Beauvoir. All Men Are Mortal
(2025) The Literary Encyclopedia — ISBN: [0691154910], published
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- Abstract
- Published in 1946, Tous les hommes sont mortels [All Men Are Mortal] is a philosophical novel in which Simone de Beauvoir uses existential fiction to question the meaning of life in the light of immortality. Through the character of Fosca ‒ a man who became immortal in the 16th century thanks to an elixir ‒ she offers a vast historical fresco from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century, covering Italy, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Americas. The story is an existential enquiry into the meaning of life, the value of action, the passage of time, the search for love, and the ambitions of political life. It asks what it means to be human, to live in time, and to act in the world when death is no longer on the horizon. The novel can be read in the light of existentialist thought and the philosophy of freedom developed by both de Beauvoir and Sartre, whose concepts of project, temporality, and contingency resonate with Fosca’s experience.
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Citations
Malinge, Y. (2025). Beauvoir. All Men Are Mortal. In Robert Clark (ed.), The Literary Encyclopedia. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/248712