Introduction to Nineteenth-century French Literature

Everyone knows something of 19th-century France - or do they? Les Misérables, La Dame aux Camélias and Les Trois Mousquetaires, Balzac and Jules Verne live in the popular consciousness as enduring human documents and cultural icons. Yet the French 19th century was even more dynamic than the stereotype suggests. This exciting new introduction takes the literature of the period both as a window on past and present mindsets and as an object of fascination in its own right. Beginning with history, the century's biggest problem and potential, it looks at narrative responses to historical, political and social experience, before devoting central chapters to poetry, drama and novels - all genres the century radically reinvented. It then explores numerous modernities, ways 19th-century writing and mentalities look forward to our own, before turning to marginalities - subjects and voices the canon traditionally forgot. No genre was left unchanged by the 19th century. This book will help to discover them anew.

Tim Farrant is Fellow and Tutor and CUF Lecturer in French at Pembroke College, Oxford.