French literature

The literature of France.

The Middle Ages The Chanson de Roland (c. 1080) is one of the early chansons de geste (epic poems about deeds of chivalry), which were superseded by the Arthurian romances (seen at their finest in the work of Chrétien de Troyes in the 12th century), and by the classical themes of Alexander, Troy, and Thebes. Other aspects of French medieval literature are represented by the anonymous Aucassin et Nicolette of the early 13th century; the allegorical Roman de la Rose/Romance of the Rose, the first part of which was written by Guillaume de Lorris (c. 1230) and the second by Jean de Meung (c. 1275); and the satiric Roman de Renart/Story of Renard of the late 12th century. The period also produced the historians Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, and Comines, and the first great French poet, François Villon.

16th century: the Renaissance One of the most celebrated poets of the Renaissance was Ronsard, leader of La Pléiade (a group of seven writers); others included Marot at the beginning of the 16th century and Mathurin Régnier (1573–1613) at its close. In prose the period produced the broad genius of Rabelais and the essayist Montaigne.

17th century The triumph of form came with the great classical dramatists Corneille, Racine, and Molière, the graceful brilliance of La Fontaine, and the poet and critic Boileau. Masters of prose in the same period include the philosophers Pascal and Descartes; the preacher Bossuet; the critics La Bruyère, Fénelon, and Malebranche; and La Rochefoucauld, Cardinal de Retz, Mme de Sévigné, and Le Sage.

18th century The age of the Enlightenment and an era of prose, with Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau; the scientist Buffon; the encyclopedist Diderot; the ethical writer Vauvenargues; the novelists Prévost and Marivaux; and the memoir writer Saint-Simon.

19th century Poetry came to the fore again with the Romantics Lamartine, Hugo, Vigny, Musset, Leconte de Lisle, and Gautier; novelists of the same school were George Sand, Stendhal, and Dumas père, while criticism is represented by Sainte-Beuve, and history by Thiers, Michelet, and Taine. The realist novelist Balzac was followed by the school of naturalism, whose representatives were Flaubert, Zola, the Goncourt brothers, Alphonse Daudet, Maupassant, and Huysmans. Dramatists include Hugo, Musset, and Dumas fils. Symbolism, a movement of experimentation and revolt against classical verse and materialist attitudes, with the philosopher Bergson as one of its main exponents, found its first expression in the work of Gérard de Nerval, followed by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Corbière, and the prose writer Villiers de l'Isle Adam; later writers in the same tradition were Henri de Régnier and Laforgue.

20th century Drama and poetry revived with Valéry, Claudel, and Paul Fort, who advocated ‘pure poetry’; other writers were the novelists Gide and Proust, and the critics Thibaudet (1874–1936) and later St John Perse, also a poet. The surrealist movement, which developed from ‘pure poetry’ through the work of Eluard and Apollinaire, influenced writers as diverse as Giraudoux, Louis Aragon, and Cocteau. The literary reaction against the symbolists was seen in the work of Charles Péguy, Rostand, de Noailles, and Romain Rolland. Novelists in the naturalist tradition were Henri Barbusse, Jules Romains, Julian Green, François Mauriac, Francis Carco, and Georges Duhamel. Other prose writers were Maurois, Malraux, Montherlant, Anatole France, Saint-Exupéry, Alain-Fournier, Pierre Hamp, and J R Bloch, while the theatre flourished with plays by J J Bernard, Anouilh, Beckett, and Ionesco. World War II had a profound effect on French writing, and distinguished post-war writers include the existentialists Sartre and Camus, ‘Vercors’ (pen-name of Jean Bruller), Simone de Beauvoir, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Romain Gary, Nathalie Sarraute, and Marguerite Duras.