FRENCH LITERATURE.

ROLCAM · Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 1:46 pm Post subject: FRENCH LITERATURE.

French literature is one of the world's richest and most influential national literatures. French writers have contributed to every major literary form, excelling in 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 other 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 many British and American writers.

Most French writers have placed special importance on form, language, style, and tradition. They have followed rules and models more closely than writers in other literatures. In general, rationalism has been an essential element in 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 various times. This experimental writing is often emotional, passionate, and expressed in unorthodox literary forms.

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 Provencal dialect. Some of this poetry was carried to northern France, where it was imitated by poets called trouveres. Both the troubadours and trouveres composed lyric poems that praised women and the ideal of love.

The greatest French lyric poet of the Middle Ages was Francois Villon. He composed ballades and long poems that dealt with the themes of love, failure, and death. His masterpiece is a 2,000-line autobiographical poem called the Grand Testament (1461).

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 were tales of warfare and heroic deeds in battle. They were called chansons de geste (epic songs). Jongleurs performed the chansons to musical accompaniment. The most famous was The Song of Roland (about 1100). It describes an incident during a 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, probably during the 1200's B.C. Romans bretons (Breton romances) told stories about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table in medieval Britain.

One of the greatest French romances is the Romance of the Rose. Guillaume de Lorris wrote the first part in the early 1200's as an allegory (symbolic story) about love. Jean de Meung continued the poem from about 1275 to 1280 as a satire on the society of his time.

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 very coarse. The collection of fabliaux Romance of Renard (about 1175 to 1205) uses animal characters to 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 dramatized 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.

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 Italian literature. Writers and scholars called humanists played a major role in the Renaissance. Humanists combined scholarship 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 Greek 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 Heptameron (1558) on The Decameron by the Italian Renaissance writer Giovanni Boccaccio in the mid-1300's.

Francois Rabelais was the most important fiction writer of the French Renaissance. His major work is Gargantua and Pantagruel. This exuberant, often bawdy, narrative in five parts was published between 1532 and 1564. The work satirizes the legal, political, religious, and social institutions of Rabelais' time.

The Pleiade was a group of seven poets who wanted 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 subjects were such common Renaissance themes as love, the passage of youth, and the immortality of the poet.

Joachim du Bellay was the second most important Pleiade poet. He was the first French poet to use extensively the sonnet form, which he borrowed from Italian Renaissance poets. Du Bellay wrote an important prose 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 by Roman poets. Du Bellay also urged poets to enrich the French vocabulary with technical words, dialect, and words from Greek and Latin.

Etienne Jodelle was a dramatist as well as a Pleiade poet. He wrote the first original French comedy, Eugene (1552), and the first tragedy, Cleopatra Prisoner (1552).

Michel de Montaigne was the last great writer of the French Renaissance. Montaigne created the personal essay as a literary form. A personal essay is written in an informal, conversational style. Montaigne's essays were loosely organized meditations on such topics as education, travel, death, customs, knowledge, and the author himself. A strong sense of skepticism about human nature runs through Montaigne's writings.

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 generally considered the high point in French literature.

The 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. Francois de Malherbe was the first important classical poet and the most influential. During the early 1600's, Malherbe wrote clear, rational, sober poetry that became the basic style for classical verse. Jean de La Fontaine and Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux were also leading classical poets. La Fontaine wrote a famous collection of animal tales in verse called Fables (1668-1694). Boileau wrote The Art of Poetry (1674). In this critical work in verse, the author described the literary principles of moderation and nobility of style that characterized classical poetry of his time.

Classical drama was the greatest expression of French classicism. The masters of classical drama were Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Moliere.

Corneille was the first great classical writer of tragedy. His plays present noble characters involved in conflicts of duty, loyalty, and love. Corneille stressed the importance of the will, self-control, honor, and freedom. His major tragedies include The Cid (1636 or 1637), Horace (1640), Cinna (1640), and Polyeucte (1642).

Racine was the greatest writer of classical tragedy. His plays show characters in the grip of passions they cannot control. A somber religious pessimism colors his works. Racine adapted ancient Greek and Roman subjects in such masterpieces as Andromaque (1667) and Phedre (1677).

Moliere was the greatest writer of comedy in French drama. His best plays are satires and present strong characters in conflict with social conventions. Moliere wrote his finest comedies in the mid-1660's. They include Tartuffe, Don Juan, and The Misanthrope.

