This article is a general introduction to French literature. For detailed information on French literature in specific historic periods, see the separate historical articles in the template to the right.

French literature is, generally speaking, literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 written in the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, particularly by citizens of France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan 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 French language, by citizens of other nations such as Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, Senegal

Senegal

Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...

, Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

, Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature

Francophone literature

Francophone literature is literature written in the French language. Most often the term is misused to refer only to literature from francophone countries outside France, but this category includes French Literature, or Literature of France, that is literature written by French authors...

. 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

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 by country.

French literature has been for French people an object of national pride for centuries, as it is one of the most brilliant and most influential components of the Western literature

Western literature

Western literature refers to the literature written in the languages of Europe, including the ones belonging to the Indo-European language family as well as several geographically or historically related languages such as Basque, Hungarian, and so forth...

.

French literature

The French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 is a romance dialect

Romance languages

The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...

 derived from Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...

 (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

Vernacular literature

Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people".In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin...

 in western Europe and it became a key source of literary themes in the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

 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

Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...

 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

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

, naturalism

Naturalism (literature)

Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...

, the "roman-fleuves" of Balzac, Zola

Zola

Zola may refer to:People:* Zola , South African entertainer* Émile Zola , French novelist* Arlette Zola, Swiss singer* Calvin Zola , Congo DR footballer...

 and Proust, surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, existentialism

Existentialism

Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...

, and the "Theatre of the Absurd

Theatre of the Absurd

The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...

".

French imperialism

Imperialism

Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

 and colonialism

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

 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

Académie française

L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 and the Institut de France

Institut de France

The Institut de France is a French learned society, grouping five académies, the most famous of which is the Académie française.The institute, located in Paris, manages approximately 1,000 foundations, as well as museums and chateaux open for visit. It also awards prizes and subsidies, which...

 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 Apostrophe

Apostrophe

The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...

, 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 Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

s in Literature than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country. Writers in English (USA, UK, South Africa, Saint Lucia...) have won twice as many Nobels as the French. 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"

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 language

Standard language

A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...

s in various territories that later came to make up the territory of modern France each produced literary traditions, such as Anglo-Norman literature

Anglo-Norman literature

Anglo-Norman literature is literature composed in the Anglo-Norman language developed during the period 1066–1204 when the Duchy of Normandy and England were united in the Anglo-Norman realm.-Introduction:...

 and Provençal literature

Provençal literature

Occitan literature — still sometimes called Provençal literature — is a body of texts written in Occitan in what is nowadays the South of France. It originated in the poetry of the 11th- and 12th-century troubadours, and inspired the rise of vernacular literature throughout medieval...

.

Literature in the regional language

Regional language

A regional language is a language spoken in an area of a nation state, whether it be a small area, a federal state or province, or some wider area....

s 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

Language revival

Language revitalization, language revival or reversing language shift is the attempt by interested parties, including individuals, cultural or community groups, governments, or political authorities, to reverse the decline of a language. If the decline is severe, the language may be endangered,...

 movements in the 19th century, such as Félibrige

Félibrige

The Félibrige is a literary and cultural association founded by Frédéric Mistral and other Provençal writers to defend and promote Occitan language and literature...

 in Provence

Provence

Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...

, coupled with wider literacy and regional presses, enabled a new flowering of literary production in the Norman language

Norman language

Norman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. Norman can be classified as one of the northern Oïl languages along with Picard and Walloon...

 and others.

Frédéric Mistral

Frédéric Mistral

Frédéric Mistral was a French writer and lexicographer of the Occitan language. Mistral won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1904 and was a founding member of Félibrige and a member of l'Académie de Marseille...

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

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 in 1904.

Breton literature

Breton literature

Breton literature may refer to literature in the Breton language or the broader literary tradition of Brittany in the three other main languages of the area, namely, Latin, Gallo and French – all of which have had strong mutual linguistic and cultural influences.-Old and Middle Breton...

 since the 1920s has been lively, despite the falling number of speakers. In 1925, Roparz Hemon

Roparz Hemon

Roparz Hemon , officially named Louis-Paul Némo, was a Breton author and scholar of Breton expression.He was the author of numerous dictionaries, grammars, poems and short stories...

 founded the periodical Gwalarn

Gwalarn

Gwalarn was a Breton language literary journal. By extension, the term refers to the style of literature that it encouraged. 166 issues appeared between 1925 and May 1944....

 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

Pêr-Jakez Helias

Pêr-Jakez Helias, baptised Pierre-Jacques Hélias, nom de plume Pierre-Jakez Hélias was a Breton stage actor, journalist, author, poet, and writer for radio who worked in the French and Breton languages....

