French Literature: A Very Short Introduction Read online

  VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way into a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in more than 25 languages worldwide.

  The series began in 1995, and now represents a wide variety of topics in history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities. The VSI Library now contains over 200 volumes-a Very Short Introduction to everything from ancient Egypt and Indian philosophyto conceptual art and cosmology-and will continue to grow to a library of around 300 titles.

  Very Short Introductions available now:

  AFRICAN HISTORY John Parker and Richard Rathbone

  AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND ELECTIONS L. Sandy Maisel

  THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY Charles O. Jones

  ANARCHISM Colin Ward

  ANCI ENT EGYPT Ian Shaw

  ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas

  ANCIENT WARFARE Harry Sidebottom

  ANGLICANISM MarkChapman

  THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair

  ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia

  ANTISEMITISM Steven Beller

  THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS Paul Foster

  ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn

  ARCHITECTURE Andrew Ba Ila ntyne

  ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes

  ART H I STORY Dana Arnold

  ARTTHEORY Cynthia Freeland

  ATH E I SM Julian Baggini

  AUGUSTINE Henry Chadwick

  AUTISM Uta Frith

  BARTH ES Jonathan Culler

  BESTSELLERS John Sutherland

  THE BIBLE John Riches

  BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY EricH.Cline

  BIOGRAPHY HermioneLee

  THE BOOK OF MORMON Terryl Givens

  THE BRAIN Michael O'Shea

  BRITISH POLITICS Anthony Wright

  BUDDHA Michael Carrithers

  BUDDHISM Damienl
  BUDDHIST ETHICS Damienl
  CAPITALISM James Fulcher

  CATHOLICISM GeraldO'Collins

  THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe

  CHAOS Leonard Smith

  CHOICE THEORY Michael Allingham

  CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson

  CHRISTIANITY LindaWoodhead

  CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy

  CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY Helen Morales

  CLASSICS Mary Beard and John Henderson

  CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard

  THE COLD WAR Robert McMahon

  COMMUNISM Leslie Holmes

  CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore

  CONTEMPORARY ART Julian Stallabrass

  CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY Simon Critchley

  COSMOLOGY Peter Coles

  THE CRUSADES ChristopherTyerman

  CRYPTOGRAPHY Fred Piper and Sean Murphy

  DADA AND SURREALISM David Hopkins

  DARWIN Jonathan Howard

  THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS TimothyLim

  DEMOCRACY Bernard Crick

  DESCARTES Tom Sorell

  DESERTS Nick Middleton

  DESIGN John Heskett

  DINOSAURS David Norman

  DOCUMENTARY FILM Patricia Aufderheide

  DREAMING ].Allan Hobson

  DRUGS Leslielversen

  THE EARTH Martin Redfern

  ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta

  EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch

  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN Paul Langford

  THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball

  EMOTION Dylan Evans

  EMPIRE Stephen Howe

  ENGELS Terrell Carver

  EPIDEMIOLOGY RoldolfoSaracci

  ETH ICS Simon Blackburn

  THE EUROPEAN UNION John Pinder and Simon Usherwood

  EVOLUTION Brian and Deborah Charlesworth

  EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn

  FASCISM I
  FASHION Rebecca Arnold

  FEMINISM Margaret Walters

  THE FIRST WORLD WAR Michael Howard

  FORENSIC SCIENCE Jim Fraser

  FOSSILS Keith Thomson

  FOUCAULT Gary Gutting

  FREE SPEECH NigelWarburton

  FREE WILL Thomas Pink

  FRENCH LITERATURE John D. Lyons

  THE FRENCH REVOLUTION William Doyle

  FREUD AnthonyStorr

  FUNDAMENTALISM MaliseRuthven

  GALAXIES John Gribbin

  GALI LEO Stillman Drake

  GAME THEORY Ken Binmore

  GANDHI Bhikhu Parekh

  GEOGRAPHY John Matthews and David Herbert

  GEOPOLITICS I
  GERMAN LITERATURE Nicholas Boyle

  GLOBAL CATASTROPHES BillMcGuire

  GLOBAL WARMING MarkMaslin

