For centuries Paris has been the home and frequently the subject matter of the most important novelists, poets, and playwrights in French literature, including Moliere, Voltaire, Balzac, Victor Hugo and Zola and Proust. Paris also was home to major expatriate writers from around the world, including Henry James, Ivan Turgenev, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Leopold Senghor, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, E. du Perron, Milan Kundera and Henry Miller. Few of the writers of Paris were actually born in Paris; they were attracted to the city first because of its university, then because it was the center of the French publishing industry, home of the major French newspapers and journals, of its important literary salons, and the company of the other writers, poets, and artists.
A literary Emperor in Lutetia (4th century)
Before Paris was Paris, while it was still Lutetia, a middle-sized provincial town of the Roman Empire, it was the home of an important writer and philosopher: the Roman Emperor Julian. The nephew of the Emperor Constantine, he arrived in Lutetia in February 358 at the age of twenty-five as commander of the Roman armies in Gaul. He was raised to the title of Emperor by his soldiers in 360, and thereafter spent his summers on military campaigns in different parts of the Empire, and his winters in Paris, in the Roman governor's palace on the Ile de la Cité where the Conciergerie is located today. His writings were mostly philosophical, largely criticism of the new religion of Christianity, which had recently appeared in Gaul, but he also wrote about nature, geography, and his philosophy of life. He was killed in battle against the Persians in 363 and was later given the posthumous title of Julian the Apostate by the Catholic Church.
The Middle Ages
The primary centers of literary and intellectual activity in Paris in the Middle Ages were the schools attached to the major monasteries, and, beginning in the 12th century, the University of Paris, which made Paris one of the great learning centers of Europe. One of the most important new schools was established on the left bank at the Abbey of Sainte-Genevieve; its teachers included the scholar Pierre Abelard (1079–1142), who taught five thousand students. Abelard was forced to leave the university because of the scandal caused by his romance with the nun Eloise. The schools trained not only clerics for the church, but also clerks who could read and write for the growing administration of the Kingdom. . In the 13th century there were between two and three thousand students living in the Left Bank, which became known as the Latin Quarter, because Latin was the language of instruction at the university. The number grew to about four thousand in the 14th century. In 1257, the chaplain of Louis IX, Robert de Sorbon, opened the most famous College of the university, which was later named after him, the Sorbonne.From the 13th to the 15th century, the University of Paris was the most important school of catholic theology in Western Europe, whose teachers included Roger Bacon from England, Saint Thomas Aquinas from Italy, and Saint Bonaventure from Germany. The teachings of the scholars, in Latin, were circulated widely, not only in France but throughout Europe. Erasmus also taught and wrote at the university, as did the religious reformer John Calvin, before he was forced to flee to Switzerland because his writings were considered heretical.
The first illuminated manuscripts began to be produced by Paris workshops in the 11th century. At first they were created by monks in the Abbeys, particularly Saint-Denis, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Notre-Dame and Saint-Germain-des-Prés; the first recognized artist of the period was the monk Ingelard, who painted miniatures at the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés between 1030 and 1060. As the Middle Ages progressed and the illuminated works became more valuable, they began to be produced by noted artists in workshops for the court and for the wealthy merchants. One notable example is the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, made by Jean Pucelle for the third wife of Charles IV between 1325 and 1328, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The first lnon-religious literary works, most romances, began to appear at about the same time, and were collected by the nobles and wealthy of Paris. The Roman de la Rose was the most famous of these works; four handmade copies made in Paris in the 1490s still exist.
16th Century – Rabelais and Ronsard
The most prominent Paris novelist of the period was François Rabelais (1494–1553) best known for his novel Gargantua and Pantagruel, which gave the word "Gargantuan" to the English language. He was admired by King Francis I, who protected him while he was alive, but after the King's death Rabelais and his works were condemned by the University of Paris and the Parlement of Paris, and he only survived because of the protection of high figures at court. He spent much of his life far from the city, but died in Paris.
