French literature explained
French literature generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in the French language by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature.
For centuries, French literature has been an object of national pride for French people, and it has been one of the most influential aspects of the literature of Europe.[1] [2] France ranks first on the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country.
One of the first known examples of French literature is the Song of Roland, the first major work in a series of poems known as, "chansons de geste".[3]
The French language is a Romance language derived from Latin and heavily influenced principally by Celtic and Frankish. Beginning in the 11th century, literature written in medieval French was one of the oldest vernacular (non-Latin) literatures in western Europe and it became a key source of literary themes in the Middle Ages across the continent.
Although the European prominence of French literature was eclipsed in part by vernacular literature in Italy in the 14th century, literature in France in the 16th century underwent a major creative evolution, and through the political and artistic programs of the Ancien Régime, French literature came to dominate European letters in the 17th century.
In the 18th century, French became the literary lingua franca and diplomatic language of western Europe (and, to a certain degree, in America), and French letters have had a profound impact on all European and American literary traditions while at the same time being heavily influenced by these other national traditions. Africa and the far East have brought the French language to non-European cultures that are transforming and adding to the French literary experience today.
Under the aristocratic ideals of the Ancien Régime (the "honnête homme"), the nationalist spirit of post-revolutionary France, and the mass educational ideals of the Third Republic and modern France, the French have come to have a profound cultural attachment to their literary heritage. Today, French schools emphasize the study of novels, theater and poetry (often learnt by heart). The literary arts are heavily sponsored by the state and literary prizes are major news. The and the are important linguistic and artistic institutions in France, and French television features shows on writers and poets (one of the most watched shows on French television was Apostrophes,[4] a weekly talk show on literature and the arts). Literature matters deeply to the people of France and plays an important role in their sense of identity.
As of 2022, fifteen French authors have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature which is more than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country. In 1964 Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he declined it, stating that "It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form."[5]
French Nobel Prize in Literature winners
For most of the 20th century, French authors had more Literature Nobel Prizes than those of any other nation.[6] The following French or French language authors have won a Nobel Prize in Literature:
French literary awards
- – created in 1948, for crime and detective fiction.
- – created 1918.
- – created in 1989.
- Prix Femina – created 1904, decided each year by an exclusively female jury, although the authors of the winning works do not have to be women.
- Prix Goncourt – created 1903, given to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year".
- Prix Goncourt des Lycéens – created in 1987.
- Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud – created in 1957.
- Prix Médicis – created 1958, awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match their talent."
- – created in 1926.
- Prix Tour-Apollo Award – 1972–1990, given to the best science fiction novel published in French during the preceding year.
- Prix des Deux Magots – created in 1933.
Key texts
Fiction
- Middle Ages
- 16th century
- 17th century
- 18th century
- 19th century
- François-René de Chateaubriand – Atala, René
- Benjamin Constant – Adolphe
- Stendhal – Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black), La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma)
- Honoré de Balzac – La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy", a novel cycle which includes Père Goriot, Lost Illusions, and Eugénie Grandet)
- Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers
- Victor Hugo – Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), Les Misérables
- Théophile Gautier – Mademoiselle de Maupin
- Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary, Salammbô, L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education)
- Jules Verne – Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas), Voyage au centre de la Terre (A Journey to the Center of the Earth), Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days)
- Edmond and Jules de Goncourt – Germinie Lacerteux
- George Sand – La Petite Fadette
- Joris-Karl Huysmans - "À rebours"
- Guy de Maupassant – Bel Ami, La Parure (The Necklace), other short stories
- Émile Zola – Thérèse Raquin, Les Rougon-Macquart (a novel cycle which includes L'Assommoir, Nana and Germinal)
- 20th century
- 21st century
Poetry
Theatre
- Pierre Corneille (1606–84)- Le Cid (1636), Horace
- Molière – Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, Dom Juan, L'Avare (The Miser), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, L'École des femmes (The School for Wives), Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid)
- Jean Racine – Phèdre, Andromaque, Bérénice, Athalie
- Marivaux – Jeu de l'amour et du hasard
- Beaumarchais – Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville), La Folle journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)
- Alfred Jarry – King Ubu
- Edmond Rostand – Cyrano de Bergerac
- Jean Giraudoux – The Trojan War Will Not Take Place
- Jean Anouilh – Becket, Antigone
- Jean-Paul Sartre – No Exit
- Eugène Ionesco – La Cantatrice chauve (The Bald Soprano), Les Chaises (The Chairs), La Leçon (The Lesson), Rhinoceros
- Jean Genet – The Maids, The Balcony
- Samuel Beckett – En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot), Fin de Partie (Endgame) and other works in French
Nonfiction
Literary criticism
Poetry
See main article: French poetry.
See also
External links
Notes and References
- http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Literature/DF_literature.shtml French literature
- http://www.lsa.umich.edu/rll/langinstruct/whyfrench.html Romance languages and literatures: why study French ?
- Web site: Internet History Sourcebooks. sourcebooks.fordham.edu. 2020-03-23. 2020-03-31. https://web.archive.org/web/20200331225325/https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/roland-ohag.asp. live.
- Roger Cohen, "The Media Business; Books Star on TV, but Only in France", The New York Times, September 10, 1990.
- Web site: Saying 'No thanks' to Nobel | News | al Jazeera . 2014-07-30 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20160811180721/http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/2009/10/2009101212723118884.html . 2016-08-11 .
- National Literature Nobel Prize shares 1901–2009 by citizenship at the time of the award and by country of birth . From J. Schmidhuber (2010), Evolution of National Nobel Prize Shares in the 20th Century at arXiv:1009.2634v1
