French literature is one of the world’s richest and most influential national literatures. French writers have contributed to every major literary form, including epic poetry, lyric poetry, drama, and fiction and other types of prose.
French literature has strongly influenced the work of writers in many countries. During the 1600’s, the French cultural movement called Classicism had a major impact on most European literatures. French writers of the 1700’s dominated the intellectual life of Europe. During the 1800’s and early 1900’s, French literary movements called Realism and Symbolism helped shape the work of authors in many other languages, especially English. In the 1900’s, Surrealism and Existentialism moved beyond France to influence the works of writers, thinkers, and other artists throughout Europe and the Americas.
Most French writers have placed special importance on form, language, style, and tradition. They have frequently followed rules and models more closely than writers in other literatures. In general, rationalism has often governed French writing. Rationalism emphasizes reason as the governing principle in human conduct. The impact of rationalism has produced writing that is clear, self-controlled, and artistically well-crafted.
Although rationalism has played a vital part in French literature, a strong experimental quality has also appeared in French writing at times. In periods such as the Romantic movement of the early 1800’s, this experimental writing could produce emotionally charged, even passionate works of art. It could also be used to work out theoretical or formal issues, such as the New Novel of the 1900’s.
Early French literature
The earliest text dates from the A.D. 800’s, during the Middle Ages. Poetry dominated medieval French literature. Much poetry was intended to be sung or recited to largely illiterate audiences by traveling entertainers called jongleurs. Gradually, two main kinds of poetry emerged—lyric and narrative.
Lyric poetry
flourished from the 1100’s to the 1400’s. It began in southern France, where poet-musicians called troubadours wrote love songs in the Provençal dialect. Some of this poetry was carried to northern France, where it was imitated by poets called trouvères. Both the troubadours and trouvères composed lyric poems that praised women and the ideal of love. These poems were intentionally conventional and repetitive. They concentrated on emotional states, portraying with great subtlety the shifts from joy to despair.
The best-remembered French lyric poet of the Middle Ages was François Villon. He composed many ballades, a verse form with three equal stanzas and a shorter concluding stanza. He also wrote long poems that dealt with the themes of love, failure, and death. Villon’s verses moved over a wide tonal range, from biting mockery and grotesque imagery to gentler passages on such themes as compassion. His masterpiece is a 2,000-line autobiographical poem, Grand Testament (1461). See Villon, François.
Narrative poetry
includes four important types: (1) epic poems, (2) romances, (3) lais and contes, and (4) fabliaux. All were written for aristocratic audiences except fabliaux, which were more for the middle class.
Epic poems
dealt with warfare and heroic deeds in battle. They were called chansons de geste (songs of great deeds). Jongleurs performed the chansons to musical accompaniment. The most famous was The Song of Roland (about 1100). It describes an incident during a military campaign led by the famous ruler Charlemagne.
Romances
were long fictional works, often filled with fantastic adventures. There were several kinds. Romans antiques (classical romances) were based on ancient subjects, such as the Trojan War between Greece and Troy, which probably took place about 1200 B.C. Romans bretons (British romances) told stories about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table in medieval Britain.
Probably the most widely read and influential French romance is the Romance of the Rose. A trouvere named Guillaume de Lorris wrote the first part about 1230. The poet Jean de Meung finished it in a darker, more cynical vein about 1275 to 1280. The poem uses elaborate allegories (symbolic stories, people, and images) to describe the progress of love.
Lais and contes
were short verse tales about chivalry, love, and the supernatural. Lais were based on Celtic sources. Contes were generally based on Latin sources. The poet Marie de France wrote many important lais in the late 1100’s.
Fabliaux
were short, usually humorous stories that were often satiric and sometimes coarse. The most famous are found in a collection called Romance of Renard (about 1175 to 1205), where animal characters satirize human society.
Early prose
included romances that appeared later than verse romances and often told the same stories. Historical chronicles became a major form of prose literature. The best-known historical writers were Philippe de Commines, Jean Froissart, Jean de Joinville, and Geoffroy de Villehardouin.
