"Written on the eve of World War II, Sartre’s small book contends that we resort to emotions when the difficult world makes agency inconceivable. Since we cannot alter the world with our actions, we transform it with our emotions, subjectively, magically. Sartre’s theory illuminates the critical emotions remarkably well, for these affects often arise when modern critics wish to insert agency into deterministic social systems that appear to be totalizing and daunting. Thus Sartre’s diagnosis helps to explain the appeal of the recent affective turn in criticism and theory. Although Sartre sees most emotions as a form of escapism, he does not dismiss them altogether. Toward the end of his essay he distinguishes between emotions that answer to our needs, as wish fulfillment, and others that happen to us regardless of what we want."

Recommended by Steven Goldsmith, Professor of English and author of Blake's Agitation: Criticism and the Emotions.