French Literature

INTRODUCTION TO
FRENCH
LITERATURE
MAJOR THEMES
• Adventure – especially high-Romance stories and fairy
tales
• Philosophical humor – satires which still bite like those

of Voltaire and Rabelais
• Liberal Humanism – ties in with Realism,

especially in the 19th Century
• Modern Individualism – leads from Proust’s memory

to Camus’ Absurb and Sartre’s Nausea
ROMANTIC ADVENTURE AND FAIRY
TALES
HIGH
ROMANCE
Chrétien de Troyes,
author of the tales of
England’s Knights of the
Round Table
• Invention of Lancelot
• Long, long, long poems
• Focus is on adventure
first, morality
second, and love third
CHARLES 1628 –1703
Created the fairy tale, Author
PERRAULT of many including:
• Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Little Red Riding
Hood),
• La Belle au bois
 dormant (Sleeping Beauty),
• Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté (Puss
in Boots),
• Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre (
Cinderella),
• La Barbe bleue (Bluebeard),
• La Marquise de Salusses ou la Patience de
Griselidis (Patient Griselda),
PHILOSOPHICAL HUMOR – SATIRES
WITH BITE
VOLTAIRE AND
RABELAIS
RABELAIS AND HIS GENTLE
GIANTS
• 1494-1553
• Renaissance thinker
• Emphasis on Free Will
• The Life of Gargantua and

of Pantagruel
– All their life was spent

not in laws, statutes, or
rules, but according to
their own free will and
pleasure.
Gargantua and
Pantagruel
AS MORAL PHILOSOPHERS
Only one law: Do What Thou Wilt because men that are free,
well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies,
have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto
virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is
called honour.
Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint

they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that
noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to
virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein
they are so tyrannously enslaved.
VOLTAIRE FRANÇOIS-MARIE
AROUET
• 1694-1778
• Deist
• Enlightenment
• Detested Ignorance
• Detested Optimism
• Close to Ben Franklin
VOLTAIRE’S MASTERPIECE:
CANDIDE, OR THE OPTIMIST
• Candide is a man who sees the
good in everthing, even in the
Spanish Inquisition, until he is
confronted with the reality of
the world (and ends up a
pragmatist, maybe)
• An immediate success, the

novella was condemned by
both secular and religious
authorities
GREAT
ADVENTU
RE
NOVELS
ALEXANDRE
DUMAS • The Three Musketeers
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• And other adventure tales
•1802-1870
•Of African Descent
•Comparable to American writer
James Finemore Cooper, author of
Last of the Mohicans
VICTOR-MARIE
HUGO You think these stories are simple adventure tales,
but as The Hunchback of Notre Dame shows, they
are much deeper. In this
novel, for instance, the Cathedral itself is the most
significant aspect, both the main setting and the
focus of the story's themes.
The book portrays the Gothic era as one of extremes
of architecture, passion, and religion. The theme of
determinism (fate and destiny) is explored as well as
revolution and social strife.
• 1802-1885
• Les Misérables
• Notre-Dame de
Paris
LIBERAL
HUMANISM
AND
th
“REALISM”
This 19 Century movement came after
the rise and fall of Napoleon, the birth and
end of Romanticism, and the Industrial
Revolution with its subsequent destruction
of the “commoners”
• Honoré de Balzac – Human Comedy (over 2,000

characters)
• Émile Zola – father of Naturalism (depressing)
• Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary
• Marcel Proust – In Search of Lost Time
LET’S SKIP ALL THAT
DEPRESSING STUFF AND
MOVE ON TO TALK
ABOUT….
Some more
really
depressing
stuff 
Aftermath of the Great
20th Century Wars
Modern Individualism –
leads from Proust’s memory to Camus’
Absurb and Sartre’s Nausea
ALBERT CAMUS Albert Camus dissociated himself from
the existentialists but acknowledged
man’s lonely condition in the
universe. His “man of the absurd” (or
absurd hero) rejects despair and
commits himself to the anguish and
responsibility of living as best he can.
JEAN PAUL
SARTRE
Hell is other people
“You will never be happy if you
continue to search for what
happiness consists of. You will
never live if you are looking for
the meaning of
life.”
“It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life

had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the
contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.”
SIMONE DE
BEAVOIR
•Partner of Jean-Paul Sartre.
•Wrote several important works including The

Second Sex.
CHECK OUT
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE TOO

ONLINE WHEN YOU GET THE TIME
 Thanks a ton!

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INTRODUCTION TO

• Philosophical humor – satires which still bite like those

• Liberal Humanism – ties in with Realism,

• Modern Individualism – leads from Proust’s memory

• The Life of Gargantua and

– All their life was spent

Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint

• An immediate success, the

• Honoré de Balzac – Human Comedy (over 2,000

“It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life

•Wrote several important works including The

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE TOO

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