The most prominent poet was Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585), from an aristocratic family of the Vendôme region. He settled in the Latin quarter, studied briefly at the College of Navarre, then became a Page to the Dauphin, the eldest son of Francis I. His first poem was published in 1547 by one of the many small publishing houses that had appeared around the university. He formed a literary circle with Joachim du Bellay and a group of other poets, and published a series of books of poetry on love and romance and a volume of erotic poems. The latter volume, Les Folastries, caused a scandal, and the Parlement of Paris ordered that all the copies be burned. Despite this (or because of this), Ronsard was a favorite of the Court during the reigns of Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. He gave poetry-writing lessons to Charles IX. However, by 1574 and the reign of Henry III, as the wars of religion began, his poetry was less in royal favor. He continued to write peacefully within the Collège de Boncourt, attached to the Collège de Navarre, until his last days.Demeude, Hugues, Paris dans les pas des grands homes, L'Express Thema, October–November 2015
Many of his poems had Paris settings; one poem from Sonnets pour Hélène, was set in the new Tuileries gardens, created by Catherine de' Medici: "Quand je pense à ce jour où, pres d'une fontaine, Dans le jardin royal ravi de ta douceur Amour te decouvrit les secrets de mon coeur; Et de combien de maux j'avais mon âme pleine..."
(When I think of that day when, near a fountain in the royal garden, enchanted by your gentleness. Love revealed to you the secrets of my heart, And how much pain had filled my soul...)Demeude, Hugues, Paris dans les pas des grands homes, L'Express Thema, October–November 2015. English translation of verse by David Siefkin
17th century – The Academie Française
Of the prominent French writers of the century, Moliere, the Marquise de Sévigné, La Rochefoucauld and Charles Perrault were all born in Paris. Pierre Corneille was from Normandy, Descartes from the Touraine, Jean Racine and La Fontaine from Champagne; they were all drawn to Paris by the publishing houses, theaters, and literary salons of the city.
The first literary academy, the Académie Française, was formally by Cardinal Richelieu on January 27, 1635, to honor but also to exert control over the literary figures of France . Writers knew that any published word critical of the King or court would lead their exile from Paris. This happened to one of the founding members of the academy, Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, who in 1660 wrote a scandalous satirical novel about life at the court of Louis XIV, which was circulated privately to amuse his friends. Although it was never published, he was banished from Paris to his chateau in Burgundy.
18th Century
Of the great French writers of the 18th century, the two most famous, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, spent most of their careers far from Paris, either in exile or under strict censorship. Early in his career Voltaire had been welcomed to the salon of Madame de Pompadour, and had been granted a government pension, which he did not touch for twelve years; the scholar and co-author of the first Encyclopedia, d'Alembert had been provided an apartment in the Louvre; and Rousseau had been feted and welcomed to the homes of the nobility. But under Louis XVI the royal attitudes changed. Voltaire very rarely visited Paris between 1760 and his death in 1784. Rousseau was allowed to return to Paris from exile only on the condition that he not publish any of his work. Nonetheless, the writing of both men was widely read, usually in clandestine editions, and shaped the ideas that led to the Revolution.
In the first half of the 18th century, eminent French writers were invited to become members of the Académie Française, but the academy in practice served largely to glorify the royal family and to keep writers under gentle control, rather to stimulate innovation in literature. Neither Rousseau nor Voltaire were chosen; only one of the great Philosophes of the enlightenment, Montesquieu, was elected a member. His 1748 book The Spirit of the Laws, proposing a separation of powers between the executive, legislature and courts, had an enormous impact on political thinking outside France, especially in England and the United States.
Despite censorship and restrictions, Paris was the leading book-publishing center of Europe, and provided books not only to France, but exported them to all the courts and aristocracies of Europe, where French was widely spoken. The plays of Voltaire, Pierre Beaumarchais and Pierre de Marivaux; the novels of Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons dangereuses), Antoine François Prévost (Manon Lescaut) and the poetry of Jacques Delille and Évariste de Parny were read in all the major cities of the continent, as far away as Saint Petersburg.
An important feature of the Paris literary world was the literary salon, where wives of the nobility invited their friends to their homes to hear readings of new books and to discuss literature, and, later in the century, politics. The first famous Paris salon of the 18th century was that of Madame de Lambert in her town house on rue Richelieu in 1710, followed by those of Madames de Tencin, Geoffrin, Du Deffand, d'Épinay, Helvétius, and Necker. The Revolution brought an abrupt end to the literary salons, as the aristocrats were executed or forced into exile, and some of the most promising writers, including the poet André Chenier, went to the guillotine.
The period of the French Revolution (1789–1799) was not a good time for French literature. The most important poet, André Chenier, was sent to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. His poems did not become well known until after the Revolution. The Marquis de Sade had been imprisoned even before the Revolution for his scandalous writing. He was released during the French Directory, but under Napoleon he was sent to an insane asylum, where he died.
Under Napoleon (1799–1815)