French literature can be understood as all books written by authors of French nationality and / or French. It is generally considered that it begins to expand in the Middle Ages to the present. The most important genres of French literature are drama, poetry, narrative prose and ideas, and autobiography. Some of his best-known representatives are Jean Racine, Voltaire , Victor Hugo or Jean-Paul Sartre.
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Birth of French literature
The Middle Ages is the period par excellence of "childhood" of literature française.Aux twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in particular, are invented most of the French poetic genres and narrative, which emerge with great freshness but also a lot of luster: very often the first extant texts in each genre are made masterpieces like the song Roland, romances of Chretien de Troyes or the poems of William of Aquitaine. Although the genres are not strictly codified, their childhoods are characterized by great attention to the forms. One of the fundamental characteristics of the medieval art of poetry is the tech in search of "style". The medieval concept of originality and thus the notion of copyright is very different from today. The writers do not try to stand out, but to integrate the best tradition of rewriting earlier texts, to bring together disparate elements. Concerns affective lot less important than the formal intervention. Their concern is in no way an expression of personal feelings or ideas, the theme itself is a pretext. They matter not to renew the memorandum, but the form: the subject is the work itself. They seem fully aware of the need, in any artistic creation, to introduce a gap rhetoric is indicative of a type and brand of a style.
The first known text of medieval French literature is Sequence or Cantilena of St. Eulalia , probably written between 881 and 882. It is actually an adaptation in 29 lines of a poem latin, religious and educational mission.
The first great works of French literature dating from the middle of them Middle Ages (eleventh century), the period of agricultural development and population growth after periods of invasions, and outbreaks of anarchy.
The first novels appeared in 1150 in the form of stories in verse the exploits of knights. But the real founder of the genre is Chretien de Troyes, who inspired the myth of King Arthur to create a fictional world coherent and clearly individualized hero Lancelot, Perceval.
The epics are long poems with thousands of worms that are intended to be sung in public, meaning gesture by warlike exploits. They report in a form combining epic legends and historical facts of past military exploits, and enhance the ideals of chivalry. The oldest and best known is the Chanson de Roland was written in the eleventh century and tells idealizing them, the exploits of Charlemagne's army.
Literature courteous, appeared in twelfth century , main theme the cult of love unique, perfect and often unhappy. It finds its origin in antiquity, incorporates Eastern influences due to the return of the Crusaders, and is inspired by Celtic legends. So the legend of Tristan and Isolde recounts the story of an absolute love and impossible that ends with the tragic death of the lovers, and these poems were sung at the court of princes by minstrels and troubadours. Chretien de Troyes (1135? -1190?) Is probably the first novelist French literature, his novels as Yvain the Knight of the lion, Lancelot or the Knight of the Cart and Perceval, the Story of the Grail are typical of the genre. The long poem Le Roman de la Rose, a bestseller from the early thirteenth century is one of the last writings on the theme of courtly love, and then only in his early short written by Guillaume de Lorris. The rest of the poem continued by Jean de Meun instead contains passages (including that of the old) for a surprising misogyny, mixed also to arguments articulated social criticism.
Roman courteous
A courtly romance is a long story written in the Middle Ages (eleventh and twelfth century) octosyllabic. It depicts the knights who fight for their ladies. The novels represent the concept of courtly love to courtois.Contrairement epics that draw on the area of France, the inspiration for courtly romance is the subject of Rome and the Matter of Britain.
Courtly poetry
The lyrical poems in the Middle Ages are real songs: their stanzas correspond to a musical phrase and a chorus is always present. Their pace is set by singing the obligatory accompaniment of a melody. The origins of poetry lyric may be sought in the folk songs and dances. The influence of Arab culture is being felt well.
Medieval poetry reached its peak in the art of the troubadours. The south, where the economy is more developed than in the northern provinces, where daily life is less bellicose, is more conducive to making art that sings of love and spring. The influence of this poetry is reflected in the langue d'oil during the second half of the twelfth century.
poetic genres are: the song that the ladies canvas sing when they weave and embroider, the song of a crusade, the shepherdess where we see lords woo shepherds, playing party representing a debate on love. Two themes follow one another: the love and nature.
