Literary texts offer firmer ground than philosophy for establishing who influenced whom.

Evidence

For instance, it is not at all clear how we can know for certain who was the fi rst person to conceive of such-and-such an idea when we ignore the precise content of their conversations (aft er all, their discussions were places to hash out their philosophical ideas). Th e inquiry is nonetheless easier when it is a question of literary texts (and not of philosophical ones): a well-conceived chronological investigation should allow us to formulate several hypotheses. In this text, I want to show how the book When Th ings of the Spirit Come First by Beauvoir could have inspired Sartre’s Th e Wall— to quote the Bible, I want to “give unto Caesar”—while at the same time refl ecting on the ways the couple worked together. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 506

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the historiographical methodology: chronology of literary texts permits defensible influence hypotheses where private conversation content is unknowable.