FROM MARXISM TO EXISTENTIALISM: THE CREATIVITY OF RICHARD WRIGHT IN 1940-50s, IN THE CONTEXT OF INFLUENCE OF JEAN-PAUL SARTRE AND ALBERT CAMUS

Abstract

The article explores the evolution of Richard Wright’s worldview and his creative manner during the period of his ideological shift from Communism to existentialism, prompted by his contacts with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, their work and philosophical views. The author reveals the peculiar features of the genesis of existentialism in African-American literature, emerging from the “protest novel”; in this connection, R. Wright’s novel “Native Son” (1940) has been analysed as the work transitional from his social prose to the philosophical existential prose of 1940-1950s. Special attention has been given to the creative history of R. Wright’s novel “The Outsider” (1953) with a focus on its interconnections with “L’Ėtranger” by A. Camus.