A New History of French Literature
These two volumes, consisting of 164 essays written by American and European specialists, provide an original and outstanding overview of French literature from 842 to the present. Each essay is introduced by a date and arranged in chronological order. A brief headline follows the date, relating the essay to a major literary event. Essays, however, follow no specific format. Some are devoted to a genre, others to a major literary movement or historical event. Large surveys are also included. Social and cultural perspectives are present, including essays on women in French literature and art, viewed from philosophical as well as theoretical perspectives. Such a compilation runs the risk of being disjointed and uneven. What emerges, however, is a rich mosaic covering over 1000 years of French literature, beginning with the Serments de Strasbourg . Most of the scholars writing for these volumes bring to the task years of specialized research concerning areas and subjects they have written on extensively. This results in broad, inclusive, and associative essays that demonstrate depth as well as breadth. These pages can be read in sequence by the ambitious reader in search of a stimulating survey that goes beyond dates and summaries and that raises social, political, literary, and philosophical issues. The scholar, too, selecting essays at random, will find novel insights by peers that merit further consideration. There is no history of French literature of this nature on the market today, in French or in English. Highly recommended.- Anthony Caprio, Oglethorpe Univ., Atlanta, Ga.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.