.

Picard

Picard language

Picard is a language closely related to French, and as such is one of the larger group of Romance languages. It is spoken in two regions in the far north of France – Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy – and in parts of the Belgian region of Wallonia, the district of Tournai and a part of...

 literature maintains a level of literary output, especially in theatrical writing. Walloon

Walloon language

Walloon is a Romance language which was spoken as a primary language in large portions of the Walloon Region of Belgium and some villages of Northern France until the middle of the 20th century. It belongs to the langue d'oïl language family, whose most prominent member is the French language...

 literature is bolstered by the more significant literary production in the language in Belgium.

Catalan literature

Catalan literature

Catalan literature is the name conventionally used to refer to literature written in the Catalan language. The Catalan literary tradition is extensive, starting in the Middle Ages....

 and literature in the Basque language

Basque language

Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...

 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

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

:

• 1901 - Sully Prudhomme
  Sully Prudhomme
  René François Armand Prudhomme was a French poet and essayist, winner of the first Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1901....
  
   (The first Nobel Prize in literature)
• 1904 - Frédéric Mistral
  Frédéric Mistral
  Frédéric Mistral was a French writer and lexicographer of the Occitan language. Mistral won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1904 and was a founding member of Félibrige and a member of l'Académie de Marseille...
  
   (wrote in Occitan)
• 1911 - Maurice Maeterlinck
  Maurice Maeterlinck
  Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
  
   (Belgian)
• 1915 - Romain Rolland
  Romain Rolland
  Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
  
  
• 1921 - Anatole France
  Anatole France
  Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
  
  
• 1927 - Henri Bergson
  Henri Bergson
  Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
  
  
• 1937 - Roger Martin du Gard
  Roger Martin du Gard
  Roger Martin du Gard was a French author and winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature. Trained as a paleographer and archivist, Martin du Gard brought to his works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for details...
  
  
• 1947 - André Gide
  André Gide
  André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
  
  
• 1952 - François Mauriac
  François Mauriac
  François Mauriac was a French author; member of the Académie française ; laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature . He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur .-Biography:...
  
  
• 1957 - Albert Camus
  Albert Camus
  Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
  
  
• 1960 - Saint-John Perse
  Saint-John Perse
  Saint-John Perse was a French poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry." He was also a major French diplomat from 1914 to 1940, after which he lived primarily in the USA until 1967.-Biography:Alexis Leger was...
  
  
• 1964 - Jean-Paul Sartre
  Jean-Paul Sartre
  Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
  
   (declined the prize)
• 1969 - Samuel Beckett
  Samuel Beckett
  Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
  
   (Irish, wrote in English and French)
• 1985 - Claude Simon
  Claude Simon
  Claude Simon was a French novelist and the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and died in Paris, France....
  
  
• 2000 - Gao Xingjian
  Gao Xingjian
  Gao Xingjian is a Chinese-born novelist, playwright, critic, and painter. An émigré to France since 1987, Gao was granted French citizenship in 1997...
  
   (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
  Grand Prix de Littérature Policière
  The Grand Prix de Littérature Policière is a French literary prize founded in 1948 by author and literary critic Maurice-Bernard Endrèbe. It is the most prestigious award for crime and detective fiction in France...
  
   - created in 1948, for crime and detective fiction.
• Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française
  Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française
  Le Grand Prix du Roman is a French literary award, created in 1918, and given each year by the Académie française. Along with the Prix Goncourt, it is one of the oldest and most prestigious literary awards in France...
  
   - created 1918.
• Prix Décembre
  Prix Décembre
  The Prix Décembre, originally known as the Prix Novembre, is one of France's premier literary awards. Its winners are generally far more radical choices than the more staid and conservative Prix Goncourt...
  
   - created in 1989.
• Prix Femina
  Prix Femina
  The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine La Vie heureuse . The prize is decided each year by an exclusively female jury, although the authors of the winning works do not have to be women...
  
   - 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
  Prix Goncourt
  The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
  
   - created 1903, given to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year".
• Prix Goncourt des Lycéens
  Prix Goncourt des Lycéens
  The Prix Goncourt des Lycéens was created in 1987 as a sort of younger sibling of the Prix Goncourt, a prize for French language literature. The ten members of the Académie Goncourt select twelve literary works as nominees...
  
   - created in 1987.
• Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud
  Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud
  The Prix littéraire Valery Larbaud is a French literary prize created in 1967, ten years after writer Valery Larbaud's death, by L'Association Internationale des Amis de Valery Larbaud, an organization dedicated to the promotion of his works. The prize is awarded to writers of books the jurists...
  