Early drama
was composed primarily in verse and dealt with religious themes. Religious dramas can be grouped into three types. Mystery plays staged scenes from the Scriptures. Miracle plays portrayed the intervention of the Virgin Mary or saints in human affairs. Morality plays were symbolic dramas intended to educate. Secular (nonreligious) comedies called farces developed as interludes during the performance of religious dramas. In the late 1200’s, the dramatist Adam de la Halle wrote secular plays that attained high levels of psychological insight and striking effects of realism.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance was a period of European cultural history that began in Italy about 1300 and spread to other parts of Europe. In French literature, the Renaissance extended from the early 1500’s to about 1600.
The French Renaissance was a flowering of learning and literature inspired by ancient Greek and Latin models and by developments in Italian art and literature. Writers and scholars called humanists played a major role in the Renaissance. Humanists combined learning in a wide range of fields with an increased interest in the individual and in worldly, rather than religious, concerns. See Humanism.
From 1494 to 1525, French armies invaded Italy. These invasions led to increased contact with Italian art and literature and with humanist scholars. These contacts helped stimulate the Renaissance in France. During the early 1500’s, King Francis I and his sister Marguerite of Navarre served as patrons of humanists and other writers in their courts. Marguerite herself was a learned author. She based her collection of tales called the Heptaméron (1558) on The Decameron by the Italian Renaissance writer Giovanni Boccaccio in the mid-1300’s.
François Rabelais
was the most important fiction writer of the French Renaissance and one of the leading medical authorities of his day. His major work is “Gargantua and Pantagruel.” This exuberant, often bawdy, narrative in five parts was published between 1532 and 1564. Rabelais wrote in a quirky style that combined remarkable learning with scenes of crude and often violent physical farce. The work satirizes the legal, political, religious, and social institutions of the time. See Gargantua and Pantagruel; Rabelais, François.
The Pléiade
was a group of seven poets who wanted to break with tradition to create a new kind of French poetry based on ancient Greek and Roman models. Pierre de Ronsard was the leader of the group. His poetry draws on mythology and ancient forms such as pastorals (poems about country life) to depict such themes as love and the passage of youth. The easy charm of Ronsard’s poetry hides a deep commitment to the significance of worldly experience. His verse reflects an ability to look without flinching at the painful aspects of that experience, such as old age and death. See Ronsard, Pierre de.
Joachim du Bellay was another member of the Pléiade. He was the first French poet to extensively use the sonnet form, which he borrowed from Italian Renaissance poets. Du Bellay wrote an important essay called Defense and Glorification of the French Language (1549). In the essay, du Bellay “defended” French as a suitable language for poetry against those who favored Latin, the language used not only by Roman poets but also by most writers throughout the Middle Ages. Du Bellay conceded that the expressive potential of French did not yet rival that of Latin or Greek. He argued, however, that the possibilities of those tongues had largely been exhausted and that the youthful freshness of French could surpass the earlier languages. He called on poets to enrich the French vocabulary with technical expressions, dialect, and borrowings from Greek and Latin. See Du Bellay, Joachim.
Étienne Jodelle was a dramatist and a member of the Pléiade. He wrote what has been called the first original French comedy, Eugène (1552), and the first tragedy, Cleopatra Prisoner (1552).
Lyon.
Another group of poets, including Maurice Scève and Pernette du Guillot, arose in the southern city of Lyon. Scève’s poetry is remarkable for the complexity of its grammar and images. His major work is a carefully crafted series of 459 dizaines (10-line stanzas) titled Délie (1544). Délie celebrates the poet’s love for a woman, sometimes thought to have been the poet Pernette du Guillot. Du Guillot’s writings frequently played on the erotic possibilities of a shared language between lovers.
