French literature () generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by French citizens; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in the French language by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature.
For centuries, French literature has been an object of national pride for French people, and it has been one of the most influential aspects of the literature of Europe.French literature Discover FranceRomance languages and literatures: why study French ? University of Michigan France ranks first on the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country.
One of the first known examples of French literature is the Song of Roland, the first major work in a series of poems known as, "chansons de geste".
The French language is a Romance language derived from Latin and heavily influenced principally by Gaulish 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. 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 and the are important linguistic and artistic institutions in France, and French television features shows on writers and poets (one of the most watched shows on French television was Apostrophes,Roger Cohen, "The Media Business; Books Star on TV, but Only in France" , The New York Times, September 10, 1990. 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 2022, fifteen French authors have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature which is more than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country. 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."
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.National Literature Nobel Prize shares 1901–2009 by citizenship at the time of the award and by country of birth . From J. Schmidhuber (2010), Evolution of National Nobel Prize Shares in the 20th Century at arXiv:1009.2634v1 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) 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 2008 – J. M. G. Le Clézio 2014 – Patrick Modiano 2022 – Annie Ernaux
French literary awards – created in 1948, for crime and detective fiction. – created 1918. – 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." – 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) Marie de France – Lais various – Tristan et Iseult (Tristan and Iseult) anonymous – Lancelot-Graal (Lancelot-Grail), also known as the prose Lancelot or the Vulgate Cycle anonymous – Roman de Renart Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung – Roman de la Rose ("Romance of the Rose") Christine de Pizan – "The Book of the City of Ladies" 16th century François Rabelais – La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel ("Gargantua and Pantagruel") Hélisenne de Crenne – The Torments of Love Marguerite de Navarre – Heptaméron 17th century Honoré d'Urfé – L'Astrée Madame de Lafayette – La Princesse de Clèves François Fénelon – The Adventures of Telemachus Madame d'Aulnoy – Les Contes des Fées ("Fairy Tales", a fairy tale collection including The Blue Bird and The Story of Pretty Goldilocks), Contes Nouveaux ou Les Fées à la Mode ("New Tales, or Fairies in Fashion", a fairy tale collection including The White Cat) Charles Perrault – Histoires ou contes du temps passé ("Stories or Tales from Past Times, with Morals", a fairy tale collection which includes Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood) 18th century Antoine Galland – Les Mille et une nuits ("The Thousand and One Nights", a fairy tale collection, which includes Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves) Abbé Prévost – Manon Lescaut Voltaire – Candide, Zadig ou la Destinée Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (Julie or the New Heloise) Denis Diderot – Jacques le fataliste (Jacques the Fatalist) Montesquieu – Persian Letters Pierre Choderlos de Laclos – Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre – Paul et Virginie (Paul and Virginia) 19th century
Germaine de Staël – Corinne, or Italy 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 Paul Féval, père – Le Bossu (The Hunchback) Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary, Salammbô, L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education) Jules Verne – Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas), 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) Edmond and Jules de Goncourt – Germinie Lacerteux George Sand – La Petite Fadette Joris-Karl Huysmans – "À rebours" 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), L'Immoraliste (The Immoralist) Marcel Proust – À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) Albert Cohen François Mauriac Louis Aragon Blaise Cendrars Samuel Beckett – Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, How It Is André Breton – Nadja Gaston Leroux – Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera) Roger Martin du Gard – Les Thibault (The Thibaults) Louis-Ferdinand Céline – Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night) Colette – Gigi Jean Genet – Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs Julien Gracq – Le Rivage des Syrtes (The Opposing Shore) André Malraux – La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate), L'Espoir (Man's Hope) Albert Camus – L'Étranger (The Stranger or The Outsider) Michel Butor – La Modification Marguerite Yourcenar – Mémoires d'Hadrien Alain Robbe-Grillet – Dans le labyrinthe Georges Perec – La vie mode d'emploi Claude Simon – Les Géorgiques (The Georgics) Robert Pinget – Passacaille Jean-Paul Sartre – La Nausée (Nausea), L´Âge de Raison (The Age of Reason) Françoise Sagan – Bonjour Tristesse (Hello Sadness) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) Bernard Werber – Les Fourmis (Empire of the Ants) 21st century Michel Houellebecq – La carte et le territoire (The Map and the Territory) Pierre Lemaitre – The Great Swindle Léonora Miano – La Saison de l'ombre Kamel Daoud – Meursault, contre-enquête (The Meursault Investigation)
Poetry Middle Ages William IX (1071–1127) Jaufre Rudel (1113–70) Bernart de Ventadorn (1130–90) Bertran de Born (1140–1215) Marie de France (fl. 1160–1210) Rutebeuf (1245–85) Jean Froissart (1337–1405) François Villon (1431–63) – Le Testament La Pléiade Clément Marot (1496–1544) Maurice Scève (1505–1569) Joachim du Bellay (1522–60) Pontus de Tyard (1521–1605) Louise Labé (1524–1566) Pierre de Ronsard (1524–85) Baroque Agrippa d'Aubigné (1552–1630) – Les Tragiques Théophile de Viau (1590–1626) Classicism François de Malherbe (1555–1628) Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) – The Fables Nicolas Boileau (1636–1711) Romanticism André Chénier (1762–1794) Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) – Méditations poétiques Alfred de Vigny (1797–1863) Victor Hugo (1802–85) – Les Contemplations Gérard de Nerval (1808–55) – The Chimeras Alfred de Musset (1810–57) Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) – Les Fleurs du mal Parnassianism Théophile Gautier (1811–72) Leconte de Lisle (1818–94) Théodore de Banville (1823–91) Symbolism and Decadence Villiers de L'Isle-Adam (1838–89) Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–98) Paul Verlaine (1844–96) Comte de Lautréamont (1846–70) Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91) – Une Saison en Enfer Paul Valéry (1871–1945) Paul Fort (1872–1960) Modernism Charles Péguy (1873–1914) Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) – Alcools Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961) Saint-John Perse (1887–1975) – Vents Dada and Surrealism Paul Éluard (1895–1952) Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) André Breton (1896–1966) Louis Aragon (1897–1982) Henri Michaux (1899–1984) Robert Desnos (1900–45) René Char (1907–88) Postmodernism Jules Supervielle (1884–1960) Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) Francis Ponge (1899–1988) – Le Parti Pris des Choses Jacques Prévert (1900–77) Raymond Queneau (1903–76) Négritude Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) Birago Diop (1906–89) Aimé Césaire (1913–2008)
Theatre Adam de la Halle – Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion Anonymous - La Farce de maître Pathelin (ca. 1456–1460) Pierre Corneille (1606–84)- Le Cid (1636), Horace