   - created in 1957.
• Prix Médicis
  Prix Médicis
  The Prix Médicis is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by Gala Barbisan and Jean-Pierre Giraudoux. It is awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match his talent."...
  
   - created 1958, awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match their talent."
• Prix Renaudot
  Prix Renaudot
  The Prix Théophraste-Renaudot or Prix Renaudot is a French literary award which was created in 1926 by ten art critics awaiting the results of the deliberation of the jury of the Prix Goncourt....
  
   - created in 1926.
• Prix Tour-Apollo Award
  Prix Tour-Apollo Award
  The Prix Tour-Apollo was an annual French award given to the best science fiction novel published in French during the preceding year. Awards were given in 1972-1990, inclusive, and usually went to a work first published in English in the US or UK.-Winners:...
  
   - 1972-1990, given to the best science fiction novel published in French during the preceding year.
• Prix des Deux Magots
  Prix des Deux Magots
  The Prix des Deux Magots is a major French literary prize. It is presented to new works, and is generally awarded to works that are more off-beat and less conventional than those that receive the more mainstream Prix Goncourt....
  
   - created in 1933.

Fiction

• Middle Ages
  Medieval French literature
  Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, literature written in Oïl languages during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century....
  
  
  • anonymous - La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland
    The Song of Roland
    The Song of Roland is the oldest surviving major work of French literature. It exists in various manuscript versions which testify to its enormous and enduring popularity in the 12th to 14th centuries...
    
    )
  • Chrétien de Troyes
    Chrétien de Troyes
    Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...
    
     - Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain, the Knight of the Lion
    Yvain, the Knight of the Lion
    Yvain, the Knight with the Lion is a romance by Chrétien de Troyes. It was probably written in the 1170s simultaneously with Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, and includes several references to the action in that poem...
    
    ), Lancelot, ou le Chevalier à la charrette (Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart
    Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart
    Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart is an Old French poem by Chrétien de Troyes. Chrétien probably composed the work at the same time as or slightly before writing Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, which refers to the action in Lancelot a number of times...
    
    )
  • various - Tristan et Iseult (Tristan and Iseult
    Tristan and Iseult
    The legend of Tristan and Iseult is an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult...
    
    )
  • anonymous - Lancelot-Graal (Lancelot-Grail
    Lancelot-Grail
    The Lancelot–Grail, also known as the Prose Lancelot, the Vulgate Cycle, or the Pseudo-Map Cycle, is a major source of Arthurian legend written in French. It is a series of five prose volumes that tell the story of the quest for the Holy Grail and the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere...
    
    ), also known as the prose Lancelot or the Vulgate Cycle
  • Guillaume de Lorris
    Guillaume de Lorris
    Guillaume de Lorris was a French scholar and poet from Lorris. He was the author of the first section of the Roman de la Rose. Little is known about him, other than that he wrote the earlier section of the poem around 1230, and that the work was completed forty years later by Jean de Meun.-...
    
     and Jean de Meung - Roman de la Rose
    Roman de la Rose
    The Roman de la rose, , is a medieval French poem styled as an allegorical dream vision. It is a notable instance of courtly literature. The work's stated purpose is to both entertain and to teach others about the Art of Love. At various times in the poem, the "Rose" of the title is seen as the...
    
     ("Book of the Rose")
• 16th century
  French Renaissance literature
  For more information on historical developments in this period see: Renaissance, History of France, and Early Modern France.For information on French art and music of the period, see French Renaissance....
  
  
  • François Rabelais
    François Rabelais
    François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
    
     - Gargantua, Pantagruel ("Gargantua and Pantagruel
    Gargantua and Pantagruel
    The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father and his son and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein...
    
    ")
  • Michel de Montaigne
    Michel de Montaigne
    Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
    
     - Les Essais ("Essais")
• 17th century
  French literature of the 17th century
  17th-century French literature was written throughout the Grand Siècle of France, spanning the reigns of Henry IV of France, the Regency of Marie de Medici, Louis XIII of France, the Regency of Anne of Austria and the reign of Louis XIV of France...
  
  
  • Madame de Lafayette - La Princesse de Clèves
    La Princesse de Clèves
    La Princesse de Clèves is a French novel which was published anonymously in March 1678. It is regarded by many as the beginning of the modern tradition of the psychological novel, and as a great classic work. Its author is generally held to be Madame de La Fayette.The action takes place between...
    
    
• 18th century
  French literature of the 18th century
  18th-century French literature is French literature written between 1715, the year of the death of King Louis XIV of France, and 1798, the year of the coup d’État of Bonaparte which brought the Consulate to power, concluded the French Revolution, and began the modern era of French history...
  