Michel de Montaigne
created the personal essay as a literary form. A personal essay is written in an informal, conversational style. Montaigne’s essays were shaped by a broad classical education. They were intensely self-examining, loosely organized meditations on such topics as education, travel, death, customs, knowledge, and the author himself. A strong but forgiving skepticism about human nature runs through his writings. See Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de.
The Classical age
The reigns of King Louis XIII and especially King Louis XIV are known as the Classical age in French literature. This period, from about 1600 to the early 1700’s, is widely considered the high point in French literature.
Classical writers did not reject the ideals of the Renaissance. However, the period developed a greater spirit of order and refinement. French writers especially emphasized reason and the intellect in analyzing ideas and human behavior. See Classicism.
Classical poetry.
François de Malherbe was the first important Classical poet and the most influential. During the early 1600’s, Malherbe wrote clear, rational, sober poetry that laid the basic style for Classical verse. Jean de La Fontaine and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux were also leading Classical poets. La Fontaine wrote a famous collection of moralizing tales about animal characters in clear, insightful, often biting verse called Fables (1668-1694). Boileau wrote The Art of Poetry (1674). In this critical work in verse, the author described the principles of moderation and nobility of style that characterized the aspirations of Classical poetry of his time.
Classical drama
has long been considered the greatest expression of French Classicism. During this period, a 12-syllable line called alexandrine was established as the dominant poetic meter in French drama. The most famous authors of Classical drama were Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Molière.
Corneille was the first great Classical writer of tragedy. His plays present noble characters involved in seemingly insoluble conflicts of duty, loyalty, and love. Corneille stressed the importance of the will, self-control, honor, and freedom. His tragedies include The Cid (1636 or 1637), Horace (1640), and Polyeucte (1642). See Corneille, Pierre.
Racine was recognized in his own time as the greatest writer of Classical tragedy. His plays show characters in the grip of passions they cannot control. A somber religious pessimism colors many of his works. Racine reworked ancient Greek and Roman subjects in such masterpieces as Andromaque (1667) and Phaedra (1677). He also adapted Biblical themes, as in Athalie (1691). See Racine, Jean.
Molière was the leading writer of comedy in French drama. His most effective plays are satires that present strong characters in conflict with social conventions. Molière wrote his finest comedies in the mid-1660’s. They include Tartuffe, Don Juan, and The Misanthrope. See Molière.
Classical prose.
Two philosophers wrote works that rank as masterpieces of French Classical prose. René Descartes wrote Discourse on Method (1637), which laid the groundwork for much later French philosophy and esthetics. Initially known as a mathematician, Blaise Pascal wrote influential prose works that reveal his deep Christian faith. Pascal’s best-known religious work is a collection of reflections called Pensées. The work was first published in 1670, after Pascal’s death, but a complete edition did not appear until 1844.
A group of writers called moralists described human conduct and manners in letters, sayings called maxims, and other prose forms. The Reflections (1664) by the Duc de La Rochefoucauld are a particularly strong example of this style, which can be psychologically penetrating, bitterly cynical, and brilliantly concise. The satire The Characters of Theophrastus (1688) by Jean de La Bruyère combines maxims with literary portraits of the people and social types of the day.
Madame de La Fayette wrote one of the first important novels in French literature, The Princess of Clèves (1678). The novel has been praised for its psychological analysis and skillful construction. Its theme of passionate love held in check would influence later writers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Jacques Bossuet was a historian and Roman Catholic bishop known for his eloquent and moving sermons. François de Fénelon was a Roman Catholic archbishop. His literary reputation primarily rests on Telemachus (1699), a romance filled with the author’s ideas on education, morals, politics, and religion.
The Enlightenment
The 1700’s in France are often called the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. During this century, progressive thinkers emphasized reason as the best method for learning truth. They were often inspired by discoveries of the day in the sciences, such as the English scientist Isaac Newton’s work in physics. Newton’s writings indicated that natural events conform to intelligible, underlying laws. They also suggested to many Enlightenment thinkers called philosophes that the natural world, with its orderly structures, could be used as a model for human society (see Philosophes). Much of the literature of this period was philosophical, produced by such important philosophes as Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. See Enlightenment.