More spontaneous and natural in the beginning, in general, the poems evolve into fixed forms: the ballade, the chant royal, the rondeau, the virelai. The idea is starting to hide under the symbols, allegory, erudition, who often come to the place of sentiment. From the late fourteenth century the concern for technical perfection takes over and poetry becomes an exercise in rhetoric or an entertainment company. Seeking to meet the aristocratic ideal, poetry leads ultimately to courteous mannerism.
courteous works express the ideal of chivalry, but they contain a new value: love the service. The appellation "courteous" comes from the word "court" which in Old French meant the Manorial Court. The imaginary court of King Arthur in the romances of the Round Table is the ideal course of real: the refined habits and uses them impose the fine as a rule. Loyalty to a Lady, the art of speaking and singing, politeness, generosity oppose, first, the coarse manners of warriors and, secondly, become signs of recognition the aristocratic class. Also, the aristocrats, they begin to move towards a more careful literature to the heart and mind.
Around the same time, the Roman de Renart is a collection of poems that chronicle the adventures of animals endowed with reason. The fox, bear, wolf, rooster, cat, etc.. each have a human trait: dishonest, naive, shrewd ... The anonymous authors in these poems mock feudal values and morals courteous.
The Parisian poet of the thirteenth century is seriously Rutebeuf echo of human weakness, uncertainty and poverty in contrast to the courtly values.
The first historical chronicles written in French are stories dating from the Crusades of the twelfth century. Some of these stories, like those of Joinville retracing the life of St. Louis, also have a moral purpose and somewhat idealize the facts presented. Then the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) is told by Jean Froissart (1337-1410?) In two books called Chronicles. Eustache Deschamps, the poet reflects society and attitudes during the Hundred Years War.
After the Hundred Years War, the poet Francois Villon (1431-1463?) Reflects the disorder and violence of that era. Orphan home noble and good student, he is then convicted of theft and murder. His work in both scholarly and popular expresses a revolt against the injustices of his time.
Theatre religious grows throughout the Middle Ages, it stages the Mysteries, that is to say, the religious holidays like Christmas, Easter and Ascension, in contrast to previous genres rather aristocratic, he is for the greatest number. Alongside this religious drama, a comic drama called stuffing appears in the fifteenth century when it was hard fought by religious officials.
French Literature in the sixteenth century
The most important literary movement of that era is humanism. The principles of humanism will have a profound literature: back to ancient texts (Greek, Latin and Hebrew), desire for knowledge, Epicureanism indisputable, renewal forms and themes in distinguishing itself from medieval literature.
poetry counts as important author Marot, Jean de Sponde , Agrippa d'Aubigné , Pleiade school of which are among Ronsard Du Bellay.
The most notable novels are those of Rabelais and Marguerite de Navarre.
Montaigne's Essays are an important work between philosophy and autobiography.
French Literature in the seventeenth century
The seventeenth century has two major literary movements simultaneously competing but complementary classicism and Baroque literature . Competitors because of classicism in literature needed to face the baroque but also complementary, as some authors have been influenced by two trends at once (As Pierre Corneille). But by the end of the century is emerging literature stream of thought that foreshadows the Enlightenment (with La Bruyere, for example).
Big names of literature from this period are: Corneille, Racine , Molière, Pascal , The Rouchefoucault , La Fontaine, La Bruyere , Madame de La Fayette.
French Literature in the eighteenth century
The eighteenth century is called the Age of Enlightenment . In this metaphor the century looking to spend, through the spirit of the Renaissance and the Cartesianism of the previous century, the triumph of reason over the Darkness (obscurantism and prejudice). Lights are a European phenomenon, but the "philosophers" French crystallize the best ideas of the century and give relief to new values, beyond the French Revolution, a lasting mark in Europe and the world.
French Literature in the nineteenth century
If the nineteenth century is important for the number of masterpieces that French literature has generated, this literary period, close to us, remains elusive. For many historians of literature, the nineteenth century French literary remains that of Romanticism, first with Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo.
This movement of artistic creation and proliferation may be partially the cause in some respects. Some focus on the momentum of freedom has led the French Revolution burst of freedom followed by disorder, confusion caused by instability, uncertainty policy emanating from the first half of the century. In this context, we see the writer with his ideals, expressing opposition to the political and social order. For others, instead of the French Revolution and the ensuing political turmoil or not completely explain the efflorescence of French romanticism, taking evidence before the birth of English Romanticism and German in countries that were not not the least shaken by revolution. They insist instead on the influence of exercise study and reading of literature in English and German by French men of letters.
French Literature in the Twentieth Century
French literature of the twentieth century was profoundly affected by the crises of historical, political, moral and artistic. The literary movement that has characterized this century Surrealism, which is especially a revival of poetry (André Breton, Robert Desnos ...), but existentialism (Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre), which also represents a new philosophy (Existentialism is a Humanism Jean-Paul Sartre). The primary source for artists of this century is related to political conflicts of the time. War is thus present both in poetry than in fiction.