  
  • Abbé Prévost - Manon Lescaut
    Manon Lescaut
    Manon Lescaut is a short novel by French author Abbé Prévost. Published in 1731, it is the seventh and final volume of Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité . It was controversial in its time and was banned in France upon publication...
    
    
  • Voltaire
    Voltaire
    François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
    
     - Candide
    Candide
    Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
    
    
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
    
     - Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse
    Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse
    Julie, or the New Héloïse is an epistolary novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1761 by Marc-Michel Rey in . The original edition was entitled Lettres de deux amans habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes .The novel’s subtitle points to the history of Héloïse d’Argenteuil and Pierre...
    
    
  • Denis Diderot
    Denis Diderot
    Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
    
     - Jacques le fataliste (Jacques the Fatalist)
  • Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
    Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
    Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos was a French novelist, official and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses ....
    
     - Les Liaisons dangereuses
    Les Liaisons dangereuses
    Les Liaisons dangereuses is a French epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos, first published in four volumes by Durand Neveu from March 23, 1782....
    
    
• 19th century
  French literature of the 19th century
  19th-century French literature concerns the developments in French literature during a dynamic period in French history that saw the rise of Democracy and the fitful end of Monarchy and Empire...
  
  
  • François-René de Chateaubriand
    François-René de Chateaubriand
    François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...
    
     - Atala, René
  • Benjamin Constant
    Benjamin Constant
    Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born French nobleman, thinker, writer and politician.-Biography:...
    
     - Adolphe
    Adolphe
    Adolphe is a classic French novel by Benjamin Constant, first published in 1816. It tells the story of an alienated young man, Adolphe, who falls in love with an older woman, Ellénore, the Polish mistress of the Comte de P***. Their illicit relationship serves to isolate them from their friends and...
    
    
  • Stendhal
    Stendhal
    Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
    
     - Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black
    The Red and the Black
    Le Rouge et le Noir , 1830, by Stendhal, is a historical psychological novel in two volumes, chronicling a provincial young man’s attempts to socially rise beyond his plebeian upbringing with a combination of talent and hard work, deception and hypocrisy — yet who ultimately allows his passions to...
    
    ), La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma
    The Charterhouse of Parma
    The Charterhouse of Parma is a novel published in 1839 by Stendhal.-Plot summary:The Charterhouse of Parma tells the story of the young Italian nobleman Fabrice del Dongo and his adventures from his birth in 1798 to his death...
    
    )
  • Honoré de Balzac
    Honoré de Balzac
    Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
    
     - La Comédie humaine
    La Comédie humaine
    La Comédie humaine is the title of Honoré de Balzac's multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy .-Overview:...
    
     ("The Human Comedy", a novel cycle which includes Père Goriot, Lost Illusions, and Eugénie Grandet
    Eugénie Grandet
    Eugénie Grandet is an 1833 novel by Honoré de Balzac about miserliness, and how it is bequeathed from the father to the daughter, Eugénie, through her unsatisfying love attachment with her cousin. As is usual with Balzac, all the characters in the novel are fully realized...
    
    )
  • Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas's most popular work. He completed the work in 1844...
    
    , The Three Musketeers
    The Three Musketeers
    The Three Musketeers is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, first serialized in March–July 1844. Set in the 17th century, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard...
    
    
  • Victor Hugo
    Victor Hugo
    Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
    
     - Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame
    The Hunchback of Notre Dame
    The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a novel by Victor Hugo published in 1831. The French title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on which the story is centered.-Background:...
    
    ), Les Misérables
    Les Misérables
    Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...
    
    
  • Théophile Gautier
    Théophile Gautier
    Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....
    
     - Mademoiselle de Maupin
  • Gustave Flaubert
    Gustave Flaubert
    Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...
    
     - Madame Bovary
    Madame Bovary
    Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...
    
    , Salammbô
    Salammbô (novel)
    Salammbô is a historical novel by Gustave Flaubert. It is set in Carthage during the third century BCE, immediately before and during the Mercenary Revolt which took place shortly after the First Punic War. Flaubert's main source was Book I of Polybius's Histories...
    
    , L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education
    Sentimental Education
    Sentimental Education was Gustave Flaubert's last novel published during his lifetime, and is considered one of the most influential novels of the 19th century, being praised by contemporaries George Sand, Emile Zola, and Henry James.-Plot introduction:The novel describes the life of a young man ...
    
    )
  • Jules Verne
    Jules Verne
    Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
    
     - Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
    Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
    Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1870. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax...
    
    ), 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
    Around the World in Eighty Days
    Around the World in Eighty Days is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in 1873. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager set by his friends at the...
    