Voltaire was the most famous and controversial literary figure of his time. He used his talents and reputation as an author to fight intolerance and bigotry and to promote rationalism. Voltaire’s most famous work is the satirical novel Candide (1759). He also wrote tragedies, partly influenced by the plays of the English dramatist William Shakespeare. In addition, Voltaire helped develop the principles of modern historical writing through his many works on European and world history. See Voltaire.
Denis Diderot is chiefly remembered as the editor of the French Encyclopédie (1751-1772), one of the great intellectual achievements of the Enlightenment. The Encyclopédie was a collection of learned articles contributed by writers in many fields. The work attempted to explain rationally the current state of knowledge to a wide audience. It attacked religious authority, economic inequality, and abuses of justice. Diderot was also known for his fiction, such as his novel Jacques the Fatalist (written possibly 1760’s-1770’s, published in 1796, after his death). See Diderot, Denis.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed changes in French society in his novel Julie, or The New Heloise (1761) and in education in the novel Émile (1762). Rousseau’s autobiographical Confessions (published in 1782 and 1789, after his death) helped create the modern literature of self-analysis. Rousseau’s sensitivity to nature is apparent in his fiction, which helped reintroduce a meditative and lyrical feeling into French literature. This sensitivity also influenced his theoretical writings on politics and social order, such as Discourses (1750 and 1755) and The Social Contract (1762). See Rousseau, Jean-Jacques.
The Marquis de Sade was little known or appreciated during his own time and held in disdain by later generations. But during the 1900’s he came to be considered one of the great writers of the Enlightenment. His cruel pornographic novels, such as Philosophy in the Boudoir (1795), feature long theoretical passages that tend to mock the optimistic visions of nature and social order promoted by writers of his day. See Sade, Marquis de.
Montesquieu, who was also known for his political writings, wrote witty social criticism in his Persian Letters (1721). Alain-René Lesage produced a famous satirical novel, Gil Blas (1715-1735). The Abbé Prévost composed a popular sentimental novel, Manon Lescaut (1731). Pierre de Beaumarchais wrote the satirical comedies The Barber of Seville (1775) and The Marriage of Figaro (1784). Both plays deal with the irrational nature of aristocratic privilege and contributed to the ideas that led to the French Revolution (1789-1799).
Romanticism
Romanticism was a movement that had its roots in the late 1700’s and flourished during the early and middle 1800’s. Romanticism was partly a reaction against Classicism and the Enlightenment. Romantic writers rejected what they considered to be the excessive rationalism and lifeless literary forms of previous periods. The Romantics emphasized the emotions and the imagination over reason, and they promoted freer forms of literary expression. The writer’s personality was often the most important element in a work. See Romanticism.
The Preromantics.
French Romanticism was influenced by earlier Romantic movements in England, Spain, and especially Germany. A number of French writers, called Preromantics, also helped shape the movement during the late 1700’s and 1800’s.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is identified with the Enlightenment. However, he was also an important forerunner of Romanticism because of his interest in self-examination, his sensitivity to the natural world, and the importance he gave to feeling and spontaneity. Rousseau also influenced the Romantics with his lyrical prose style and his depiction of passionate but frustrated love.
François-René de Chateaubriand exerted a tremendous influence through his fiction. The feelings of boredom, loneliness, and grief that dominate his writings became essential elements of Romantic literature. Chateaubriand created a basic character in Romantic writing—the solitary, passionate, and misunderstood antihero. Chateaubriand had strong religious feelings, and his works helped revive interest in the Christian Middle Ages, a period scorned by writers of Classicism and the Enlightenment. See Chateaubriand, François-René de.
Madame de Staël made a major impact on French Romantic critical theory with On Literature (1800). She introduced German Romanticism into France in On Germany (1810). The poet André Chenier incorporated several technical elements into his verse that were adopted by Romantic poets.
