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This article is a general introduction to French literature. For detailed information on French literature in specific historic periods, see the separate historical articles in the template to the right.

French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature. As of 2006, French writers have been awarded more Nobel Prizes in Literature than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country. France itself ranks first in the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country.

French literature has been for French people an object of national pride for centuries, as it is one of the most brilliant and most influential components of the Western literature.^[1][2]

French literature[link]

The French language is a romance dialect derived from Vulgar Latin (non-standard Latin) and heavily influenced principally by Celtic and Frankish. Beginning in the 11th century, literature written in medieval French was one of the oldest vernacular (non-Latin) literatures in western Europe and it became a key source of literary themes in the Middle Ages across the continent.

Although the European prominence of French literature was eclipsed in part by vernacular literature in Italy in the 14th century, literature in France in the 16th century underwent a major creative evolution, and through the political and artistic programs of the Ancien Régime, French literature came to dominate European letters in the 17th century.

In the 18th century, French became the literary lingua franca and diplomatic language of western Europe (and, to a certain degree, in America), and French letters have had a profound impact on all European and American literary traditions while at the same time being heavily influenced by these other national traditions (for example: British and German Romanticism in the nineteenth century). French literary developments of the 19th and 20th centuries have had a particularly strong effect on modern world literature, including: symbolism, naturalism, the "roman-fleuves" of Balzac, Zola and Proust, surrealism, existentialism, and the "Theatre of the Absurd".

French imperialism and colonialism in the Americas, Africa, and the far East have brought the French language to non-European cultures that are transforming and adding to the French literary experience today.

Under the aristocratic ideals of the ancien régime (the "honnête homme"), the nationalist spirit of post-revolutionary France, and the mass educational ideals of the Third Republic and modern France, the French have come to have a profound cultural attachment to their literary heritage. Today, French schools emphasize the study of novels, theater and poetry (often learnt by heart). The literary arts are heavily sponsored by the state and literary prizes are major news. The Académie française and the Institut de France are important linguistic and artistic institutions in France, and French television features shows on writers and poets (one of the most watched shows on French television was Apostrophes^[3], a weekly talk show on literature and the arts). Literature matters deeply to the people of France and plays an important role in their sense of identity.

As of 2006, French literary people have been awarded more Nobel Prizes in Literature than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country. Writers in English (USA, UK, South Africa, Saint Lucia...) have won twice as many Nobels as the French. In 1964 Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he declined it, stating that "It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form."^{[citation needed]}

Literatures of other languages of France[link]

Besides literature written in the French language, the literary culture of France may include literature written in other languages of France. In the medieval period many of the competing standard languages in various territories that later came to make up the territory of modern France each produced literary traditions, such as Anglo-Norman literature and Provençal literature.

Literature in the regional languages continued through to the 18th century, although increasingly eclipsed by the rise of the French language and influenced by the prevailing French literary model. Conscious language revival movements in the 19th century, such as Félibrige in Provence, coupled with wider literacy and regional presses, enabled a new flowering of literary production in the Norman language and others.

Frédéric Mistral, a poet in Occitan (1830–1914), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904.

Breton literature since the 1920s has been lively, despite the falling number of speakers. In 1925, Roparz Hemon founded the periodical Gwalarn which for 19 years tried to raise the language to the level of other great "international" languages by creating original works covering all genres and by proposing Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, Al Liamm took up the role of Gwalam. Other reviews came into existence and gave Breton a fairly large body of literature for a minority language. Among writers in Breton are Yann-Ber Kalloc'h, Anjela Duval and Per-Jakez Hélias.

Picard literature maintains a level of literary output, especially in theatrical writing. Walloon literature is bolstered by the more significant literary production in the language in Belgium.

Catalan literature and literature in the Basque language also benefit from the existence of a readership outside the borders of France.