    )
  • Edmond
    Edmond de Goncourt
    Edmond de Goncourt , born Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and the founder of the Académie Goncourt.-Biography:...
    
     and Jules de Goncourt
    Jules de Goncourt
    Jules de Goncourt , born Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, who published books together with his brother Edmond.- Works :With Edmond de Goncourt:* Sœur Philomène...
    
     - Germinie Lacerteux
  • Guy de Maupassant
    Guy de Maupassant
    Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....
    
     - Bel Ami
    Bel Ami
    Bel Ami is French author Guy de Maupassant's second novel, published in 1885. An English translation titled Bel ami, or, The history of a scoundrel: a novel appeared in 1903....
    
    , La Parure (The Necklace
    The Necklace
    The Necklace or The Diamond Necklace is a short story by Guy de Maupassant, first published in 1884 in the French newspaper Le Gaulois. The story has become one of Maupassant's popular works and is well known for its ending. It is also the inspiration for Henry James's short story, "Paste"...
    
    ), other short stories
  • Émile Zola
    Émile Zola
    Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
    
     - Thérèse Raquin
    Thérèse Raquin
    Thérèse Raquin is the title of a novel and a play by the French writer Émile Zola. The novel was originally published in serial format in the journal L'Artiste and in book format in December of the same year.-Plot introduction:Thérèse Raquin tells the story of a young woman, unhappily married to...
    
    , Les Rougon-Macquart
    Les Rougon-Macquart
    Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire , it follows the life of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire and is an example of French...
    
     (a novel cycle which includes L'Assommoir
    L'Assommoir
    L'Assommoir is the seventh novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Usually considered one of Zola's masterpieces, the novel—a harsh and uncompromising study of alcoholism and poverty in the working-class districts of Paris—was a huge commercial success and established...
    
    , Nana
    Nana (novel)
    Nana is a novel by the French naturalist author Émile Zola. Completed in 1880, Nana is the ninth installment in the 20-volume Les Rougon-Macquart series, the object of which was to tell "The Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire", the subtitle of the series.-Origins:A year...
    
     and Germinal)
• 20th century
  French literature of the 20th century
  20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts...
  
  
  • André Gide
    André Gide
    André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
    
     - Les Faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters
    The Counterfeiters (novel)
    The Counterfeiters is a 1925 novel by French author André Gide, first published in Nouvelle Revue Française...
    
    ), The Immoralist
    The Immoralist
    The Immoralist is a novel by André Gide, published in France in 1902. When it was first published, it was considered shocking. What some see as a story of dereliction, others see as a tale of introspection and self-discovery.-Plot:...
    
    
  • Marcel Proust
    Marcel Proust
    Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
    
     - À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time
    In Search of Lost Time
    In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely...
    
    )
  • André Breton
    André Breton
    André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
    
     - Nadja
    Nadja (novel)
    One of the iconic works of the French surrealist movement, Nadja is the second novel published by André Breton, in 1928. It starts with the question "Who am I?"...
    
    
  • Gaston Leroux
    Gaston Leroux
    Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera , which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon...
    
     - Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera
    The Phantom of the Opera
    Le Fantôme de l'Opéra is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialisation in "Le Gaulois" from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910...
    
    )
  • Louis-Ferdinand Céline
    Louis-Ferdinand Céline
    Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...
    
     - Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night
    Journey to the End of the Night
    Journey to the End of Night is the first novel of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work describes antihero Ferdinand Bardamu....
    
    )
  • Colette
    Colette
    Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...
    
     - Gigi
    Gigi
    Gigi is a 1944 novella by French writer Colette. The plot focuses on a young Parisian girl being groomed for a career as a courtesan and her relationship with the wealthy cultured man named Gaston who falls in love with her and eventually marries her....
    
    
  • Jean Genet
    Jean Genet
    Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
    
     - Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs
    Our Lady of the Flowers
    Our Lady of the Flowers is the debut novel of French writer Jean Genet, first published in 1943. The free-flowing, poetic novel is a largely autobiographical account of a man's journey through the Parisian underworld...
    
    
  • Albert Camus
    Albert Camus
    Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
    
     - L'Étranger (The Stranger
    The Stranger (novel)
    The Stranger or The Outsider is a novel by Albert Camus published in 1942. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of existentialism, though Camus did not consider himself an existentialist; in fact, its content explores various philosophical schools of thought, including absurdism, as...
    
    )
  • Michel Butor
    Michel Butor
    -Life and work:Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Salonika, the United States, and Geneva...
    