In France, the nouveau roman, theorized by Alain Robbe-Grillet in Le Nouveau Roman, does that few writers initially but then inspired a generation of writers grouped around today Editions de Minuit, including Jean Echenoz, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Tanguy Viel, Christian Oster, Lawrence Mauvigné or Christian Gailly. After that, no movement in the strict sense only manages to emerge. The Oulipo Ouvroir of Potential Literature, which belonged Queneau and Perec (and authors like today Roubaud Fournel, Toy or Le Tellier) does not in fact be conceived as a movement, but as a working group. It's the same for New Fiction gathering of novelists such as Hubert Haddad, Tristan Frederick or John Levy.
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the sixteenth century (1500 - 1600)
The sixteenth century, and precious had sought to enrich their vocabulary. At the end of the seventeenth century will now seek to establish the official list of words. The first dictionary was published in 1694, with a specific grammar. The French language is well standardized. In literature, we try to distinguish between types: farce, comedy, drama, tragedy, romance and new.
The Renaissance and its characteristics (1515-1547)
The Renaissance refers to a school of thought that has crossed Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
the Renaisance is characterized by a rediscovery of the ancient (Greek and Latin) and is accompanied strong confidence in man and in his future.
texts, the Middle Ages, were surrounded by comments, intended, it was thought then to clarify their true meaning. Renaissance calls for a return to the purity of the original text, claiming the right to read alone.
If the man of the Middle Ages looks at God, which he placed in the church at the center of the city, the Renaissance man looks at the man.
The Renaissance comes with a mindset that spreads throughout the educated classes: humanism. Its essential components are the erudition and knowledge of the ancient world in the service of understanding the modern world. Humanists are concerned for the man and his greatness. They feverishly seeking truth in all areas.
A humanist is primarily a scholar who studies the ancient texts in their original language.
The Renaissance men discovered in an ancient authors of the new vision of the human condition, they also wanted to introduce the new age of hope and faith in man.
The humanist movement
rediscovering the great texts of antiquity, he affirmed his faith in the capabilities of knowledge possessed by humans.
characteristics
1. redécouvrte of great texts of antiquity
2. confidence in the ability of human knowledge
1. François Rabelais (1494 - 1553); prose narrative; Pantagruel, Gargantua
2. Montaigne (1533 - 1592); prose ideas Tests
School of the Pleiades
willing to use all the resources of the French language, she develops a poem based on immitaion antique models.
characteristics
1. wishes to exploit all resources of the French language
2. develops a poem based on the imitation of classical models (the sonnet)
1. Pierre de Ronsard (1524 - 1585), lyric poetry, The Loves - epic poetry: The Franciade
2. Joachim Du Bellay (1522 - 1560), lyric poetry, Les Regrets.
Frontier sixteenth - seventeenth century
Baroque
he seeks to renew the vision of reality by presenting the metamorphosis of the world and the illusions of the human soul . The term 'Baroque' means "strange" or "eccentric". The Baroque movement seeks to surprise. It emphasizes the freedom of imagination, movement and profusion of ornament characterize this style. The optical illusion makes the uncertain boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture. Human reality, grandiosity and the chiaroscuro became important.
characteristics
1. seeks to renew the vision of reality
2. metamorphoses of the world and the illusions of the human soul
1. Jean de Sponde (1557 - 1595); lyric poetry: Verses on the Death
2. Theophilus Viau (1590 - 1626); lyric: Works
3. Agrippa d'Aubigné (1552 - 1630); epic poetry: The Tragic
4. Cornelius (1606 - 1684 early in his career); Theatre: L'Illusion comique
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the seventeenth century (1600 - 1700)
Classicism
he seeks balance and measure in the representation of the human being, he is concerned to define his ideal aesthetic through rules of writing (3 units ...), applied particularly in the genre of tragedy. classicism is the art of proportions, perspective, and mathematics. The classical style has a concept of "honest man", which shines through his mind and dominate his passions. The paintings hang on the history inspiration in antiquity, the Bible, mythology, poetry and literature of the time.
