A stranger and a nice. The Stranger by Albert Camus and The Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes.

Abstract

Published in Paris in 1942, The Stranger was Albert Camus’ first published novel. It tells the story of the office employee Meursault and retraces the events that lead him to commit unpremeditated murder. Awaiting execution at the end of the story, Meursault declares that nothing is of any importance. His attitude toward life makes him a “stranger” in the eyes of most other characters in the story and he is condemned to death not for murder but for his behaviour. This article focuses on what being a “stranger” means in Camus’ novel and on the novel’s relation to other fictive stories and “strangers”, mainly to Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, or the Story of the Grail.

Keywords: Albert Camus, The Stranger/The Outsider, Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval or The Story of the Grail, outsider/stranger