     - La Modification
    La Modification
    Second Thoughts is a novel by Michel Butor. It is the author's most famous work.-Plot summary:The plot is quite straightforward: a middle-aged man takes the train in Paris to visit his lover, Cécile - whom he has not informed of his arrival - in Rome. They have met in secret once a month for the...
    
    
  • Marguerite Yourcenar
    Marguerite Yourcenar
    Marguerite Yourcenar was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist. Winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, she was the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980, and the seventeenth person to occupy Seat 3.-Biography:Yourcenar was born Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie...
    
     - Mémoires d'Hadrien
  • Alain Robbe-Grillet
    Alain Robbe-Grillet
    Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
    
     - Dans le labyrinthe
  • Georges Perec
    Georges Perec
    Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group...
    
     - La vie mode d'emploi
    Life: A User's Manual
    Life A User's Manual is Georges Perec's most famous novel, published in 1978, first translated into English by David Bellos in 1987. Its title page describes it as "novels", in the plural, the reasons for which become apparent on reading...
    
    
  • Robert Pinget
    Robert Pinget
    Robert Pinget was a major avant-garde French writer, born in Switzerland, who wrote several novels and other prose pieces that drew comparison to Beckett and other major Modernist writers...
    
     - Passacaille
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
    
     - L´Âge de Raison (The Age of Reason
    The Age of Reason (Sartre)
    L'âge de raison is a 1945 novel by Jean Paul Sartre. It is the first part of the trilogy Les chemins de la liberté . The novel, set in the bohemian Paris of the late 1930s, focuses on three days in the life of a philosophy teacher named Mathieu who is seeking money to pay for an abortion for his...
    
    )
  • Françoise Sagan
    Françoise Sagan
    Françoise Sagan – real name Françoise Quoirez – was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Hailed as "a charming little monster" by François Mauriac on the front page of Le Figaro, Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois...
    
     - "Bonjour Tristesse", (Hello Sadness) 1954 awarded Prix de Critiques

Poetry

• François Villon
  François Villon
  François Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...
  
   - Les Testaments
• Pierre de Ronsard
  Pierre de Ronsard
  Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...
  
  , Joachim du Bellay
  Joachim du Bellay
  Joachim du Bellay was a French poet, critic, and a member of the Pléiade.-Biography:He was born at the Château of La Turmelière, not far from Liré, near Angers, being the son of Jean du Bellay, Lord of Gonnor, first cousin of the cardinal Jean du Bellay and of Guillaume du Bellay.Both his parents...
  
   and other poets of "La Pléiade
  La Pléiade
  The Pléiade is the name given to a group of 16th-century French Renaissance poets whose principal members were Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf. The name was a reference to another literary group, the original Alexandrian Pleiad of seven Alexandrian poets and...
  
  " - poems
• La Fontaine - The Fables
• Victor Hugo
  Victor Hugo
  Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
  
   - Les Contemplations
• Alphonse de Lamartine
  Alphonse de Lamartine
  Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...
  
   - Méditations poétiques
• Charles Baudelaire
  Charles Baudelaire
  Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
  
   - Les Fleurs du mal
  Les Fleurs du mal
  Les Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 , it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements...
  
  
• Paul Verlaine
  Paul Verlaine
  Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
  
   - Romances sans paroles
• Arthur Rimbaud
  Arthur Rimbaud
  Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
  
   - Une Saison en Enfer
• Stéphane Mallarmé
  Stéphane Mallarmé
  Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
  
   - Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard ("A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance")
• Guillaume Apollinaire
  Guillaume Apollinaire
  Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
  
   - Alcools
• Francis Ponge
  Francis Ponge
  Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. In many ways, he combined the two — essay and poem — into a single art form.-Life:...
  
  
• Raymond Queneau
  Raymond Queneau
  Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
  
  
• Yves Bonnefoy
  Yves Bonnefoy
  Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....
  
   - Words in Stone
• Alain Tasso
  Alain Tasso
  Alain Tasso is a Franco-Lebanese poet, painter and essayist, born in Beirut on July 22, 1962.Autodidact, his literary intensive profuse work is received by much critical attention.- Biography :...
  
  

Theatre

• Pierre Corneille
  Pierre Corneille
  Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...
  
   (1606–84)- Le Cid
  Le Cid
  Le Cid is a tragicomedy written by Pierre Corneille and published in 1636. It is based on the legend of El Cid.The play followed Corneille's first true tragedy, Médée, produced in 1635. An enormous popular success, Corneille's Le Cid was the subject of a heated polemic over the norms of dramatic...
  
   (1636), Horace
• Molière
  Molière
  Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
  
   - Tartuffe
  Tartuffe
  Tartuffe is a comedy by Molière. It is one of his most famous plays.-History:Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664...
  