Classical prose. Two philosophers wrote works that rank as masterpieces of French classical prose. Rene Descartes wrote Discourse on Method (1637), an influential example of rationalist thought. Blaise Pascal wrote outstanding prose works that reveal his deep Christian faith. Pascal's best-known religious work is a collection of reflections called Pensees. The collection was first published in 1670, though a complete edition was not issued until 1844.

A group of writers called moralists described human conduct and manners in letters, sayings called maxims, and other prose forms. The satire The Characters of Theophrastus (1688) by Jean de La Bruyere is an example of moralist literature. It 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 Cleves (1678). The novel has been praised for its psychological analysis and skillful construction.

Jacques Bossuet was a historian and Roman Catholic bishop known for his eloquent and moving sermons. Francois de Fenelon 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 Age of Reason

The 1700's in France are often called the Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment. During this century, philosophers emphasized reason as the best method for learning truth. Much of the literature was philosophical, produced by such important thinkers as Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and Jean Jacques Rousseau. See AGE OF REASON.

Voltaire was the most famous literary figure of his time. He used his literary skills 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 William Shakespeare. In addition, Voltaire helped develop the principles of modern historical writing through his many works on European and world history.

Denis Diderot is chiefly known as the editor of the French Encyclopedie (1751-1772), one of the great intellectual achievements of the Age of Reason. The Encyclopedie was a collection of learned articles contributed by writers in many fields. The work attempted to explain rationally the latest scientific discoveries. It also attacked religious authority, economic inequality, and abuses of justice.

Jean Jacques Rousseau proposed changes in French society in his novel The New Heloise (1761) and in education in the novel Emile (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 reintroduced a meditative and lyrical feeling into French literature. This sensitivity appears most prominently in Reveries of the Solitary Stroller (1782).

Several other major writers contributed to the Age of Reason. Montesquieu wrote witty social criticism in his Persian Letters (1721). Alain Rene Lesage produced a famous satirical novel, Gil Blas (1715-1735). The Abbe Prevost composed a popular sentimental novel, Manon Lescaut (1731). Pierre Marivaux wrote novels about middle-class society and delicate comedies about problems of love as seen by women. 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 mid-1800's. Romanticism was partly a reaction against classicism and the Age of Reason. 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. Romantic writers were extremely self-centered. 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, Germany, and Spain. A number of French writers, called preromantics, also helped shape the movement during the late 1700's and early 1800's.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is identified with the Age of Reason. However, he was also an important forerunner of romanticism because he prized feeling over reason and spontaneity over self-discipline. Rousseau also influenced the romantics with his lyrical prose style, his introduction of passionate love into the French novel, and his sensitivity to the beauties of nature.

Francois-Rene 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 hero. 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 Age of Reason.

Madame de Stael 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 Andre Chenier incorporated several technical elements into his verse that were adopted by romantic poets.

Romantic poetry began in 1820 with the publication of Poetic Meditations by Alphonse de Lamartine. His melancholy poems dealt with nature, love, and solitude.

Victor Hugo was the greatest figure in French romanticism, excelling as a poet, dramatist, and fiction writer. Hugo's Odes and Various Poems (1822) have a colorful, exotic quality. His later collections, such as Leaves of Autumn (1831), are more personal and meditative.

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.

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.

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 Age of Reason. Victor Hugo wrote the first significant romantic play, the historical drama Hernani (1830). Vigny and Musset also contributed to romantic drama. 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 pere (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.

Some romantic writers moved toward a more realistic style of fiction. Such authors as Honore de Balzac, George Sand, and Stendhal retained many romantic characteristics in their work. But they modified their romanticism with a more faithful observation of 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.

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 Haunted Pool (1846).

Stendhal was a rationalist, but he liked passionate, strong characters and melodramatic situations. A master psychologist, Stendhal used a clear and ironic style to portray the struggle between passion and calculating ambition. His two masterpieces are The Red and the Black (1830) and The Charterhouse of Parma (1839).

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 was dominating 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 facts. For his novel Madame Bovary (1856), Flaubert deliberately chose an ordinary subject--a dull country doctor and his shallow wife. This portrait of French provincial life ranks among the masterpieces of French literature.

Guy de Maupassant became known for his realistic short stories. De Maupassant was an expert at observing human behavior. Many of his stories portray provincial life in Normandy or the tedious existence of petty civil servants in Paris.

There were two main types of realistic drama in France. One was the well-made play, which emphasized plot and suspense. The comedies of Eugene Scribe were the best examples. The other type was the problem, or thesis, play. Most dealt with social problems, such as divorce and legal injustice. The leading writers of problem plays were Emile Augier, Eugene 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.