  GLOBALIZATION Manfred Steger

  THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE NEW DEAL Eric Rauchway

  HABERMAS James Gordon Finlayson

  HEGEL Peter Singer

  HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood

  HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson

  HINDUISM Kim Knott

  HISTORY John H. Arnold

  THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin

  THE HISTORY OF LIFE Michael Benton

  THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE William Bynum

  THE HISTORY OF TI ME Leofranc Holford-Strevens

  HIV/AIDS Alan Whiteside

  HOBBES RichardTuck

  HUMAN EVOLUTION Bernard Wood

  HUMAN RIGHTS AndrewClapham

  HUMS A.J.Ayer

  IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden

  INDIAN PHILOSOPHY Sue Hamilton

  INFORMATION LucianoFloridi

  INNOVATION Mark Dodgson and David Gann

  INTELLIGENCE lanJ.Deary

  INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION I
  INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Paul Wilkinson

  ISLAM MaliseRuthven

  ISLAMIC HISTORY Adam Silverstein

  JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves

  JUDAISM NormanSolomon

  JUNG AnthonyStevens

  KABBALAH Joseph Dan

  KAFI
  KANT RogerScruton

  KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner

  THE KORAN Michael Cook

  LAW Raymond Wacks

  THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS Peter Atkins

  LINCOLN Allen C. Guelzo

  LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews

  LITERARY TH EORY Jonathan Culler

  LOCKE John Dunn

  LOGIC Graham Priest

  MACH IAVELLI Quentin Skinner

  THE MARQUIS DE SADE John Phillips

  MARX Peter Singer

  MATHEMATICS TimothyGowers

  THE MEANING OF LIFE Terry Eagleton

  MEDICAL ETHICS Tony Hope

  MEDIEVAL BRITAIN John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths

  MEMORY Jonathan K. Foster

  MODERN ART David Cottington

  MODERN CHINA Rana Mitter

  MODERN IRELAND SeniaPa"seta

  MODERN JAPAN Christopher Goto-jones

  MOLECULES Philip Ball

  MORMONISM Richard Lyman Bushman

  MUSIC Nicholas Cook

  MYTH Robert A. Segal

  NATIONALISM Steven Grosby

  NELSON MANDELA EllekeBoehmer

  NEOLIBERALISM Manfred Steger and Ravi Roy

  THE NEW TESTAMENT Luke TimothyJohnson

  THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE Kyle Keefer

  NEWTON RobertIliffe

  N I ETZSCH E Michael Tanner

  NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and H. C. G. Matthew

  THE NORMAN CONQUEST George Garnett

  NORTHERN IRELAND Marc Mulholland

  NOTHING Franl
  NUCLEAR WEAPONS Joseph M. Siracusa

  THE OLD TESTAMENT Michael D. Coogan

  PARTICLE PHYSICS Franl
/>   PAUL E.P. Sanders

  PHILOSOPHY Edward Craig

  PHILOSOPHY OF LAW Raymond Wacks

  PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE SamirOl
  PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards

  PLATO JuliaAnnas

  POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY David Miller

  POLITICS Kenneth Minogue

  POSTCOLONIALISM RobertYoung

  POSTMODERNISM Christopher Butler

  POSTSTRUCTURALISM Catherine Belsey

  PREHISTORY ChrisGosden

  PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY Catherine Osborne

  PRIVACY Raymond Wacks

  PROGRESSIVISM Walter Nugent

  PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns

  PSYCHOLOGY Gillian Butler and Freda McManus

  PURITANISM FrancisJ.Bremer

  THE QUAKERS Pink Dandelion

  QUANTUM THEORY John Polkinghorne

  RACISM Ali Rattansi

  THE REAGAN REVOLUTION GilTroy

  THE REFORMATION PeterMarshall

  RELATIVITY Russell Stannard

  RELIGION IN AMERICA TimothyBeal

  THE RENAISSANCE JerryBrotton

  RENAISSANCE ART Geraldine A. Johnson

  ROMAN BRITAIN PeterSalway

  THE ROMAN EMPIRE Christopher Kelly

  ROUSSEAU RobertWokler

  RUSSELL A. C. Grayling

  RUSSIAN LITERATURE Catrional
  THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION S. A. Smith

  SCHIZOPHRENIA Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone

  SCHOPENHAUER Christopher Janaway

  SCIENCE AND RELIGION Thomas Dixon

  SCOTLAND Rab Houston

  SEXUALITY VeroniqueMottier

  SHAKESPEARE GermaineGreer

  SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt

  SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY John Monaghan and PeterJust

