Everything about French Literature totally explained
» This article is a general introduction to French literature. For detailed information on French literature in specific historic periods, see the separate historical articles in the template to the right.
French literature is, generally speaking,
literature written in the
French language, particularly by citizens of
France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak other traditional
non-French languages. Literature written in French by citizens of other nations such as
Belgium,
Switzerland,
Canada,
Senegal,
Algeria,
Morocco, etc. is referred to as
Francophone literature.
French literature
The
French language is a
romance dialect derived from
Vulgar Latin and heavily influenced principally by
Celtic and
Frankish. Beginning in the 11th century, literature written in medieval French was one of the oldest
vernacular (non-Latin) literatures in western Europe and it became a key source of literary themes in the
Middle Ages across the continent.
Although the European prominence of French literature was eclipsed in part by vernacular literature in Italy in the 14th century, literature in France in the 16th century underwent a major creative evolution, and through the political and artistic programs of the
Ancien Régime, French literature came to dominate European letters in the 17th century.
In the 18th century, French became the literary
lingua franca and diplomatic language of western Europe (and, to a certain degree, in America), and French letters have had a profound impact on all European and American literary traditions while at the same time being heavily influenced by these other national traditions (for example: British and German Romanticism in the nineteenth century). French literary developments of the
19th and
20th centuries have had a particularly strong effect on modern world literature, including:
symbolism,
naturalism, the "
roman-fleuves" of
Balzac,
Zola and
Proust,
surrealism,
existentialism, and the "
Theatre of the Absurd".
French
imperialism and
colonialism in the Americas, Africa, and the far East have brought the French language to non-European cultures that are transforming and adding to the French literary experience today.
Under the aristocratic ideals of the ancien régime (the "honnête homme"), the nationalist spirit of post-revolutionary France, and the mass educational ideals of the Third Republic and modern France, the French have come to have a profound cultural attachment to their literary heritage. Today, French schools emphasize the study of novels, theater and poetry (often learnt by heart). The literary arts are heavily sponsored by the state and literary prizes are major news. The
Académie française and the
Institut de France are important linguistic and artistic institutions in France, and French television features shows on writers and poets (the most watched show in French history was
Apostrophes, a weekly talk show on literature and the arts). Literature matters deeply to the people of France and plays an important role in their sense of identity.
As of 2006, French literary people have been awarded more
Nobel Prizes in Literature than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country, although writers in English have won twice as many Nobels as the French.
Literatures of other languages of France
Besides literature written in the French language, the literary culture of France may include literature written in other languages of France. In the medieval period many of the competing
standard languages in various territories that later came to make up the territory of modern France each produced literary traditions, such as
Anglo-Norman literature and
Provençal literature.
Literature in the
regional languages continued through to the 18th century, although increasing eclipsed by the rise of the French language and influenced by the prevailing French literary model. Conscious
language revival movements in the 19th century, such as
Félibrige in
Provence, coupled with wider literacy and regional presses, enabled a new flowering of literary production in the
Norman language and others.
Frédéric Mistral, a poet in
Occitan (1830–1914), was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904.
Breton literature since the 1920s has been lively, despite the falling number of speakers. In 1925,
Roparz Hemon founded the periodical
Gwalarn which for 19 years tried to raise the language to the level of other great "international" languages by creating original works covering all genres and by proposing Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946,
Al Liamm took up the role of
Gwalam. Other reviews came into existence and gave Breton a fairly large body of literature for a minority language. Among writers in Breton are
Yann-Ber Kalloc'h,
Anjela Duval and
Per-Jakez Hélias.
Picard literature maintains a level of literary output, especially in theatrical writing.
Walloon literature is bolstered by the more significant literary production in the language in
Belgium.
Catalan literature and literature in the
Basque language also benefit from the existence of a readership outside the borders of France.
French Nobel Prize in Literature winners
The following French or French language authors have won a
Nobel Prize in Literature:
French literary awards
Grand Prix de Littérature Policière - created in 1948, for crime and detective fiction.
Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française - created 1918.
Prix Décembre - created in 1989.
Prix Femina - created 1904, decided each year by an exclusively female jury, although the authors of the winning works don't have to be women.
Prix Goncourt - created 1903, given to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year".
Prix Goncourt des Lycéens - created in 1987.
Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud - created in 1957.
Prix Médicis - created 1958, awarded to an author whose "fame doesn't yet match their talent."
Prix Renaudot - created in 1926.
Prix Tour-Apollo Award - 1972-1990, given to the best science fiction novel published in French during the preceding year.
Prix des Deux Magots - created in 1933.
Selected list of French literary classics
Fiction
Middle Ages
16th century
17th century
18th century
19th century
20th century
Poetry
François Villon - Les Testaments
Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and other poets of "La Pléiade" - poems
La Fontaine - The Fables
Victor Hugo - Les Contemplations
Alphonse de Lamartine - Méditations poétiques
Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du mal
Paul Verlaine - Jadis et naguère
Arthur Rimbaud - Une Saison en Enfer
Stéphane Mallarmé - Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard ("A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance")
Guillaume Apollinaire - Alcools
Francis Ponge
Raymond Queneau
Theatre
Pierre Corneille - Le Cid, Horace
Molière - Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, Dom Juan, L'Avare (The Miser), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, L'Ecole des femmes (The School for Wives)
Jean Racine - Phèdre, Andromaque
Marivaux - Jeu de l'amour et du hasard
Beaumarchais - Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville), La Folle journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)
Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac
Jean Giraudoux - The Trojan War Will Not Take Place
Jean Anouilh - Becket, Antigone
Jean-Paul Sartre - No Exit
Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot, Endgame
Eugène Ionesco - The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros
Jean Genet - The Maids, The Blacks
Non-fiction
Michel de Montaigne - The Essays
Blaise Pascal - Les Pensées
François de La Rochefoucauld - The Maxims
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The Social Contract
François-René de Chateaubriand - Genius of Christianity, Memoirs from Beyond Grave
Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America
Jules Michelet - Histoire de France, La Sorcière
Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
Jean-Paul Sartre - Existentialism is a Humanism, Being and Nothingness
Literary criticism
Nicolas Boileau
Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Hippolyte Taine
Jacques Lacan
Paul Bénichou
Roland Barthes
Jean-François Lyotard
Jacques Derrida
Julia Kristeva
Poetry
Parnassian
Romanticism
Symbolism (arts)
Surrealism
Further Information
Get more info on 'French Literature'.
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