Romantic poetry
is generally considered to have begun in France with the 1820 publication of Poetic Meditations by Alphonse de Lamartine. His melancholy poems dealt with nature, love, and solitude.
Victor Hugo was considered by the people of his day to be the greatest figure in French Romanticism, excelling as a poet, dramatist, and fiction writer. Hugo’s Odes and Various Poems (1822) demonstrate a mastery of the 12-syllable alexandrine line combined with unconventional rhythmic effects. Many of his poems have a colorful, exotic quality. Hugo’s later collections, such as Leaves of Autumn (1831), are more personal and meditative. His collection The Contemplations (1856) turns darker in tone and addresses troubling questions, such as the role of humanity in the universe, the inevitability of death, and the loss of loved ones. See Hugo, Victor.
Alfred de Vigny is best known for Antique and Modern Poems (1826). The poems are philosophical and often dramatic, stressing human unhappiness and the loneliness of the superior individual. See Vigny, Alfred de.
Alfred de Musset had great lyrical gifts. His melancholy and musical poems concern love, suffering, and solitude. In his lyrics called Nights (1835-1837), Musset described the anguish he suffered over a lost love. See Musset, Alfred de.
Romantic drama
dealt with historical subjects and melodramatic situations, often mixing comedy with tragedy. The dramas emphasized color and spectacle, unlike the more controlled dramas of Classicism and the Enlightenment. Victor Hugo wrote the first significant Romantic play, the historical drama Hernani (1830). Vigny’s Chatterton (1835) featured a popular character in Romantic literature, the neglected artist. Musset wrote sophisticated comedies noted for their verbal brilliance.
Romantic fiction.
Many Romantic authors wrote historical novels modeled on the works of the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott. Alexandre Dumas père (the elder) wrote the famous historical novel The Three Musketeers (1844), set during the reign of King Louis XIII in the 1600’s. Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) showed the Romantic taste for the Middle Ages. It also reflects his lifelong attempts to correct social injustices through the power of literature.
Some Romantic writers moved toward a more realistic style of fiction. Such authors as Honoré de Balzac, George Sand, and Stendhal retained many Romantic characteristics in their work. But they modified their Romanticism with attempts to portray objective natural and social conditions of human life.
Beginning in 1829, Balzac wrote almost 100 novels and stories that were collected as The Human Comedy (1842-1848). In this series, the author attempted to describe the entire French society of his time. Balzac portrayed a wide range of human types, with their motivations and interactions. He also explored the influence of social institutions and values, especially society’s attitudes toward money. See Balzac, Honoré de.
George Sand was the pen name of a Frenchwoman who began her literary career by writing novels of love and passion, such as Indiana (1832) and Lelia (1833). Later, she turned to rural subjects, especially in her novel of country life, The Devil’s Pool (1846). See Sand, George.
Stendhal was a master psychologist who liked passionate, strong characters and melodramatic situations. He used a clear and ironic style to portray the struggle between passion and calculating ambition. His two best-known works are The Red and the Black (1830) and The Charterhouse of Parma (1839). See Stendhal.
Gautier and Nerval.
Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval stand out among the second generation of Romantic writers. Gautier was distinguished by the verve and dry humor of his prose and the lyricism of his poetry. His fiction includes several supernatural tales and the novel The Spiritualist (1866). The collection of poems called Enamels and Cameos (1852) represent Gautier’s mastery of verse technique. Gautier coined the term “Art for art’s sake,” which would become a rallying cry for defending the independent value of artistic creation. See Gautier, Théophile.
Nerval’s early poetry was distinguished by its musical lyricism, while his later poems turned inward onto a personal world of spiritualism. His prose includes a collection of short fiction called The Daughters of Fire (1854). Many of these short pieces are based on autobiographical material and create dreamlike effects. Nerval wrote Aurélia (1855), one of the most important first-person accounts of madness in the French language. See Nerval, Gérard de.