  SOCIALI SM Michael Newman

  SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce

  SOCRATES C. C. W. Taylor

  THE SOVIET UNION Stephen Lovell

  THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR Helen Graham

  SPINOZA RogerScruton

  STATISTICS DavidJ.Hand

  STUART BRITAIN John Morrill

  SUPERCONDUCTIVITY Stephen Blundell

  TERRORISM CharlesTownshend

  TH LO LOGY David F. Ford

  THOMAS AQUINAS Fergus Kerr

  TRAGEDY Adrian Poole

  THE TUDORS John Guy

  TWENTIETH-CENTURY B RITAIN Kenneth 0. Morgan

  THE UNITED NATIONS Jussi M. Hanhimal
  THE VI KI N65 Julian Richards

  WITCHCRAFT Malcolm Gaskill

  WITTGENSTEIN A. C. Grayling

  WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman

  THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION AmritaNarlikar

  WRITING AND SCRIPT Andrew Robinson

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  FILM MUSIC Kathryn Kalinak

  GERMAN PHILOSOPHY Andrew Bowie

  DRUIDS Barry Cu n l iffe

  FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY David Canter

  ADVERTISING Winston Fletcher

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  John D. Lyons

  List of illustrations xi

  Introduction: meeting French literature 1

  Saints, werewolves, knights, and a poete maudit: allegiance and character in the Middle Ages 5

  The last Roman, `cannibals', giants, and heroines of modern life: antiquity and renewal 18

  3 Society and its demands 32

  4 Nature and its possibilities 46

  r_ Around the Revolution 58

  6 The hunchback, the housewife, and the flaneur 72

  From Marcel to Rrose Selavy 88

  The self-centred consciousness 104

  French-speaking heroes without borders? 117

  Further reading 129

  Index 133

  1 Charlemagne finds Roland's corpse after the battle of Roncevaux, from Les Grandes Chroniques de France, c.1460 10

  © Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris/ Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library

  2 Illustration by Gustave Dore (1854) for Rabelais's Gargantua (1534) 25

  © akg-images

  3 Chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, designed by Louis Le Van, in an engraving by Perelle (1660) 34

  © akg-images

  4 Engraving by Francois Chauveau (1668) for La Fontaine's fable Le Loup et le chien 36

  5 Scene from Bernardin de SaintPierre's novel Paul et Virginie (1787), in a 1805 engraving after Francois Gerard 55

  © Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris/ Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library

  6 Napoleon Bonaparte throwing a Marquis de Sade book into the fire, drawing attributed to P. Cousturier (1885) 62

  © Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

  7 Voltaire's remains are transferred to the Pantheon, 1791, engraving after Lagrenee 65

  © Roger-Viollet/TopFoto

  8 Bust by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, entitled `Why be born a slave?' (1868) 68

  Courtesy of the Image of the Black in Western Art Project and Photo Archive, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute

  9 Engraving by Luc-Olivier Merson (1881) inspired by Victor Hugo's novel Notre Dame de Paris (1831) 74

  Cc) Roger-Viollet/TopFoto

  10 Maxime Lalanne (1827-86), `Demolition work for the construction of the Boulevard Saint-Germain', scene from Haussmann's renovations of Paris 84

  © MusEe Carnavalet/Roger-Viollet/ TopFoto

  11 Claude Monet, La Gare Saint-Lazare (1877) 85

  © The Granger Collection/TopFoto

  12 Page of Stephane Mallarme's poem, Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard (1897) 87

  © Roger-Viollet/TopFoto

  13 `Les yeux de fougere, photographic montage illustration for Andre Breton's Nadja (1928) 96

  (c© ADAGP, Paris, and DACS, London, 2009

  14 Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Selavy, c. 1920-1, in a photograph by Man Ray 101

  n Man Ray Trust/ADAGP, Paris, and DACS, London, 2009. Photo n The Philadelphia Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence

  15 Lucien Raimbourg and Pierre Latour in Samuel Beckett's En attendant Godot, photograph from the 1956 Paris production by Roger Blin 107

  © Roger-Viollet/TopFoto

  16 Scene from Alain Resnais's film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) 115

  n Argos/Como/Pathe Overseas/ DAIEI Motion Pictures/Album/ akg-images

  The heritage of literature in the French language is rich, varied, extensive in time and space, and appealing both to its immediate public, readers of French, and also to a global audience reached through translations and film adaptations. The first great works of this repertory were written in the 11th century in northern France, and now, at the beginning of the 21st century, French literatures include authors writing in many parts of the world, ranging from the Caribbean to Western Africa, whose works are available in bookshops and libraries in France and in other French-speaking countries. For many centuries, French was also a language of aristocratic and intellectual elites throughout Europe.

