The Cambridge History of French Literature

William Burgwinkle, Nicholas Hammond, Emma Wilson

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780521897860
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316169346
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

From Occitan poetry to Francophone writing produced in the Caribbean and North Africa, from intellectual history to current films, and from medieval manuscripts to bandes dessinées, this History covers French literature from its beginnings to the present day. With equal attention to all genres, historical periods and registers, this is the most comprehensive guide to literature written in French ever produced in English, and the first in decades to offer such an array of topics and perspectives. Contributors attend to issues of orality, history, peripheries, visual culture, alterity, sexuality, religion, politics, autobiography and testimony. The result is a collection that, despite the wide variety of topics and perspectives, presents a unified view of the richness of French-speaking cultures. This History gives support to the idea that French writing will continue to prosper in the twenty-first century as it adapts, adds to, and refocuses the rich legacy of its past.

Table of contents

• Cover
• THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Manuscripts and manuscript culture
• 2 The troubadours: the Occitan model
• 3 The chanson de geste
• 4 Saints’ lives, violence, and community
• 5 Myth and the matière de Bretagne
• 6 Sexuality, shame, and the genesis of romance
• 7 Medieval lyric: the trouvères
• 8 The Grail
• 9 Women authors of the Middle Ages
• 10 Crusades and identity
• 11 Rhetoric and historiography: Villehardouin’s La Conquête de Constantinople
• 12 Humour and the obscene
• 13 Travel and orientalism
• 14 Allegory and interpretation
• 15 History and fiction: the narrativity and historiography of the matter of Troy
• 16 Mysticism
• 17 Prose romance
• 18 Rhetoric and theatre
• 19 The rise of metafiction in the late Middle Ages
• 20 What does 'Renaissance' mean?
• 21 Sixteenth-century religious writing
• 22 Sixteenth-century poetry
• 23 Sixteenth-century theatre
• 24 Women writers in the sixteenth century
• 25 Sixteenth-century prose narrative
• 26 Sixteenth-century thought
• 27 Sixteenth-century travel writing
• 28 Sixteenth-century margins
• 29 Tragedy: early to mid seventeenth century
• 30 Tragedy: mid to late seventeenth century
• 31 Seventeenth-century comedy
• 32 Seventeenth-century poetry
• 33 Seventeenth-century philosophy
• 34 Seventeenth-century women writers
• 35 Moraliste writing in the seventeenth century
• 36 Seventeenth-century prose narrative
• 37 Seventeenth-century religious writing
• 38 Seventeenth-century margins
• 39 What is Enlightenment?
• 40 The eighteenth-century novel
• 41 The eighteenth-century conte
• 42 Eighteenth-century comic theatre
• 43 Eighteenth-century theatrical tragedy
• 44 Eighteenth-century women writers
• 45 Eighteenth-century philosophy
• 46 Libertinage
• 47 Eighteenth-century travel
• 48 Eighteenth-century margins
• 49 The roman personnel
• 50 Romanticism: art, literature, and history
• 51 Realism
• 52 French poetry, 1793–1863
• 53 Symbolism
• 54 Madness and writing
• 55 Literature and the city in the nineteenth century
• 56 Nineteenth-century travel writing
• 57 Philosophy and ideology in nineteenth-century France
• 58 Naturalism
• 59 Impressionism: art, literature, and history, 1870–1914
• 60 Decadence
• 61 Avant-garde: text and image
• 62 Autobiography
• 63 The modern French novel
• 64 The contemporary French novel
• 65 Existentialism
• 66 Modern French thought
• 67 French drama in the twentieth century
• 68 Twentieth-century poetry
• 69 Francophone writing
• 70 Writing and postcolonial theory
• 71 Travel writing, 1914–2010
• 72 French cinema, 1895–2010
• 73 Writing, memory, and history
• 74 Holocaust writing and film
• 75 Women writers, artists, and filmmakers
• 76 French popular culture and the case of bande dessinée
• 77 Literature, film, and new media
• Select bibliography
• Index