Realism
Realism was a literary doctrine that emerged partly as a reaction against Romanticism. The Realists believed that art should reproduce life accurately, honestly, and objectively. By the mid-1800’s, Realism dominated French literature. See Realism.
Gustave Flaubert was the major representative of French Realism. He followed Balzac in his love of detail and his careful observation of human behavior. For his novel Madame Bovary (1856), Flaubert deliberately chose an ordinary subject—a dull country doctor and his shallow wife. In spite of its seemingly tedious subject, Madame Bovary was condemned as obscene and Flaubert was brought to trial on its account. See Flaubert, Gustave; Madame Bovary.
Guy de Maupassant became known for his Realistic short stories, which showed him to be a keen observer of human behavior with a cruel streak. Many of his stories portray provincial life in Normandy and the frustrated existence of petty civil servants in Paris. See De Maupassant, Guy.
There were two main types of Realistic drama in France. One was the well-made play, which emphasized plot and suspense. The comedies of Eugène Scribe were the best examples. The other type was the problem play or thesis play. Most dealt with social problems, such as divorce and legal injustice. The leading writers of problem plays were Émile Augier, Eugène Brieux, and Alexandre Dumas fils (the younger).
Literary criticism played a major role in Realistic literature and greatly influenced later literary criticism. The leading Realistic critic was Charles Sainte-Beuve. He believed that a literary work should be studied through the author’s life and personality. He also placed importance on the social environment and historical background in which the work was created. See Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin.
Naturalism
During the late 1800’s, a movement called Naturalism developed as an extreme form of Realism. Naturalistic writers emphasized the sordid and coarse aspects of human conduct. The typical Naturalistic work is pessimistic and often criticizes social injustice. The movement followed a philosophy called determinism, which taught that a person’s character is determined by environment and heredity rather than free will. See Naturalism.
Émile Zola was the leading French Naturalistic writer. He proposed to treat fiction as a “laboratory” in which the laws of human behavior could be discovered. Zola created masterpieces of description and social criticism in his series of 20 novels called The Rougon-Macquart (1871-1893). The novels follow the members of a single extended family through extremes of fortune, misery, depravity, and unrelenting struggle. See Zola, Émile.
The brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt collaborated on Germinie Lacerteux (1864), a somber novel about a servant girl who leads a life of vice. But the brothers were better known for their Journal, a record of the literary and social life of Paris from 1851 to 1896. See Goncourt.
Henri Becque was the most important Naturalistic playwright. His drama The Vultures (1882) is a bitter exploration of ruthless human conduct.
Hippolyte Taine was the leading Naturalistic literary critic. Taine developed a deterministic view of literature that can be summarized as race, milieu, and moment. Race referred to the author’s heredity. Milieu was the author’s environment, and moment was the state of the artistic tradition in which the author worked. According to Taine, these three factors governed literary creativity. See Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe.
Symbolism
French Symbolism was a literary movement of the late 1800’s. The term Symbolism has also been applied to the work of French writers who did not belong to the movement but were associated with it. See Symbolism.
The key figures in the Symbolist movement were the poets Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud. They wanted to liberate the techniques of poetry from traditional styles to create freer verse forms. The Symbolists believed poetry should suggest meanings through impressions, intuitions, and sensations rather than attempt to capture an elusive reality through straightforward descriptions. Much of their poetry was personal and obscure.
Charles Baudelaire was the forerunner of Symbolism. His The Flowers of Evil (1857) is a collection of about 100 related poems. The work reflects Baudelaire’s somber fascination with humanity and its vices. His belief that even the lowest aspects of the human condition could give birth to beauty is captured in the collection’s title. See Baudelaire, Charles.
Stéphane Mallarmé was the most influential of the Symbolist poets and theorists. His prose writings are remarkable for their austere sense of beauty and their difficult syntax, which often presents readers with impossible choices among different meanings. His poetry tends to put the possibility of meaning itself into question. The most famous of his poems are “The Afternoon of a Faun” (1876) and the puzzling “A Throw of the Dice” (1897). See Mallarmé, Stéphane.
