Writing style: Much of Jean Genet’s work including numerous poems, three plays and five novels are controversial for their deliberately provocative and explicit portrayal of criminality and homosexuality.Jean Genet’s genre was homosexuality, crime, existentialism and sadomasochism. ... Who cares? Search all of SparkNotes Search. A figure whom Sartre is particularly invested in is Jean Genet. Jean Genet The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet 'Is any of this true? Jean Genet was a fascinating character, a professional thief who served time in prison, a brilliant novelist and also a highly-regarded poet and playwright, openly homosexual at a time when that was an … History/Basic Explanation: Though Jean-Paul Sartre could be crowned the king of Existentialism, he had many collaborators and fellow thinkers. In the 1940s and 50s, exploring existential thought was exciting and popular. The Balcony (French: Le Balcon) is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet.It is set in an unnamed city that is experiencing a revolutionary uprising in the streets; most of the action takes place in an upmarket brothel that functions as a microcosm of the regime of the establishment under threat outside.. and Parisian Existentialism By BENJAMIN NELSON The central theme of Jean Genet's extraordinary play, surely one of the major works of the twentieth century, is best expressed in two phrases about the nature of the cosmos we may take the liberty of adapting from two famous philosophers, Gottfried Ionesco's 'theater,' which included Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet and Arthur Adamov, was a theater that posed a problem; it was not a theater of entertainment. The Maids is filled with illusions created by the maids as a way to combat their oppressive circumstances. It’s hard to understand a play by Jean-Paul Sartre without understanding Existentialism. Illusion as a Reaction Against Authority. Among them: Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Richard Wright, Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Jean Genet and … He is credited with several works. A summary of Themes in Jean Genet's The Maids. Sartre takes Genet as an example of existential man, forced to enact the role of “criminal” that existence has arbitrarily assigned to … That book, which canonized Genet at the age of forty-two, purported to be an “existential psychoanalysis,” based on Sartre’s lengthy conversations with his subject: an abandoned child, vagabond thief, army deserter, and homosexual prostitute who wrote five remarkable books in prison that swept him to the summit of French letters. Genet’s career became more closely entwined with Sartre in 1952, when Sartre’s biography, SaintGenet: Actor and Martyr, was published as volume 1 of Genet’s Complete Works. A short summary of Jean Genet's The Maids This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of The Maids. Read on! It is if I say it is, for I define my existential self. Genet was many things – he wrote novels, plays, poems and essays and was politically active. Your next choice is Jean-Paul Sartre’s Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr (1952). The ideas that Sartre explored were more commonly understood through… Who cares? Use up and down arrows to … He has been a part of the Theatre of the Absurd, Literary Movement. Suggestions.