French literature - French Nobel Prize in Literature winners, Selected list of French literary classics, Literary criticism, Poetry

A literature emerging in the 12th-c from late Latin, which continued to exercise a powerful influence. The earliest vernacular works were the chansons de geste, soon followed by courtly romances dealing with both classical and Celtic subjects (Chrétien de Troyes' Lancelot, late 12th-c), and the allegorical romance, of which the Roman de la Rose (mid-13th-c) is the finest example, its two parts contrasting romance and early realism. François Villon (1431–?) was the most remarkable lyric poet in mediaeval France, to be matched by Ronsard of La Pléiade, while the greatest French writer of the 16th-c was Rabelais, with his inexhaustible masterpieces Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–52). The 17th-c was a golden age in French literature, the milieu of court and salon producing not only the three great dramatists Corneille, Racine, and Molière, but the classicists Malherbe and Boileau, the philosopher Descartes, Pascal (Pensées, 1660), La Rochefoucauld (Maximes, 1665–78), and La Fontaine. It also saw the creation of the Académie Française by Richelieu in 1634. The 18th-c is best characterized by the rationalist satire of Voltaire and the vast Encyclopédie (1751–65) written under Diderot. Rousseau heralded the Romantic movement (Confessions 1764–70), which was powerfully represented in France by Chateaubriand and Lamartine, Musset, and Vigny, and by the dominating figure of Victor Hugo in verse and prose (Les Misérables, 1862). The Realist/Naturalist novel took centre stage in the mid-19th-c, with Balzac, Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1857), and Zola; but the Symbolist poets claimed their due, in Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé.

In the 20th-c, French literature was very diverse, ranging from the intense self-exploration of Proust and Genet and the experiments with the nouveau roman of Nathalie Sarraute and Robbe-Grillet to the Catholic revival with Claudel and Maritain and the political engagement of Aragon and Sartre. In addition, there is the existentialist fiction of Camus and the absurdist theatre of Ionesco and Beckett; philosophical preoccupations (serious and playful) continue to fascinate the French writer. Meanwhile, Surrealism in all its forms has remained a pervasive influence.

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French and Francophone literature

French literature By category French language

French literary history

Medieval 16th century - 17th century 18th century - 19th century 20th century - Contemporary

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Molière - Racine - Balzac Stendhal - Flaubert Emile Zola - Marcel Proust Samuel Beckett - Albert Camus

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French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France;

French Nobel Prize in Literature winners

The following French or French language authors have won a Nobel Prize in Literature:

1901 - Sully Prudhomme (The first Nobel Prize in literature) 1904 - Frédéric Mistral (wrote in Occitan) 1911 - Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgian) 1915 - Romain Rolland 1921 - Anatole France 1927 - Henri Bergson 1937 - Roger Martin du Gard 1947 - André Gide 1952 - François Mauriac 1957 - Albert Camus 1960 - Saint-John Perse 1964 - Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize) 1969 - Samuel Beckett (Irish, wrote in English and French) 1985 - Claude Simon 2000 - Gao Xingjian (writes in Chinese)

Selected list of French literary classics

Fiction

Middle Ages anonymous - La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland) Chrétien de Troyes - Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain, the Knight of the Lion), Lancelot, ou le Chevalier à la charrette (Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart) various - Tristan et Iseult (Tristan and Iseult) anonymous - Lancelot-Graal (Lancelot-Grail), also known as the prose Lancelot or the Vulgate Cycle Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung - Roman de la Rose ("Romance of the Rose") 16th century François Rabelais - Pantagruel, Gargantua 17th century Madame de Lafayette - La Princesse de Clèves 18th century Voltaire - Candide Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse Denis Diderot - Jacques le fataliste (Jacques the Fatalist) 19th century Victor Hugo - Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Les Misérables Alexandre Dumas, père - Les Trois mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers), Le Comte de Monte-CristoThe Count of Monte Cristo 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) Jules Verne - Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours (Around the World in Eighty Days), Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary, L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education) Guy de Maupassant - Bel Ami, Le Collier (The Necklace), other short stories Émile Zola - Les Rougon-Macquart (a novel cycle which includes Germinal, Nana and La Bête humaine) 20th century Gaston Leroux- Le Fantôme de l'opéra (The Phantom of the Opera), Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room) André Gide - Les Faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters), The Immoralist Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) André Breton - Nadja Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night) Colette - Gigi Albert Camus - L'Étranger The Stranger Michel Butor - L'Emploi du temps Alain Robbe-Grillet - Dans le labyrinthe Georges Perec - La vie mode d'emploi Robert Pinget - Quelqu'un Robert Pinget - Quelqu'un Robert Pinget - Quelqu'un

Poetry

François Villon - Les Testaments Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and other poets of "La Pléiade" - poems La Fontaine - The Fables Victor Hugo - poems Alphonse de Lamartine - poems Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du mal Paul Verlaine - poems Arthur Rimbaud - Une Saison en Enfer Stéphane Mallarmé - Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard ("A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance")

Theater

Pierre Corneille - Le Cid Molière - Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, Dom Juan Jean Racine - Phèdre, Andromaque Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac Jean Giraudoux - The Trojan War Will Not Take Place Jean Anouilh - Becket, Antigone Jean-Paul Sartre - No Exit Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot, Endgame Eugène Ionesco - The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros Jean Genet - The Maids, The Blacks

Non-fiction

Michel de Montaigne - The Essays Blaise Pascal - Les Pensées François de La Rochefoucauld - The Maxims Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The Social Contract François-René de Chateaubriand - Genius of Christianity Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America Adolphe Thiers - History of the French Revolution, History of the Consulate and Empire Jules Michelet - Histoire de France, La Sorcière Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus Jean-Paul Sartre - Existentialism is a Humanism, Being and Nothingness

Literary criticism

Roland Barthes Paul Bénichou Jacques Derrida Julia Kristeva Jacques Lacan Jean-François Lyotard

Poetry

Parnassian Romanticism Symbolism (arts) Surrealism