Designed for the general reader, this splendid introduction to
French literature from 842 A.D.-the date of the earliest surviving
document in any Romance language-to the present decade is the most
compact and imaginative single-volume guide available in English to
the French literary tradition. In fact, no comparable work exists
in either language. It is not the customary inventory of authors
and titles but rather a collection of wide-angled views of
historical and cultural phenomena. It sets before us writers,
public figures, criminals, saints, and monarchs, as well as
religious, cultural, and social revolutions. It gives us books,
paintings, public monuments, even TV shows. Written by 164 American
and European specialists, the essays are introduced by date and
arranged in chronological order, but here ends the book's
resemblance to the usual history of literature. Each date is
followed by a headline evoking an event that indicates the
chronological point of departure. Usually the event is literary-the
publication of an original work, a journal, a translation, the
first performance of a play, the death of an author-but some events
are literary only in terms of their repercussions and resonances.
Essays devoted to a genre exist alongside essays devoted to one
book, institutions are presented side by side with literary
movements, and large surveys appear next to detailed discussions of
specific landmarks. No article is limited to the "life and works"
of a single author. Proust, for example, appears through various
lenses: fleetingly, in 1701, apropos of Antoine Galland's
translation of The Thousand and One Nights; in 1898, in connection
with the Dreyfus Affair; in 1905, on the occasion of the law on the
separation of church and state; in 1911, in relation to Gide and
their different treatments of homosexuality; and at his death in
1922. Without attempting to cover every author, work, and cultural
development since the Serments de Strasbourg in 842, this history
succeeds in being both informative and critical about the more than
1,000 years it describes. The contributors offer us a chance to
appreciate not only French culture but also the major critical
positions in literary studies today. A New History of French
Literature will be essential reading for all engaged in the study
of French culture and for all who are interested in it. It is an
authoritative, lively, and readable volume.
General
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