It is perhaps in the theatre that the value of current insights into the ludic and performative nature of the human condition can most easily be tested. At the close of the century, the most modern of creative writers in this respect remained Irish-born Samuel Beckett, standing at the intersection of Irish and French cultural traditions. Although Beckett died in 1989, more than a decade before the close of the 20th century, his importance, influence, and presence had never been greater. Shifting in its latter stages to an increasingly minimalist but always materialist mode, variously exploiting and offsetting the rhythms of language, vision, and movement in order to explore the limits and the potential of form, Beckett’s drama enshrines the serious nature of play. In so doing, it brings into focus what have always been the best parts of the French contribution to the Western cultural tradition: the analytic vision that penetrates the patterns and structures of the historical moment, the synthetic imagination that clarifies those patterns for others to see, in all their force and intensity—and the driving desire to see them otherwise. Robin Caron Buss Jennifer Birkett
Citation Information
Article Title: French literature
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 21 July 2016
URL: https://www.britannica.com/art/French-literature
Access Date: August 17, 2019
Additional Reading General literary histories
Among the literary histories and reference books available at the turn of the 21st century are Jennifer Birkett and James Kearns, A Guide to French Literature: From Early Modern to Postmodern (1997); Peter France (ed.), The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French (1995); David Hollier (ed.), A New History of French Literature (1989, reissued 1994); and Anthony Levi, Guide to French Literature, 2 vol. (1992–94). Middle Ages
Useful histories include John Fox, The Middle Ages (1974), vol. 1 in the series A Literary History of France, ed. by P.E. Charvet; Lynette R. Muir, Literature and Society in Medieval France: The Mirror and the Image, 1100–1500 (1985); and Paul Zumthor, Speaking of the Middle Ages (1986), translated by Sarah White, originally published in French, 1980.
C.W. Aspland (ed.), A Medieval French Reader (1979); and Brian Woledge (ed.), The Penguin Book of French Verse, vol. 1 (1961), are anthologies.
The epic is discussed in Jessie Crosland, The Old French Epic (1951, reprinted 1971); Pierre Le Gentil, The Chanson de Roland (1969; originally published in French, 1955); and Joseph J. Duggan, A Guide to Studies on the Chanson de Roland (1976).
Discussions of the romance can be found in Roger Sherman Loomis (ed.), Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (1959, reprinted 1979); L.T. Topsfield, Chrétien de Troyes: A Study of the Arthurian Romances (1981); Douglas Kelly, Medieval French Romance (1993); and David J. Shirt, The Old French Tristan Poems (1980).
Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (eds.), The Toubadours: An Introduction (1999); L.T. Topsfield, Troubadours and Love (1975, reprinted 1978); and Frederick Goldin (comp.), Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères (1973, reprinted 1983) treat the lyric. Janet M. Ferrier, French Prose Writers of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (1966), covers prose of the period; and Grace Frank, The Medieval French Drama (1954, reprinted 1972), places medieval plays in context. The 16th century
A general background of the period is provided in Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life, vol. 1, The Limits of the Possible (1981, reissued 1992), originally published in French (1967); and Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (1975, reissued 1987). A briefer overview is given in A.J. Krailsheimer (ed.), The Continental Renaissance (1971, reissued 1978); and I.D. McFarlane, A Literary History of France, vol. 2: Renaissance France 1470–1589 (1974). Among studies of the Pléiade are Henri Weber, La Création poétique au XVIe siècle en France de Maurice Scève à Agrippa d’Aubigné (1956, reissued 1994); and Grahame Castor, Pléiade Poetics: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Thought and Terminology (1964). The poetry and prose of the time is treated in Terence C. Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (1979, reissued 1985), and Devotional Poetry in France c. 1570–1613 (1969). Jean Céard, La Nature et les prodiges: l’insolite au 16e siècle en France, 2nd ed. rev. (1996), studies the philosophy and cosmology of Ronsard and his contemporaries; as does Guy Demerson, La Mythologie classique dans l’oeuvre lyrique de la “Pléiade” (1972). The subject of drama is covered in Geoffrey Brereton, French Tragic Drama in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1973); and Madeleine Lazard, Le Théâtre en France au XVIe siècle (1980), which explores the decline of the medieval styles and the return of Classical tragedy and comedy. The 17th century
Important works include P.J. Yarrow, “The Seventeenth Century, 1715–1789,” in P.E. Charvet (ed.), A Literary History of France, vol. 2 (1967); John Cruickshank (ed.), The Seventeenth Century (1969), vol. 2 in French Literature and Its Background; John Lough, Paris Theatre Audiences in the 17th & 18th Centuries (1957, reissued 1972); W.D. Howarth, The Seventeenth Century (1965), vol. 1 in Life and Letters of France; and A.J. Krailsheimer (ed.), Studies in Self-Interest: From Descartes to La Bruyère (1962). Among works on the drama are C.J. Gossip, Introduction to French Classical Tragedy (1981); Gordon Pocock, Corneille and Racine: Problems of Tragic Form (1973); and H.T. Barnwell, The Tragic Drama of Corneille and Racine: An Old Parallel Revisited (1982). Odette de Mourgues, Racine; or, the Triumph of Relevance (1967), remains the model for all readings of Racine’s poetic texts. Also useful is David Maskell, Racine: A Theatrical Reading (1991). The 18th century