Paul Verlaine wrote simple, melodious verse that is delicate, graceful, and musical. In Songs Without Words (1874), he tried to create a sense of music in verse. See Verlaine, Paul.
Arthur Rimbaud was a boy genius. He was producing highly original poetry at the age of 16. At the age of about 19, Rimbaud composed A Season in Hell (1873), an autobiographical collection of prose and verse that describes his tortured spiritual experiences. See Rimbaud, Arthur.
No Symbolist novelist or dramatist equaled the poets. However, the dreamy Symbolist plays of Maurice Maeterlinck did inspire writers of his day. Maeterlinck was a Belgian author, but he wrote in French. See Maeterlinck, Maurice.
The 1900’s
The early years.
Four authors dominated French literature during the early 1900’s. They were Paul Claudel, André Gide, Paul Valéry, and Marcel Proust. All were born about 1870, and all passed through a Symbolist phase in their early careers. By 1920, each was recognized as a significant literary figure.
Claudel wrote drama, poetry, criticism, and religious commentary that reflected his strong Roman Catholic beliefs. Claudel’s poetry is filled with bold metaphors, violent emotions, and flowery language. However, his best-known works are his religious plays, notably Break of Noon (written in 1906) and The Tidings Brought to Mary (1912). See Claudel, Paul.
Gide was a novelist who generated controversy because of his unorthodox views on religion, families, sexuality, and morality. His fiction won praise for its stylistic innovations and psychological insights into character. In 1909, Gide helped found The New French Revue, the leading French literary journal of the early 1900’s. See Gide, André.
Proust was perhaps the most respected French novelist of the 1900’s. His monumental novel Remembrance of Things Past was published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927. The novel is a highly personal and poetic work as well as a brilliant study of social manners and character psychology. See Proust, Marcel.
Valéry’s poetry shows the influence of the rational tradition in French literature. He stressed emotional control and classical forms. His works include the long poem The Young Fate (1917) and lyrics collected in Charms (1922). He was also an influential literary critic. See Valéry, Paul.
Surrealism
was a movement founded in 1924 by a group of writers and painters in Paris. The Surrealists explored unconscious thought processes, especially dreams, which they believed must be integrated into rational, waking existence to create a full human experience. See Surrealism.
The poet Guillaume Apollinaire had a major influence on Surrealism. His Alcools (1913) is a collection of lyrics that celebrate the imagination and the modern world. The chief theorist and leader of the Surrealists was André Breton. The leading poets were René Char, Paul Éluard, and Louis Aragon. However, all three wrote their finest poetry after they left the movement in the late 1930’s. Their themes tended to focus on love and other subjective states, which they expressed through striking associations of words and visual images.
Although Breton denounced the value of theater, the playwright Antonin Artaud wrote an important series of essays on dramatic theory after breaking with the Surrealists. In The Theater and Its Double (1938), he argued that theater should have the same power to transform its audience as religious ritual or forms of torture.
Existentialism
was a philosophy that strongly influenced French literature after World War II (1939-1945). Jean-Paul Sartre, the leading Existential writer, became famous for such plays as No Exit (1944) and Dirty Hands (1948) as well as for philosophical writings and criticism. His works explore moral and political topics, especially the problems of freedom and responsibility. His novel Nausea (1938), for example, examines the disturbing consequences of confronting existence itself. Simone de Beauvoir helped popularize Existentialist ideas in such works as For a Morality of Ambiguity (1947). Albert Camus was not strictly an Existentialist. However, Camus explored similar ethical and moral problems in such works as the novels The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947) and the long essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). See Existentialism.
Developments in drama.
Several novelists and poets contributed to French drama in the mid-1900’s, including Sartre and Camus. Other leading playwrights were Jean Giraudoux, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Genet. Giraudoux wrote in a witty, urbane, artificial style. His best-known plays investigate the nature of love or protest against war and greed. Cocteau became known for reworking mythological subjects. Genet drew on ritual to portray characters who were social outsiders.
