite, and groundless. There is no stable identity beneath action; there is only situation and choice.
This position situates existentialism between psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. Psychoanalysis fractures the subject internally; existentialism isolates it ontologically; poststructuralism will later dissolve it discursively. Existentialism is thus a hinge theory, marking the moment when the subject becomes a problem rather than a premise.
Literature reflects this instability through characters who resist psychological depth and symbolic integration. They do not develop; they persist. Their interiority is not rich but exposed as fragile and contingent.
Conclusion: Existentialism as Threshold, Not Endpoint
Existentialism should not be read as a final philosophy of meaning or despair. Within modern literary theory, it functions as a threshold—a moment when essence collapses, narrative coherence falters, and subjectivity stands exposed without guarantees. It does not yet abandon meaning, but it reveals how difficult meaning has become.
Literature is central to this project because it can stage uncertainty without resolving it. Existentialist texts do not offer answers; they dramatize the conditions under which answers are no longer credible. In doing so, existentialism prepares the ground for poststructuralist skepticism while preserving the ethical urgency that later theory will often suspend.
Existentialism, then, is not an end, but a passage: the point at which modern literary theory confronts the possibility that meaning, identity, and narrative coherence may no longer be foundations, but problems.
Existentialism within Modern Literary Theory
| Dimension | Classical Literature | Existentialism | Later Theory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essence | Pre-given moral or psychological nature | Rejected: existence precedes essence | Identity as discursive construct |
| Subject | Unified and coherent | Free but isolated and unstable | Fragmented / dissolved |
| Narrative | Teleological and meaningful | Episodic, anti-teleological | Disrupted / non-closure |
| Time | Purposeful progression | Empty succession | Non-linear / textual |
| Ethics | Universal norms | Choice under uncertainty | Ethics suspended or localized |
| Meaning | Discovered or revealed | Struggled for | Deferred or undecidable |
| Role of Literature | Representation of values | Staging of crisis | Critique of representation |
| Theoretical Position | Humanist | Transitional | Poststructuralist |