French Nobel Prize in Literature winners[link]

For most of the 20th century, French authors had more Literature Nobel Prizes than those of any other nation.^[4] The following French or French language authors have won a Nobel Prize in Literature:

• 1901 - Sully Prudhomme (The first Nobel Prize in literature)
• 1904 - Frédéric Mistral (wrote in Occitan)
• 1911 - Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgian)
• 1915 - Romain Rolland
• 1921 - Anatole France
• 1927 - Henri Bergson
• 1937 - Roger Martin du Gard
• 1947 - André Gide
• 1952 - François Mauriac
• 1957 - Albert Camus
• 1960 - Saint-John Perse
• 1964 - Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize)
• 1969 - Samuel Beckett (Irish, wrote in English and French)
• 1985 - Claude Simon
• 2000 - Gao Xingjian (writes in Chinese)
• 2008 - J.M.G. Le Clézio

French literary awards[link]

• Grand Prix de Littérature Policière - created in 1948, for crime and detective fiction.
• Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française - created 1918.
• Prix Décembre - created in 1989.
• Prix Femina - created 1904, decided each year by an exclusively female jury, although the authors of the winning works do not have to be women.
• Prix Goncourt - created 1903, given to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year".
• Prix Goncourt des Lycéens - created in 1987.
• Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud - created in 1957.
• Prix Médicis - created 1958, awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match their talent."
• Prix Renaudot - created in 1926.
• Prix Tour-Apollo Award - 1972-1990, given to the best science fiction novel published in French during the preceding year.
• Prix des Deux Magots - created in 1933.

Key texts[link]

Fiction[link]

• Middle Ages
  • anonymous - La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland)
  • Chrétien de Troyes - Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain, the Knight of the Lion), Lancelot, ou le Chevalier à la charrette (Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart)
  • various - Tristan et Iseult (Tristan and Iseult)
  • anonymous - Lancelot-Graal (Lancelot-Grail), also known as the prose Lancelot or the Vulgate Cycle
  • Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung - Roman de la Rose ("Book of the Rose")
• 16th century
  • François Rabelais - Gargantua, Pantagruel ("Gargantua and Pantagruel")
  • Michel de Montaigne - Les Essais ("Essais")
• 17th century
  • Madame de Lafayette - La Princesse de Clèves
• 18th century
  • Abbé Prévost - Manon Lescaut
  • Voltaire - Candide
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse
  • Denis Diderot - Jacques le fataliste (Jacques the Fatalist)
  • Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - Les Liaisons dangereuses
• 19th century
  • François-René de Chateaubriand - Atala, René
  • Benjamin Constant - Adolphe
  • Stendhal - Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black), La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma)
  • Honoré de Balzac - La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy", a novel cycle which includes Père Goriot, Lost Illusions, and Eugénie Grandet)
  • Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers
  • Victor Hugo - Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Les Misérables
  • Théophile Gautier - Mademoiselle de Maupin
  • Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary, Salammbô, L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education)
  • Jules Verne - Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), Voyage au centre de la Terre (A Journey to the Center of the Earth), Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days)
  • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt - Germinie Lacerteux
  • Guy de Maupassant - Bel Ami, La Parure (The Necklace), other short stories
  • Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin, Les Rougon-Macquart (a novel cycle which includes L'Assommoir, Nana and Germinal)
• 20th century
  • André Gide - Les Faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters), L'Immoraliste (The Immoralist)
  • Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time)
  • André Breton - Nadja
  • Gaston Leroux - Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera)
  • Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night)
  • Colette - Gigi
  • Jean Genet - Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs
  • André Malraux - La Condition humaine (Man's Fate), L'Espoir (Man's Hope)
  • Albert Camus - L'Étranger (The Stranger)
  • Michel Butor - La Modification
  • Marguerite Yourcenar - Mémoires d'Hadrien
  • Alain Robbe-Grillet - Dans le labyrinthe
  • Georges Perec - La vie mode d'emploi
  • Robert Pinget - Passacaille
  • Jean-Paul Sartre - L´Âge de Raison (The Age of Reason)
  • Françoise Sagan - "Bonjour Tristesse", (Hello Sadness) 1954 awarded Prix de Critiques^[5]