  , Le Misanthrope
  Le Misanthrope
  The Misanthrope is a 17th-century comedy of manners in verse written by Molière. It was first performed on 4 June 1666 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, Paris by the King's Players....
  
  , Dom Juan
  Dom Juan
  Dom Juan or The Feast with the Statue is a French play by Molière, based on the legend of Don Juan. Molière's characters Dom Juan and Sganarelle are the French counterparts to the Spanish Don Juan and Catalinón, characters who would later become familiar to opera goers as Don Giovanni and Leporello...
  
  , L'Avare (The Miser
  The Miser
  L'Avare is a 1668 five-act satirical comedy by French playwright Molière. Its title is usually translated as The Miser when the play is performed in English....
  
  ), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
  Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
  Le Bourgeois gentilhomme is a five-act comédie-ballet—a play intermingled with music, dance and singing—by Molière, first presented on 14 October 1670 before the court of Louis XIV at the Château of Chambord by Molière's troupe of actors...
  
  , L'Ecole des femmes (The School for Wives
  The School for Wives
  The School for Wives is a theatrical comedy written by the seventeenth century French playwright Molière and considered by some critics to be one of his finest achievements. It was first staged at the Palais Royal theatre on 26 December 1662 for the brother of the King...
  
  )
• Jean Racine
  Jean Racine
  Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...
  
   - Phèdre
  Phèdre
  Phèdre is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677.-Composition and premiere:...
  
  , Andromaque
  Andromaque
  Andromaque is a tragedy in five acts by the French playwright Jean Racine written in alexandrine verse. It was first performed on 17 November 1667 before the court of Louis XIV in the Louvre in the private chambers of the Queen, Marie Thérèse, by the royal company of actors, called "les Grands...
  
  
• 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
  The Marriage of Figaro (play)
  The Marriage of Figaro ) is a comedy in five acts, written in 1778 by Pierre Beaumarchais. This play is the second installment in the Figaro Trilogy, preceded by The Barber of Seville and followed by The Guilty Mother. The Barber begins the story with a simple love triangle in which the Count has...
  
  )
• Edmond Rostand
  Edmond Rostand
  Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century...
  
   - Cyrano de Bergerac
  Cyrano de Bergerac (play)
  Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. Although there was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, the play bears very scant resemblance to his life....
  
  
• Jean Giraudoux
  Jean Giraudoux
  Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...
  
   - The Trojan War Will Not Take Place
  The Trojan war will not take place
  The Trojan War Will Not Take Place is a play written in 1935 by French dramatist Jean Giraudoux. In 1955 it was translated into English by Christopher Fry...
  
  
• Jean Anouilh
  Jean Anouilh
  Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's...
  
   - Becket
  Becket
  Becket or The Honor of God is a play written in French by Jean Anouilh. It is a depiction of the conflict between Thomas Becket and King Henry II of England leading to Becket's murder in 1170. It contains many historical inaccuracies, which the author acknowledged.-Background:Anouilh's...
  
  , Antigone
  Antigone (Anouilh play)
  Jean Anouilh's play Antigone is a tragedy inspired by Greek mythology and the play of the same name from the fifth century B.C...
  
  
• Jean-Paul Sartre
  Jean-Paul Sartre
  Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
  
   - No Exit
  No Exit
  No Exit is a 1944 existentialist French play by Jean-Paul Sartre. The original French title is Huis Clos, the French equivalent of the legal term in camera, referring to a private discussion behind closed doors; English translations have also been performed under the titles In Camera, No Way Out...
  
  
• Eugène Ionesco
  Eugène Ionesco
  Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
  
   - The Bald Soprano
  The Bald Soprano
  La Cantatrice Chauve — translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna — is the first play written by Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. Nicolas Bataille directed the premiere on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, Paris...
  
  , Rhinoceros
  Rhinoceros (play)
  Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd...
  
  
• Jean Genet
  Jean Genet
  Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
  
   - The Maids
  The Maids
  The Maids is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. It was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris in a production that opened on 17 April 1947, which Louis Jouvet directed...
  
  , The Balcony
  The Balcony
  The Balcony is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Since Peter Zadek directed its first production at the Arts Theatre Club in London in 1957, the play has attracted many of the greatest directors of the 20th century, including Peter Brook, Erwin Piscator, Roger Blin, Giorgio Strehler, and...
  
  

Nonfiction

• Michel de Montaigne
  Michel de Montaigne
  Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
  
   - The Essays
  Essays (Montaigne)
  Essays is the title given to a collection of 107 essays written by Michel de Montaigne that was first published in 1580. Montaigne essentially invented the literary form of essay, a short subjective treatment of a given topic, of which the book contains a large number...
  