  What is `French literature'?

  Both `French' and `literature' are problematic terms. What are the boundaries of `French'? Historically, the effective domination of the `French' language among the population living within the boundaries of today's `France' was realized only at the end of the 19th century, when universal schooling brought the language of Paris and the elites to the speakers of such tongues as Breton (Brezhoneg) spoken on the Brittany peninsula, Basque (Euskara) on the southwest coast, varieties of Occitanian (Lenga d'oc) such as Gascon and Provencal in the south, and Alsatian (Elsasserditsch) in the northeast. Moreover, there are many important authors who have written and now write in French who do not live within the borders of the European territory known as `France', though in many cases they are citizens of France (the residents of Martinique, Guadeloupe, New Caledonia, and so forth) or of former colonies of France such as Quebec and Senegal. Some authors whose first language is not French have chosen to write a significant portion of their work in French, for instance Samuel Beckett. Other authors, born in France and French citizens, h
ave chosen not to write in `French': Frederic Mistral, like Beckett a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote in Provencal. As for `literature', the current use of the term dates from the 19th century, when what had long been called `poetry' or belles lettres was amalgamated with other writings such as memoirs and essays as the basis for literary studies in universities. It is a bit flippant, but useful, to think of literature as what we read when we do not have to - what we read without immediate, circumstantial purpose.

  The protagonist as starting point

  To get one's bearings in French literature means, in part, to have some idea of the major texts of the evolving tradition and a sense of how they relate and respond to one another. Coming into that tradition can be, at first, disorienting. Fortunately, perhaps, the situation of having to relate to an unfamiliar society and of having to determine one's own place while observing other people is a central topic of some of the principal texts of the French tradition. Whether by their choice or by circumstance, the protagonists of many French texts find themselves in situations of opposition to, or isolation from, most other members of their society. This is often a literary device for authors to make critical, polemical, or didactic points (and French literature can be called justly a literature of ideas), but it may also be a source of emotional turmoil that offers the reader an experience of empathy, rather than a purely intellectual insight.

  It makes sense to look at literary works in terms of their central characters, or protagonists, since throughout history, epics, tragedies, short stories, and poems have very often taken the name of the protagonist as their title, whether it be Beowulf or Hamlet in English, or, in French, Lancelot, Gargantua, The Misanthrope, Chatterton, Consuelo, Madame Bovary, `Le Mauvais vitrier' (The Bad Glazier), Cyrano de Bergerac, Nadja, The Story of O. But even in works that do not feature the central character's name in the title, the focus on his or her characteristics, thoughts, and actions makes the protagonist an obvious place to start an exploration of the literature. And it should be noted that the term `protagonist' also applies to works, like many poems and autobiographical texts, in which the main figure is some version of the author ('some version' in the sense that we often assume a creative reworking of the first-person speaker, as when Ronsard embellishes or mythifies `Ronsard' in his love poetry, or when Rousseau writes of himself in his Confessions). And since most works that make up the literary tradition have central characters, their study offers a convenient way to compare works to one another, within a single period or from one epoch to another.

  Protagonists necessarily have problems. If they did not, there would be no story, no quest, no obstacle to overcome, no mysteries to solve, no desire to satisfy, no enemy to defeat. In the French literary tradition, moreover, the central figures often have problems of such a unique type as to warrant being called `problematic heroes' - heroes and heroines whose very status and place in society is at stake - or even `anti-heroes' (defined by the OED as chief characters who are `totally unlike a conventional hero'). What kind of person is chosen as focal point of the plot and that person's relation to her or his society can tell us a good deal about a literary text and its time, whether that character is portrayed as very good within prevailing social norms or very unusual in an undesirable way. For instance, Rousseau's character `Emile' in Emile, or, On Education (1762) is neither the most complex nor most believable character of the time, but he presented a revolutionary model of human nature and of the consequences for childrearing.