Naturalism

During the late 1800's, a movement called naturalism emerged 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.

Emile 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 were named after the family that occupies a central place in the stories.

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, which recorded the literary and social life of Paris from 1851 to 1896.

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.

Symbolism

French symbolism was a literary movement of the late 1800's. The term symbolism has also been applied to the work of a number of French writers who did not belong to the specific movement. See SYMBOLISM.

The key figures in the symbolist movement were the poets Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, 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 describe objective reality. Much of their poetry was personal and obscure.

Charles Baudelaire was the forerunner of symbolism. His Flowers of Evil (1857) is a collection of about 100 related poems. The work reflects Baudelaire's somber view of humanity and its vices. However, he wrote that humanity had the potential to create poetic beauty.

Stephane Mallarme was the first great symbolist poet. Mallarme hoped that poetic language could approach absolute truth. His works are difficult to understand because of their unusual syntax, learned words, elaborate metaphors, and abstract subject matter. His most famous poem is The Afternoon of a Faun (1876).

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.

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.

No symbolist novelist or dramatist equaled the poets. However, the dreamy symbolist plays of Maurice Maeterlinck gained some attention. Maeterlinck was a Belgian author, but he wrote in French.

The 1900's

The four masters. Four authors dominated French literature during the early 1900's. They were Paul Claudel, Andre Gide, Paul Valery, 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 master of French literature.

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).

Gide was a novelist who became controversial because of his unorthodox views on religion and morality. Gide's fiction has been praised for its style and psychological insights into character. In 1909, he helped found The New French Review, the leading French literary journal of the early 1900's.

Proust was perhaps the greatest French novelist since Balzac. His monumental autobiographical 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.

Valery wrote poetry that shows the influence of the rational tradition in French literature. Valery stressed emotional control and classical forms in his poetry. His major works include the long poem The Young Fate (1917) and the lyrics collected in Charms (1922). Valery was also an outstanding literary critic.

Surrealism was a movement founded in 1924 by a group of writers and painters in Paris. The surrealists wanted to revolutionize society. They explored unconscious thought processes, especially dreams, which they believed would yield ultimate truth. See SURREALISM.

The poet Guillaume Apollinaire was a major influence on surrealism. His Alcools (1913) is a collection of beautiful lyrics that celebrate the imagination. The chief theorist and leader of the surrealists was Andre Breton. The leading poets were Rene Char, Paul Eluard, and Louis Aragon. However, all three wrote their finest poetry after they left the movement in the late 1930's. Their main themes were love and patriotism.

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 commitment. 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 several works, including the novels The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947) and the long essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942).

French drama of the mid-1900's. Several novelists and poets contributed to French drama in the mid-1900's, including Sartre and Camus. Other leading playwrights were Jean Anouilh, Jean Giraudoux, and Jean Cocteau. Anouilh explored questions of illusion and reality and the individual against society. He often used mythological and historical subjects. Giraudoux wrote in a witty, elaborate, artificial style. His best-known plays investigate the nature of love or protest against war and greed. Cocteau became known for his fantasies on mythological subjects.

The 1950's and 1960's saw two major developments in French literature. One was the emergence of the Theater of the Absurd. 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.

The other major development was the New Novel. Its chief representatives included Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon. These writers moved away from traditional approaches to the novel, such as realistic storytelling and plots. Instead, their novels concentrate on descriptions of events and objects as experienced or seen by the characters.

Recent French literature. During the late 1900'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 became a writer and director of motion pictures. Other writers explored different kinds of novels. J. M. G. Le Clezio wrote in a powerful, poetic style about people's struggles to understand the world despite the cold, technological nature of modern life. Michel Tournier often used stories from such sources as English author Daniel Defoe and the Bible to examine issues of human identity and communication. In his novels, Patrick Modiano dealt with the topics of memory and the German occupation of France during World War II (1939-1945).

In the 1970's, a feminist movement appeared in French literature. A number of critics, mostly women, turned their attention to women writers of the past. They also analyzed female characters in fiction and the expression of feminist concerns in modern literature.

Marguerite Duras and Helene Cixous ranked among the leading French feminist writers of the late 1900's. Monique Wittig is an extreme feminist writer who believes the language of past literature has represented chiefly a masculine point of view. She tries to replace that masculine language with a feminine one.

Also during the late 1900'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.
_________________
Roland Camilleri

Moderator

Sydney , Australia.