ABSTRACT
One of the areas in which continental philosophy has had the greatest impact has been that of aesthetics. Important movements of criticism have grown out of poststructuralist and postmodernist theory in recent years, and before that, of course, from structuralism and Marxism. Particularly as regards post-Sartrean French philosophy, it is possible to argue that this is where this kind of theorizing has been most influential. This chapter discusses how continental philosophy from existentialism to postmodernism translates into criticism and aesthetic theory. Sartre's most substantial piece of aesthetic theorizing is What is Literature, and it constitutes a fascinating confrontation between existentialist and Marxist thought. The critical realist aesthetic was most famously expounded in Lukacs's survey of modern literature, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism. Barthes, a key theorist of structuralism, his later work moves in a recognisably poststructuralist direction, with S/Z arguably being one of the first great works of poststructuralist aesthetics.
