Abstract

What does Le Premier Homme bring specifically to our understanding of Camus’s view of love? The novel allows us to understand love as love of specific human individuals, as well as love of life and the world, and a sense of the frailties of love. While many commentaries have touched on the idea of the importance of love in this work, they have tended to focus more on the disguised autobiographical elements concerning the people in Camus’s life. They have also centred on the descriptive aspects of the work. What I would like to do is look at how love is presented in more depth, and show how specific kinds of love are valorized, and how these different kinds of love are all connected.