Introduction -- Toward a portrait of the French intellectual -- Part I: from Pathos to stature. Valles and the Pathos of rebellion -- Bourget and the guilt of the teacher -- Emile Zola and Anatole France: the lay apostle and the lay saint -- Martin du Gard's Jean Barois and the challenge of history -- Louis Guilloux and the myth of cripure -- Part II: the tragic impasse. 1930-1950: the age of guilt -- Malraux: passion and intellect -- Sartre and the existentialist novel: the intellectual as "impossible" hero -- The fifties: the anti-intellectual reaction.