LITERARY FRANCE
French writers
Writers are among the most respected professions in France and, in the opinion of Finding France, if it wasn’t for this respect, the world wouldn’t have many of the great works of fiction it has today. In the early twentieth century, the French government allowed the publication of novels that other countries such as England and America were banning. Writer William Burroughs, for example, who greatly influenced the Beat writers, may never have been published had he not spent time in France where his famous novel The Naked Lunch was published. France’s contribution to the literary world is enormous, both in support of the art and in the great talents the country itself has produced. Below, Finding France gives you a list of France’s most influential writers and the great oeuvres they are known for.
François Rabelais (1494 – 1553) - one of the most famous Renaissance writers. Rabelais was a monk, physician and satirist. His comic writings on the two imaginary giants, ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel,’ mixed fantasy, satire, gravity and wisdom to express the Renaissance values of justice, respect for the individual, and a love of both physical and intellectual life.
Madame La Fayette (1634-93) – her novel La Princesse de Clèves (1678) established the tradition of the French novel.
Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95) - his witty, moral fables illustrated human vanity, dishonesty and cunning.
Jean Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1622-73) - his comedies explored the emotional conflicts, inner contradictions and inconsistencies of human nature.
Victor Hugo (1802-85) – his poetry ranged from simple lyrics to grandiose epics but, in the English speaking world, he is probably better known for his novel writing, most especially Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame..
Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) is one of France’s greatest poets whose work epitomised the transition from romanticism to symbolism. In his most famous work, Les Fleurs du Mal, he used a complex array of metaphors to convey his tormented existence on earth struggling between good and evil.
Paul Verlaine (1844-96) was a great poet. His first ‘masterpiece’ (as apposed to his first work) is called Romances Sans Paroles and was written in Mons prison where he was serving time for shooting (but not seriously injuring) his poet lover Arthur Rimbaud after Rimbaud tried to leave him. His poetry is renowned for its musicality and his reliance on suggestion rather than precise statement.
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91) had a brilliant academic career at the Collège de Charlesville when in 1870 he published his first book of poems and ran away to Paris. He soon returned to Charlesville where, while living a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle, he wrote one of his most popular works, Le Bateau Ivre, known for its bawdy language and daring imagery. In 1871, Paul Verlaine invited Rimbaud to Paris where they began an affair. In Brussels in 1873 when Rimbaud tried to end this relationship, Verlaine shot him, injuring Rimbaud’s wrist. Verlaine was sent to prison for attempted murder.
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98) was a French Symbolist poet who experimented with symbols and language to discover new forms of reality in visions of mysterious beauty in unknown worlds. His best-known works, L’Après-Midi d’un Faune, was illustrated by Manet.
Stendhal (1783-1842), was the pseudonym of Romantic novelist Henri Beyle. Stendhal excelled in analyzing the passions and moral codes of his characters. Two of his best known works are Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) and La Chartreuse de Parme.
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) wrote more than a hundred novels and stories, grouped under the title La Comédie Humaine. His ability to create memorable characters and to describe their world in precise detail made him a leader of the realist movement.
Gustave Flaubert’s (1821-80) greatest achievement was his famous novel, Madame Bovary. After it was published in 1857, the novel was condemned as a moral outrage and Flaubert was prosecuted, albeit unsuccessfully. Despite this, the novel continues to hold its place as a literary classic.
Guy de Maupassant (1850-93) wrote more than 300 stories that varied in length from a couple of pages to full-length novels. He was encouraged to write by Gustave Flaubert who was a friend of his mother’s. Maupassant is renowned for his use of minute and merciless observations. Some of his greatest works include: Boule de Suif, Le Horla and La Peur.
George Sand (1804-76) is the pseudonym of Amandie Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baronne Dudevant. At the age of 18, she married Baron Dudevant and had two children, but after nine years left him and went to Paris with her children to make her living through writing. George Sand scandalised bourgeois society with her unconventional ways and love affairs. She spent much of her life in the company of influential and distinguished men. Her first lover was Jules Sandeau from whose surname she took her pseudonym and with whom she wrote a novel Rose et Blanche. Among her several other lovers was musician Chopin and socialist Pierre Leroux.
Emile Zola (1840-1902) kept detailed journals of his observations of various professions and elements of society which he then transformed into novels such as L’Assommoir which looks at drunkenness and Germinal which is about a miner.
Alexander Dumas (1802-70) wrote many novels and stories that were immensely popular in his day. In the English speaking world, he is probably best known for writing the Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires).
Jules Verne (1828-1905) tapped into a new genre of fiction by exaggerating and often anticipating the possibilities and describing adventures carried out by means of science in exotic locations. His best-known work includes: Around the World in Eighty Days (Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt Mille Lieues Sous les Mers) and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Voyage au Centre de la Terre).
André Gide (1869-1957) won the 1947 Nobel prize for literature. He wrote more than fifty books and became known as the grand old man of French literature. Significant titles include: Les Faux Monnayeurs (translated into English as <The Counterfeiters), L’Immoraliste (The Immoralist) and La Porte Étroite (translated into English as Strait is the Gate).
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) – was a novelist who withdrew from society, immured himself in a sound-proof apartment and dedicated his life to introspection. He set himself the task of exploring the influence of subconscious thoughts on our characters. À la recherché du temps perdu (translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past) is one of his well-known masterpieces.
Edmond Rostand (1868-1918) – was a poet and dramatist who famously wrote Cyrano de Bergerac.
Anatole France is the pseudonym of Anatole François Thibault. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1921. His novels include: Le Livre de Mon Ami and Les Opinions de Jérôme Coignard.
Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) is considered the pioneer of the surrealist movement. He was originally called Apollinaris Kostrowitzky. He was born in Rome to Polish parents. He settled in Paris in 1900 where he lead the movement rejecting the traditions of poetry such as language and rhythm. One of his most famous works is Les Mamelles de Tirésias.
André Breton (1896-1966) was a poet, essayist and critique. In 1916 he joined the Dadaist group. He collaborated with Philippe Soupault to write Les Champs Magnétiques which was said to be an experiment in automatic writing. In 1922, he turned to Surrealism and published his first work in this genre in 1924, Le Poisson Soluble.
Albert Camus (1913-60) was a writer and philosopher. He is known for his Existentialist novel, l’Étranger (The Stranger) which explores his philosophy about the ‘absurd’. Camus was an active member of the French Resistance during World War II and co-edited a left-wing newspaper, Combat, with Jean-Paul Sartre. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel prize for literature.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was one of the most pre-eminent French Existentialist philosophers and writers. She worked alongside fellow Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she also shared a life long love affair. Her most famous and influential philosophical work, The Second Sex, heralded a feminist revolution and remains to this day a central text in the investigation of women's oppression and liberation. In addition to her philosophical pursuits, Beauvoir was also an accomplished literary figure and her novel, The Mandarins, received the prestigious Prix Goncourt award in 1954.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) was a writer and philosopher and is known for being the most prominent exponent of atheistic existentialism. His philosophies are outlined in L’Existentialisme est un humanisme and fully explored in L’Être et le néant (translated into English as Being and Nothingness). Sartre was also a novelist and he was awarded, but declined to accept, the 1964 Nobel prize for literature. One of his famous novels is Les Mains Sales.