The Cambridge Introduction to French Literature (Cambridge Introductions to Literature)

Brian Nelson
Cambridge University Press, 6/11/2015
EAN 9780521715096, ISBN10: 0521715091

Paperback, 320 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm
Language: English

In this highly accessible introduction, Brian Nelson provides an overview of French literature - its themes and forms, traditions and transformations - from the Middle Ages to the present. Major writers, including Francophone authors writing from areas other than France, are discussed chronologically in the context of their times, to provide a sense of the development of the French literary tradition and the strengths of some of the most influential writers within it. Nelson offers close readings of exemplary passages from key works, presented in English translation and with the original French. The exploration of the work of important writers, including Villon, Racine, Molière, Voltaire, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Proust, Sartre and Beckett, highlights the richness and diversity of French literature.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Chronology
1. Villon
a dying man
2. Rabelais
the uses of laughter
3. Montaigne
self-portrait
4. Corneille
heroes and kings
5. Racine
in the labyrinth
6. Molière
new forms of comedy
7. La Fontaine
the power of fables/fables of power
8. Madame de Lafayette
the birth of the modern novel
9. Voltaire
the case for tolerance
10. Rousseau
man of feeling
11. Diderot
the enlightened sceptic
12. Laclos
dangerous liaisons
13. Stendhal
the pursuit of happiness
14. Balzac
'All is true'
15. Hugo
the divine stenographer
16. Baudelaire
the streets of Paris
17. Flaubert
the narrator vanishes
18. Zola
the poetry of the real
19. Huysmans
against nature
20. Mallarmé
the magic of words
21. Rimbaud
somebody else
22. Proust
the self, time and art
23. Jarry
the art of provocation
24. Apollinaire
impresario of the new
25. Breton and company
surrealism
26. Céline
night journey
27. Sartre
writing in the world
28. Camus
a moral voice
29. Beckett
filling the silence
30. French literature into the twenty-first century
Notes
Further reading.