A movement called the Theater of the Absurd emerged in France in the 1950’s. Playwrights in this movement tried to dramatize what they believed was the essentially meaningless nature of life. The leading Absurdists were Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco. Beckett was Irish and Ionesco was Romanian, but they both wrote in French, and their most significant works were first staged in Paris. See Waiting for Godot.
The middle and late 1900’s.
A major development was the New Novel. Its chief representatives included Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon. These writers did not apply an external narrative framework to structure the events in their novels. Instead, they tended to develop their novels out of the characters’ perceptions of those events. This led to jarring effects of time and perspective.
A lesser but still significant influence was the group known as OuLiPo, which included the authors Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec. In their writings, they used mathematics and game principles to reinvent literary language and conventions.
In the 1970’s, a feminist movement appeared in French literature. It was inspired, in part, by Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949). A number of critics, mostly women, turned their attention to women writers of the past. They concentrated on women’s experiences, showing how a male-dominated society had neglected, hidden, or manipulated those experiences.
Marguerite Duras and Hélène Cixous ranked among the leading French feminist writers of the late 1900’s and early 2000’s. Monique Wittig, an extreme feminist writer, believed the language of past literature represented chiefly a masculine point of view. She tried to replace the masculine language with a feminine one.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s, French literary criticism was heavily influenced by the philosophical movement known as deconstruction. Deconstructionist authors concentrated on how literary techniques contradict intended meaning in texts. The writers questioned the boundaries between literature and other fields, such as philosophy. Jacques Derrida was the leading deconstructionist author. See Derrida, Jacques.
Recent French literature.
During the 1970’s and 1980’s, the New Novel became less important in French literature. Some novelists turned to other art forms. For example, Sarraute concentrated largely on drama, and Robbe-Grillet wrote and directed motion pictures. Many writers continued to produce fiction, however, and the novel remained the dominant literary form in France at the end of the 1900’s, showing great diversity.
J.-M. G. Le Clézio wrote in a powerful, poetic style about people’s struggles to understand the world despite the cold, technological nature of modern life. Le Clézio won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature. Some novelists, including Michel Tournier and Edmond Jabès, turned to existing myths or created their own mythlike worlds.
Tournier often used stories from the Bible and other sources to examine issues of human identity and communication. Jabès was deeply influenced by Jewish mysticism. He examined the experiences and implications of the Holocaust, the systematic murder of the Jews by the Nazis during World War II (1939-1945). He also explored the limits of language.
Other writers used autobiographical material. Late in their careers, both Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras used elements from their early lives in fictionalized autobiographies. In his novels, Patrick Modiano used the experiences of his family and his own past to deal with the topics of memory, Jewish identity, and the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Modiano received the 2014 Nobel Prize in literature. Jorge Semprun drew on his experiences as a Spanish immigrant in France, a secret Communist, a resistance fighter, and a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp to create a literature that explores social injustices. His writing style draws on philosophical speculations and complex narrative structures to investigate the nature of self-identity.
Some writers used fiction to challenge social conventions. Annie Ernaux has written about her own experiences to examine the differences between the working class and the middle class. Her novel The Event (2000) focuses on a young woman’s secret abortion to describe women’s sense of social exclusion, powerlessness, and solidarity with one another.
A number of writers have drawn on stylistic experimentation, especially nonliterary writing and speech, to comment on society. Michael Houellebecq, in particular, has examined middle-aged longings and other sexual themes in an unemotional style that often borrows from the language of commerce and publicity. Lydie Salvayre has used grotesque characterizations and extreme situations to portray social oppression. She also incorporates the language of judicial procedures in her writing, which creates an effect that is simultaneously realistic and alienating.
Also during the late 1900’s and early 2000’s, poetry continued to be an important form of literature. Yves Bonnefoy wrote brief, philosophical poems in a complex, compact language. The powerful, difficult poems of Jean-Claude Renard often reflected almost mystical experiences.
