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An accessible and authoritative new history of French literature, written by a highly distinguished transatlantic group of scholars
This book provides an engaging, accessible, and exciting new history of French literature from the Renaissance through the twentieth century, from Rabelais and Marguerite de Navarre to Samuel Beckett and Assia Djebar. Christopher Prendergast, one of today's most distinguished authorities on French literature, has gathered a transatlantic group of more than thirty leading scholars who provide original essays on carefully selected writers, works, and topics that open a window onto key chapters of French literary history. The book begins in the sixteenth century with the formation of a modern national literary consciousness, and ends in the late twentieth century with the idea of the "national" coming increasingly into question as inherited meanings of "French" and "Frenchness" expand beyond the geographical limits of mainland France.
. Provides an exciting new account of French literary history from the Renaissance to the end of the twentieth century
. Features more than thirty original essays on key writers, works, and topics, written by a distinguished transatlantic group of scholars
. Includes an introduction and index
The contributors include Etienne Beaulieu, Christopher Braider, Peter Brooks, Mary Ann Caws, David Coward, Nicholas Cronk, Edwin M. Duval, Mary Gallagher, Raymond Geuss, Timothy Hampton, Nicholas Harrison, Katherine Ibbett, Michael Lucey, Susan Maslan, Eric Mechoulan, Hassan Melehy, Larry F. Norman, Nicholas Paige, Roger Pearson, Christopher Prendergast, Jean-Michel Rabate, Timothy J. Reiss, Sarah Rocheville, Pierre Saint-Amand, Clive Scott, Catriona Seth, Judith Sribnai, Joanna Stalnaker, Aleksandar Stevic, Kate E. Tunstall, Steven Ungar, and Wes Williams.
Contents
List of Contributors, ix
Introduction (1): Aims, Methods, Stories, 1
Christopher Prendergast
Introduction (2): The Frenchness of French Literature, 20
David Coward
Erasmus and the "First Renaissance" in France, 47
Edwin M. Duval
Rabelais and the Low Road to Modernity, 71
Raymond Geuss
Marguerite de Navarre: Renaissance Woman, 91
Wes Williams
Ronsard: Poet Laureate, Public Intellectual, Cultural Creator, 113
Timothy J. Reiss
Du Bellay and La deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, 137
Hassan Melehy
Montaigne: Philosophy before Philosophy, 155
Timothy Hampton
Molière, Theater, and Modernity, 171
Christopher Braider
Racine, Phèdre, and the French Classical Stage, 190
Nicholas Paige
Lafayette: La Princesse de Clèves and the Conversational Culture of Seventeenth-Century Fiction, 212
Katherine Ibbett
From Moralists to Libertines, 229
Eric Méchoulan
Travel Narratives in the Seventeenth Century: La Fontaine and Cyrano de Bergerac, 250
Judith Sribnai
The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, 269
Larry F. Norman
Voltaire's Candide: Lessons of Enlightenment and the Search for Truth, 291
Nicholas Cronk
Disclosures of the Boudoir: The Novel in the Eighteenth Century, 312
Pierre Saint-Amand
Women's Voices in Enlightenment France, 330
Catriona Seth
Comedy in the Age of Reason, 351
Susan Maslan
Diderot, Le neveu de Rameau, and the Figure of the Philosophe in Eighteenth-Century Paris, 371
Kate E. Tunstall
Rousseau's First Person, 393
Joanna Stalnaker
Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self-Invention: Stendhal and Balzac, 414
Aleksandar Stević
Hugo and Romantic Drama: The (K)night of the Red, 436
Sarah Rocheville and Etienne Beaulieu
Flaubert and Madame Bovary, 451
Peter Brooks
Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud: Poetry, Consciousness, and Modernity, 470
Clive Scott
Mallarmé and Poetry: Stitching the Random, 495
Roger Pearson
Becoming Proust in Time, 514
Michael Lucey
Céline/Malraux: Politics and the Novel in the 1930s, 534
Steven Ungar
Breton, Char, and Modern French Poetry, 554
Mary Ann Caws
Césaire: Poetry and Politics, 575
Mary Gallagher
Sartre's La Nausée and the Modern Novel, 595
Christopher Prendergast
Beckett's French Contexts, 615
Jean-Michel Rabaté
Djebar and the Birth of "Francophone" Literature, 634
Nicholas Harrison
Acknowledgments, 653
Index, 655
Description
An accessible and authoritative new history of French literature, written by a highly distinguished transatlantic group of scholars
This book provides an engaging, accessible, and exciting new history of French literature from the Renaissance through the twentieth century, from Rabelais and Marguerite de Navarre to Samuel Beckett and Assia Djebar. Christopher Prendergast, one of today's most distinguished authorities on French literature, has gathered a transatlantic group of more than thirty leading scholars who provide original essays on carefully selected writers, works, and topics that open a window onto key chapters of French literary history. The book begins in the sixteenth century with the formation of a modern national literary consciousness, and ends in the late twentieth century with the idea of the "national" coming increasingly into question as inherited meanings of "French" and "Frenchness" expand beyond the geographical limits of mainland France.
. Provides an exciting new account of French literary history from the Renaissance to the end of the twentieth century
. Features more than thirty original essays on key writers, works, and topics, written by a distinguished transatlantic group of scholars
. Includes an introduction and index
The contributors include Etienne Beaulieu, Christopher Braider, Peter Brooks, Mary Ann Caws, David Coward, Nicholas Cronk, Edwin M. Duval, Mary Gallagher, Raymond Geuss, Timothy Hampton, Nicholas Harrison, Katherine Ibbett, Michael Lucey, Susan Maslan, Eric Mechoulan, Hassan Melehy, Larry F. Norman, Nicholas Paige, Roger Pearson, Christopher Prendergast, Jean-Michel Rabate, Timothy J. Reiss, Sarah Rocheville, Pierre Saint-Amand, Clive Scott, Catriona Seth, Judith Sribnai, Joanna Stalnaker, Aleksandar Stevic, Kate E. Tunstall, Steven Ungar, and Wes Williams.