  
• Blaise Pascal
  Blaise Pascal
  Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...
  
   - Les Pensées
  Pensées
  The Pensées represented a defense of the Christian religion by Blaise Pascal, the renowned 17th century philosopher and mathematician. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensées was in many ways his life's work. "Pascal's Wager" is found here...
  
  
• François de La Rochefoucauld
  François de La Rochefoucauld (writer)
  François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. The view of human conduct his writings describe has been summed up by the words "everything is reducible to the motive of self-interest", though the term "gently cynical" has also been applied...
  
   - The Maxims
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
  
   - Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
  Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
  A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences , more commonly known as Discourse on the Sciences and Arts , is an essay by Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau which argued that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality...
  
  , The Social Contract
  Social Contract (Rousseau)
  Of The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is the book in which Rousseau theorized about the best way in which to set up a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society which he had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality...
  
  , Les Confessions
• François-René de Chateaubriand
  François-René de Chateaubriand
  François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...
  
   - Genius of Christianity
  Génie du christianisme
  Génie du christianisme is a work by the French author François-René de Chateaubriand, written during his exile in England in the 1790s as a defence of the Catholic Christian religion, then under attack during the French Revolution...
  
  , Memoirs from Beyond Grave
  Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe
  Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe - literally "Memoirs from Beyond the Grave" - is an autobiography in 42 volumes by François-René de Chateaubriand, published posthumously in 1848...
  
  
• Alexis de Tocqueville
  Alexis de Tocqueville
  Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
  
   - Democracy in America
  Democracy in America
  De la démocratie en Amérique is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville. A "literal" translation of its title is Of Democracy in America, but the usual translation of the title is simply Democracy in America...
  
  
• Jules Michelet
  Jules Michelet
  Jules Michelet was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.-Early life:His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press...
  
   - Histoire de France, La Sorcière
• Albert Camus
  Albert Camus
  Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
  
   - The Myth of Sisyphus
  The Myth of Sisyphus
  The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus. It comprises about 120 pages and was published originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe de Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin O'Brien followed in 1955....
  
  
• Jean-Paul Sartre
  Jean-Paul Sartre
  Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
  
   - Existentialism is a Humanism, Being and Nothingness

Literary criticism

• Nicolas Boileau
• Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
• Hippolyte Taine
  Hippolyte Taine
  Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was a French critic and historian. He was the chief theoretical influence of French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism, and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate...
  
  
• Jacques Lacan
  Jacques Lacan
  Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
  
  
• Maurice Blanchot
  Maurice Blanchot
  Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...
  
  
• Paul Bénichou
  Paul Bénichou
  Paul Bénichou, was a French writer, intellectual, critic, and literary historian.Bénichou first achieved prominence in 1948 with Morales du grand siècle, his work on the social context of the French seventeenth-century classics...
  
  
• Roland Barthes
  Roland Barthes
  Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
  
  
• Jean-François Lyotard
  Jean-François Lyotard
  Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition...
  
  
• Jacques Derrida
  Jacques Derrida
  Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
  
  
• Julia Kristeva
  Julia Kristeva
  Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...
  
  

Poetry

• Parnassian
• Romanticism
  Romanticism
  Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
  
  
• Symbolism (arts)
  Symbolism (arts)
  Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
  
  
• Surrealism
  Surrealism
  Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
  
  

See also

• French culture
• French art
  French art
  French art consists of the visual and plastic arts originating from the geographical area of France...
  
  
• List of French language authors
• List of French language poets
• French science fiction
  French science fiction
  French science fiction is a substantial genre of French literature. It remains an active and productive genre which has evolved in conjunction with anglophone science fiction and other French and international literature....
  
  
• Fantastique
  Fantastique
  The Fantastique is a French term for a literary and cinematic genre that overlaps with science fiction, horror and fantasy.The fantastique is a substantial genre within French literature...
  
  

External links

• French Language & Literature Resources at Yale University
• Littérature francophone virtuelle (ClicNet) online texts
• Athena Textes Français online texts
• The Marandet Collection of French Plays
• ABU online texts
• French Literature at Digital Librarian
• 
  French literature on Commons
• Jean-Michel Maulpoix & Co.: Modern and contemporary French literature site maintained by prominent French poet Jean-Michel Maulpoix
  Jean-Michel Maulpoix
  Jean-Michel Maulpoix was born on November 11, 1952 in Montbéliard, Doubs.The author of more than twenty volumes of French poetry and of several volumes of essays and criticism, he teaches modern French literature at the University Paris X Nanterre and is the director of the quarterly literary...