The Plague was published by Librairie Gallimard in 1947- Thereafter, for a period of about twenty-five years, critical attention frequently fell into one of two camps. A demonstration of The Plague's representation of historical time thus challenges Sartrean and Barthesian prejudices and provides the foundation for an ethical reading that discloses a vital moral dialogue among competing ethical positions at the centre of Camus's text.

Contemporary trends in literary criticism, which specifically include the recent proliferation of theoretical speculation on ethics and literary study, have persuasively argued that an event is not necessarily atemporalized even if it is expressed allegorically rather, allegorical representation and temporality may be coextensive. While Sartre's and Barthes's evaluations are strong voices of ethical criticism in the corpus of textual interpretation of The Plague, they are expressions of a specific historical moment in that corpus hence, they Calmot be taken as the last word on the novel's moral significance.

JOHN KRAPP Time and Ethics in Albert Camus's The Plague Ethical readings of Albert Camus's The Plague have traditionally reflected the criticism, introduced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Roland Barthes, that Camus's text fails to invite serious moral consideration because, representing its subject allegorically, it fails to represent real material history, in which ethical thought serves to inform choice in time. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Albert camus the plague pages