A Short History of French Literature

by Kay, Sarah; Cave, Terence; Bowie, Malcolm

• ISBN13: 9780198159315
• ISBN10: 0198159315
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

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

Table of Contents

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