characteristics
1. seeks a balance in representation and measurement of human
2. defines his aesthetic ideal through rules writing, particularly in the genre of tragedy
1. Cornelius (1606 - 1684); tragic theater: Horace
2. Racine (1639 - 1699); tragic drama: Phaedra
3. Molière (1622 - 1673); comic theater: Tartuffe
4. The Fountain (1621 - 1695); Poetry: Fables
5. Boileau (1636 - 1711); Poetry: Poetic Art
6. La Bruyere (1645 - 1696); prose of ideas: The Characters
7. Pascal (1623 - 1662); prose of ideas: Thoughts.
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the eighteenth century (1700 - 1800)
Enlightenment philosophy
intellectuals born in the salons, it is based on scientific discoveries to develop critical thinking and combat against all forms of prejudice.
characteristics
1. rise in the lounges
2. scientific discoveries -> development of critical thinking, struggle against all forms of prejudice
3. abstract ideal in the collective work: The Encyclopedia
1. Montesquieu (1689 - 1755) ; Prose of ideas: The Spirit of Laws
2. Voltaire (1694 - 1778); prose of ideas: Philosophical Dictionary, Candide prose narrative
3. Rousseau (1712 - 1778); prose of ideas: The Social Contract
4. Diderot (1713 - 1784); prose narrative: Jacques the Fatalist
5. Marivaux (1688 - 1763); Theatre: The Island of Slaves
6. Beaumarchais (1732 - 1799); Theatre: The Marriage of Figaro
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the nineteenth century (1800 - 1900)
Existentialism
current philosophy placing at the center of reflection of individual existence, freedom and personal choice, subjects who were treated in literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by writers associated with the movement of thought.
Romanticism
Romanticism uses registers of emotion and sensibility: it considers the human being in the expression of personal feelings, focusing on his relationship.
Romanticism was born as a reaction against classicism too rigid. This movement wanted to transform the culture and leave the constraints of the form. Emotions and fantasies of the artist were the most important. The art was as a way to express the fullness of man, with an opening toward the exotic and the enhancement of the campaign (as a reaction against the big city and industrialization).
characteristics
1. reaction against the rationalism of the preceding period
2. registers of emotion and sensitivity
3. the individual and the expression of his personal feelings
1. Chateaubriand (1768 - 1848); novel René
2. Lamartine (1790 - 1869); Poetry: Meditations
3. Vigny (1797 - 1863); Poetry: The Designed
4. Hugo (1802 - 1885); Poetry: Les Contemplations; theater Hernani; novel Notre-Dame de Paris
5. Musset (1810 - 1857); theater Lorenzaccio
6. Nerval (1808 - 1855); novel, The Daughters of fire
Realism
Precursors
Some writers of the late eighteenth century, are considered precursors romance, "Romanticism" to borrow a term coined by critics at the beginning of our century. Ago, in fact, in the works of Rousseau as in those of Senancour, the first expressions of one of the most important aspects of Romanticism: the feeling of nature, expressed as an ecstasy based on the similarity between the inner landscape (that of the soul) and the landscape outside. Ago, also, Rene or Memoires d'outre-tombe de Chateaubriand, a painting of this "unhappiness" or the "evil of the century" to be the main topic of romantic poetry, that of Vigny Musset or example.
Although the adjective "romantic" had emerged from the classical age to compete with the adjective "romantic", it took its modern sense only gradually, as opposed to the adjective "classical" (as that 'first employed Goethe, Schlegel, Stendhal, etc..). In France, Rousseau in the Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1776-1778 - posthumous, 1782), who was one of the first writers to give it its current meaning by using it to describe the character and scenic wild landscape.
realistic literature is characterized mainly the novels produced in Europe and the United States between 1840 and 1890, when realism gave way to naturalism. Literary realism was born in France with some works of Alfred de Musset and Balzac and took a more complete form with the novels of Gustave Flaubert, new Guy de Maupassant and Emile Zola's novels. In Russia, Anton Chekhov became the ambassador of realism in his plays and his short stories. The novelist George Eliot introduced realism in English fiction, as she wrote in Adam Bede (1859), his intention was to give a "true representation of ordinary things." Mark Twain and William Dean Howells were the pioneers of realism in the United States. One of the greatest writers of realistic, the British-born American novelist Henry James, drew much of its inspiration from the works of his mentor, Eliot and Howells.
The production of these writers illustrates the principles of realism, whereby writers must not select facts in terms of preconceived moral or aesthetic ideals but should record their observations impartially and objectively. Seeking to truly make the scenes of everyday life, of the most high the most vulgar, the realists had tend to minimize the plot in favor of the psychology of characters and put more specifically directed the concerns of the middle class, believing that their work should play a social role and not only work on language forms.
Realism aims to describe the company in its historical and social dimension
Realism rejects the inspiration of the Romantic imagination and academic formalities. This movement seeks an objective and simple contemporary life accessible to all. The artist should not seek to idealize or to alter reality or to give a voluntary incomplete.
characteristics
1. describe society in its historical and social dimension
2. dominance of the novel
1. Stendhal (1783 - 1842), The Red and the Black
2. Balzac (1799 - 1850); Goriot, La Cousine Bette (the cycle of the Human Comedy)
3. Flaubert (1821 - 1880), Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education
4. The Goncourt brothers; Germinie Lacerteux
5. Daumier, Millet, Courbet
Naturalism
characteristics
1. based on the sciences of man and nature
2. wants to explore systematically all milieurs social, revealing the human misery
3. dominance of the novel
1. Zola (1840 - 1902); The Assommoir Germinal (the cycle of Rougon-Macquart)
2. Maupassant (1850 - 1893); news: Maison Tellier, a novel: A Life
3. Huysmans (1848 - 1907)
Symbolism
Symbolism intends to explore in a systematic manner all walks of life, revealing the human misery.
characteristics
1. exceed the limits offered by the reality
2. art = medium to express the spiritual part of man
3. reflection on the mysteries of the world
4. dominance of lyric poetry
1. Baudelaire (1821 - 1867), Les Fleurs du Mal
2. Verlaine (1844 - 1896); Poetry saturniens
3. Rimbaud (1854 - 1891); Illuminations
4. Mallarme (1842 - 1898); Poems.
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the twentieth century (1900 - 2000)
literature takes many forms increasingly complex, deliberate choice of two movements: 1. Surrealism 2. New Novel
Surrealism
Surrealism, born after World War I, is characterized by its opposition to all social conventions, logical and moral. It is a movement bonus dreams, instinct, desire and revolt. So many literary and artistic, it comes from Dadaism.
characteristics
looking new ways of writing, he wants to go beyond reality to unleash the forces of dreams and the unconscious.
1. André Breton (1896 - 1966); story: Nadja
2. Louis Aragon (1897 - 1982); story: The peasants of Paris
3. Paul Eluard (1895 - 1952); lyric: Capital of pain
4. Robert Desnos (1900 - 1945); lyric poetry: Body and well
5. Francis Jammes (1868 -1938), the Georgics Christian
New Roman
expression designating a group of works by French writers, published in 1950 by Jerome Lindon at Editions de Minuit, who had in common to question the main features of the traditional novel.
The very term "New Roman", created by a journalist on the model of "New Wave", which meant the young filmmakers of the 1950s, was taken by Alain Robbe-Grillet (For a New Novel , 1963) and Jean Ricardou (Problems of the New Novel, 1967 and for a theory of the nouveau roman, 1971). These three essays constitute a theory of the novel, without being a manifesto of school. They advocate including abandonment traditional elements of writing fiction, whether the design of the inherited character of Balzac's story, the notion of plot, or the principle of omniscience of the author demiurge. In general, the authors of the Nouveau Roman (Claude Simon, Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute, Robert Pinget Ricardou Jean Claude Ollier) find themselves in a similar criticism of literary realism.
In fact, with New Roman literature into "an era of suspicion" (as the title of an essay of Sarraute published in 1956), which The main consequence of questioning the need for credible, hence the rejection of the description and the denial of what Barthes calls the "reality effect". This critique of the hegemony of verisimilitude, registered in the tradition of literary research of Joyce, is coupled with special attention paid not to the plot as such but to the "adventure" that is writing itself. The passenger of the Change, (1957) Butor, a hero is not described in the third person, but a character who is addressed directly. Similarly, the narrative impersonal Jealousy, (1957) allows Robbe-Grillet to evoke the presence of objects returned to their enigmatic nature without any human eye does not come to give them a special meaning. In the Planetarium (1959) of Sarraute, identical scenes are presented from the perspective of different characters, whose thoughts and words are transcribed in a prose both continuous and chopped that reflects these movements almost imperceptible to us live. As for the work of Claude Simon, she tries to return at the long sentences interspersed with parenthetical asides and the difficulties of consciousness to perceive the outside world, to represent time, wave period in which past and present mingle indiscriminately.
The school's "new novel"
1. denies the realist tradition
2. ransformation agenda rérit romantic
3. undermines the unity of psychological characters
1. Nathalie Sarraute (1902 - 1999); The Planetarium
2. Claude Simon (1913 -?), La Route des Flandres
3. Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922 -?) Jealousy
4. Michel Butor (1926 -?) The Changing
