French Language and Literature

In this highly accessible introduction, Brian Nelson provides an overview of French literature - its themes and forms, traditions and transformations - from the Middle Ages to the present. Major writers, including Francophone authors writing from areas other than France, are discussed chronologically in the context of their times, to provide a sense of the development of the French literary tradition and the strengths of some of the most influential writers within it. Nelson offers close readings of exemplary passages from key works, presented in English translation and with the original French. Explores important writers, including Villon, Racine, Molire, Voltaire, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Proust, Sartre and Beckett.

Essays of two to three pages by 164 American and European scholars discuss genres, movements, and events of French literature from 842 to the 1980s. They consider political, scientific, philosophical, and religious works as well as the strictly literary. Aimed at the general reader, and useful for specialists as background. Includes a chronology and a map.

A new and reconceived work rather than a revision of the old Companion to French Literature. In 3,000 entries, it provides a guide to ten centuries of work produced in France and, more recently, in other French-speaking countries around the world. It highlights not only poets, novelists, and dramatists, but also historians, statesmen, and philosophers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.