French literature

**French literature** is the literature of France. It also includes literature that is written in French, even if the writer is not from France. There are countries besides France where French is also spoken. These countries include Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Algeria, and Morocco. Works that are written in French but not from France are called Francophone literature.

## History of French literature

The French language grew out of Latin. French is a Romance language, related to other languages like Spanish and Italian. French was also influenced by the Celtic and Frankish languages.

## French Nobel Prize in Literature winners

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)

### Fiction

- 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_ ("Romance of the Rose")
- 16th century
    - François Rabelais - _Pantagruel_, _Gargantua_
- 17th century
    - Madame de Lafayette - _La Princesse de Clèves_
- 18th century
    - Voltaire - _Candide_
    - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - _Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse_
    - Denis Diderot - _Jacques le fataliste_ (_Jacques the Fatalist_)
- 19th century
    - 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_ and _Eugénie Grandet_)
    - Gustave Flaubert - _Madame Bovary_, _Salammbô_, _L'Éducation sentimentale_ (_Sentimental Education_)
    - Edmond and Jules de Goncourt - _Germinie Lacerteux_
    - Guy de Maupassant - _Bel Ami_, _La Parure_ (_The Necklace_), other short stories
    - Émile Zola - _Les Rougon-Macquart_ (a novel cycle which includes _L'Assommoir_, _Nana_ and _Germinal_)
- 20th century
    - André Gide - _Les Faux-monnayeurs_ (_The Counterfeiters_), _The Immoralist_
    - Marcel Proust - _À la recherche du temps perdu_ (_In Search of Lost Time_)
    - André Breton - _Nadja_
    - Louis-Ferdinand Céline - _Voyage au bout de la nuit_ (_Journey to the End of the Night_)
    - Colette - _Gigi_
    - Jean Genet - _Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs_
    - 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_

### Poetry

- François Villon - _Les Testaments_
- Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and other poets of "La Pléiade" - poems
- La Fontaine - _The Fables_
- Victor Hugo - _Les Contemplations_
- Alphonse de Lamartine - _Méditations poétiques_
- Charles Baudelaire - _Les Fleurs du mal_
- Paul Verlaine - _Jadis et naguère_
- Arthur Rimbaud - _Une Saison en Enfer_
- Stéphane Mallarmé - _Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard_ ("A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance")
- Guillaume Apollinaire - _Alcools_
- Francis Ponge
- Raymond Queneau

### Theater

- Pierre Corneille - _Le Cid_
- Molière - _Tartuffe_, _The Misanthrope_, _Dom Juan_
- Jean Racine - _Phèdre_, _Andromaque_
- Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
- Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
- Edmond Rostand - _Cyrano de Bergerac_
- Jean Giraudoux - _The Trojan War Will Not Take Place_
- Jean Anouilh - _Becket_, _Antigone_
- Jean-Paul Sartre - _No Exit_
- Samuel Beckett - _Waiting for Godot_, _Endgame_
- Eugène Ionesco - _The Bald Soprano_, _Rhinoceros_
- Jean Genet - _The Maids_, _The Blacks_

### Non-fiction

- Michel de Montaigne - _The Essays_
- Blaise Pascal - _Les Pensées_
- François de La Rochefoucauld - _The Maxims_
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau - _Discourse on the Arts and Sciences_, _The Social Contract_
- François-René de Chateaubriand - _Genius of Christianity_
- Alexis de Tocqueville - _Democracy in America_
- Adolphe Theirs - _History of the French Revolution_, _History of the Consulate and Empire_
- Jules Michelet - _Histoire de France_, _La Sorcière_
- Albert Camus - _The Myth of Sisyphus_
- Jean-Paul Sartre - _Existentialism is a Humanism_, _Being and Nothingness_

## Literary criticism

- Roland Barthes
- Paul Bénichou
- Jacques Derrida
- Julia Kristeva
- Jacques Lacan
- Jean-François Lyotard

## Poetry

- Parnassian
- Romanticism
- Symbolism (arts)
- Surrealism

## Related pages

- French culture
- French art
- List of French language authors
- List of French language poets
- French science fiction
- Fantastique

## Other websites

- French Language & Literature Resources at Yale University
- Littérature francophone virtuelle (ClicNet) online texts
- Athena Textes Français online texts
- ABU online texts
- French Literature at _Digital Librarian_
- Jean-Michel Maulpoix & Co.: Modern and contemporary french literature site maintained by prominent French poet Jean-Michel Maulpoix
- Full text of Roland Barthes' "Death of the Author"