A Short History of French Literature

This book traces the history of French literature from its beginnings to the present. Within its remarkably brief compass, it offers a wide-ranging, personal, and detailed--though selective--account of major writers and movements. Developments in French literature are presented in an innovative way, not as an even sequence of literary events but as a series of stories told at varying pace and with different kinds of focus. Readers can thus take in the broad sweep of historical change, grasp the main characteristics of major periods, or enjoy a close appraisal of individual works and their contexts. The book is written in an accessible and non-technical style that will make it attractive both to students of French and to non-specialist readers.

Malcolm Bowie, formerly Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford, is now Master of Christ's College, Cambridge.

List of Illustrations

xi

Introduction: The Long View

1

(12)

PART I. THE MIDDLE AGES: FROM THE EARLIEST TEXTS TO 1470

13

(84)

Overview of the Period

15

(16)

The Period in Close-Up

31

(1)

The saints speak French

31

(3)

Inventing love poetry: the songs of the troubadours

34

(7)

The three matieres and the move from history to fiction

41

(4)

Courtliness and the rise of romance

45

(3)

The chansons de geste

48

(4)

Clerks, jongleurs, and townspeople

52

(5)

Prose: history, romance, and the Grail

57

(5)

Treatises, encyclopedias, and compilation in the thirteenth century

62

(3)

The Roman de la rose and the allegorical tradition

65

(4)

From the grand chant courtois to the formes fixes: the French lyric at its height

69

(6)

The dit amoureux: between lyric and history

75

(5)

Writing history

80

(2)

Humanism, didacticism, licence and death

82

(5)

The `Querelle du Roman de la rose' and `Labelle dame sans mercy'

87

(2)

Theatre in the late Middle Ages

89

(3)

The future of a poet with a past: Francois Villon

92

(5)

PART II. THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD: 1470--1789

97

(96)

Overview of the Period

99

(14)

The Period in Close-Up

113

(1)

From Burgundy to the French court: Jean Lemaire de Belges

113

(3)

Rabelais: Pantagruel and Gargantua

116

(2)

Religious controversy and literature: the circle of Marguerite de Navarre

118

(4)

Rabelais's later works

122

(1)

Poetry: (i) from Marot to Labe

123

(6)

Poetry: (ii) the Pleiade

129

(4)

The late sixteenth century: Montaigne's Essais

133

(5)

New directions in the early seventeenth century

138

(1)

Poetry: (iii) Malherbe and his contemporaries

139

(2)

Questions of language and style

141

(2)

Theatre: a retrospect

143

(2)

Theatre: Corneille and his times

145

(3)

Descartes and Pascal: the mid-century turn

148

(4)

Literature and power in the age of Louis XIV

152

(2)

Questions of psychology and ethics

154

(4)

Lucidity and uncertainty

158

(3)

`Ancients' and `Moderns'

161

(3)

Outlines of the novel

164

(4)

The end of a reign: literature at the turn of the century

168

(1)

The letter-form: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Graffigny

169

(4)

The philosophes in action: the Encyclopedie

173

(3)

Rousseau: autobiography and fiction

176

(4)

The sentimental and the erotic

180

(5)

Diderot: the philosophe and his double

185

(4)

Crossing the divide

189

(4)

PART III. THE MODERN PERIOD: 1789--2000

193

(122)

Overview of the Period

195

(13)

The Period in Close-Up

208

(1)

Literature and political action

208

(2)

The Romantic individual

210

(3)

Literature and sexuality

213

(2)

The Napoleonic legend

215

(3)

Romanticism in verse

218

(3)

History and prophecy

221

(3)

Prose fiction prepares for victory

224

(2)

Stendhal and Balzac

226

(2)

A colossus: Victor Hugo

228

(3)

Poetry and society

231

(6)

Writing by women, 1830--1880

237

(4)

Theatre in the nineteenth century

241

(3)

Literature before the law

244

(1)

Flaubert's war on stupidity

245

(2)

Literature and science: the case of `Naturalism'

247

(3)

Dreyfus and after

250

(3)

Gide and Proust

253

(5)

Literature and war: 1914--18

258

(2)

In Mallarme's shadow

260

(4)

Dada and surrealism

264

(3)

Prose fiction between the wars

267

(4)

The twentieth century's Voltaire: Jean-Paul Sartre

271

(3)

Literature and war: 1939--45

274

(5)

The fortunes of the modern novel

279

(6)

Writing by women in the twentieth century: a long revolution

285

(7)

Theatre in the twentieth century

292

(5)

Poetry in the later twentieth century

297

(4)

Beyond the Hexagon

301

(5)

Beyond the literary profession

306

(3)

The Revolution remembered

309

(4)

A final note, in which the story does not end

313

(2)

Postface

315

(2)

Suggestions for Further Reading

317

(8)

Sources of Quotations

325

(8)

Index

333

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A Short History of French Literature

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials