French literature

French literature is, generally speaking, 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 by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature. As of 2006, French writers have been awarded more Nobel Prizes in Literature than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country. France itself ranks first in the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country.

French literature

The French language is a romance dialect derived from Vulgar Latin (non-standard 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 (for example: British and German Romanticism in the nineteenth century). French literary developments of the 19th and 20th centuries have had a particularly strong effect on modern world literature, including: symbolism, naturalism, the "roman-fleuves" of Balzac, Zola and Proust, surrealism, existentialism, and the "Theatre of the Absurd".

French imperialism and colonialism in the Americas, 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 Académie française and the Institut de France are important linguistic and artistic institutions in France, and French television features shows on writers and poets (the most watched show in French history was Apostrophes, 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 2006, French literary people have been awarded more Nobel Prizes in Literature than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country except writers in English, who have won twice as many Nobels as the French.

Literatures of other languages of France

Besides literature written in the French language, the literary culture of France may include literature written in other languages of France. In the medieval period many of the competing standard languages in various territories that later came to make up the territory of modern France each produced literary traditions, such as Anglo-Norman literature and Provençal literature.

Literature in the regional languages continued through to the 18th century, although increasingly eclipsed by the rise of the French language and influenced by the prevailing French literary model. Conscious language revival movements in the 19th century, such as Félibrige in Provence, coupled with wider literacy and regional presses, enabled a new flowering of literary production in the Norman language and others.

Frédéric Mistral, a poet in Occitan (1830–1914), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904.

Breton literature since the 1920s has been lively, despite the falling number of speakers. In 1925, Roparz Hemon founded the periodical Gwalarn which for 19 years tried to raise the language to the level of other great "international" languages by creating original works covering all genres and by proposing Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, Al Liamm took up the role of Gwalam. Other reviews came into existence and gave Breton a fairly large body of literature for a minority language. Among writers in Breton are Yann-Ber Kalloc'h, Anjela Duval and Per-Jakez Hélias.

Picard literature maintains a level of literary output, especially in theatrical writing. Walloon literature is bolstered by the more significant literary production in the language in Belgium.

Catalan literature and literature in the Basque language also benefit from the existence of a readership outside the borders of France.

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. 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)

2008 - J.M.G. Le Clézio

Compare the Evolution of Nobel Prizes by country.

French literary awards

Grand Prix de Littérature Policière - created in 1948, for crime and detective fiction.

Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française - created 1918.

Prix Décembre - 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."

Prix Renaudot - 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

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 - Gargantua, Pantagruel ("Gargantua and Pantagruel")

Michel de Montaigne - Les Essais

17th century

Madame de Lafayette - La Princesse de Clèves

18th century

Abbé Prévost - Manon Lescaut

Voltaire - Candide

Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse

Denis Diderot - Jacques le fataliste (Jacques the Fatalist)

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - Les Liaisons dangereuses

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)

Edmond and Jules de Goncourt - Germinie Lacerteux

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

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

Gaston Leroux - Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera)

Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night)

Colette - Gigi

Jean Genet - Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs

Albert Camus - L'Étranger (The Stranger)

Michel Butor - La Modification

Marguerite Yourcenar - Mémoires d'Hadrien

Alain Robbe-Grillet - Dans le labyrinthe

Georges Perec - La vie mode d'emploi

Robert Pinget - Passacaille

Jean-Paul Sartre - L´Âge de Raison (The Age of Reason)

Françoise Sagan - "Bonjour Tristesse", (Hello Sadness) 1954 awarded Prix de Critiques

Poetry

François Villon - Les Testaments

Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and other poets of "La Pléiade" - poems

La Fontaine - The Fables

Victor Hugo - Les Contemplations

Alphonse de Lamartine - Méditations poétiques

Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du mal

Paul Verlaine - Romances sans paroles

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")

Guillaume Apollinaire - Alcools

Francis Ponge

Raymond Queneau

Yves Bonnefoy - Words in Stone

Theatre

Pierre Corneille (1606–84)- Le Cid (1636), Horace

Molière - Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, Dom Juan, L'Avare (The Miser), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, L'Ecole des femmes (The School for Wives)

Jean Racine - Phèdre, Andromaque

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)

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 - The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros

Jean Genet - The Maids, The Balcony

Nonfiction

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, Les Confessions

François-René de Chateaubriand - Genius of Christianity, Memoirs from Beyond Grave

Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America

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

Nicolas Boileau

Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Hippolyte Taine

Jacques Lacan

Paul Bénichou

Roland Barthes

Jean-François Lyotard

Jacques Derrida

Julia Kristeva

Poetry

 French poetry

Parnassian

Romanticism

Symbolism (arts)

Surrealism

(source:wikipedia)