Andre Gide's Politics

These essays examine the outcomes of Gide's evolving commitment to a host of controversial issues ranging from the sexual to the political, from the literary to the social.

Beginning in the 1920s, at the peak of his career, after having established himself as an accomplished writer, "moraliste" and the foremost spokesperson of his generation for personal freedom and self realization, Gide became aware, first, that his particular brand of bourgeois individualism was becoming increasingly irrelevant in the contemporary world and, second, that social commitment and even revolution could serve as a powerful source of inspiration and self renewal.

Over a ten-year period that ended with his public break with the Soviet Union in 1936, Gide interacted with society in what were for him unprecedented ways.