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 - Frederic Mistral (wrote in Occitan)
1911 - Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgian)
1915 - Romain Rolland
1921 - Anatole France
1927 - Henri Bergson
1937 - Roger Martin du Gard
1947 - Andre Gide
1952 - Francois 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)
Selected list of French literary classics
Fiction
Middle Ages
anonymous - La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland)
Chretien de Troyes - Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain, the Knight of the Lion), Lancelot, ou le Chevalier a 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
Francois Rabelais - Pantagruel, Gargantua
17th century
Madame de Lafayette - La Princesse de Cleves
18th century
Voltaire - Candide
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Julie, ou la nouvelle Heloise
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)
Honore de Balzac - La Comedie humaine ("The Human Comedy", a novel cycle which includes Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet)
Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary, Salammbo, L'Education sentimentale (Sentimental Education)
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt - Germinie Lacerteux
Guy de Maupassant - Bel Ami, La Parure (The Necklace), other short stories
Emile Zola - Les Rougon-Macquart (a novel cycle which includes L'Assommoir, Nana and Germinal)
20th century
Andre Gide - Les Faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters), The Immoralist
Marcel Proust - A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time)
Andre Breton - Nadja
Louis-Ferdinand Celine - Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night)
Colette - Gigi
Jean Genet - Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs
Albert Camus - L'Etranger (The Stranger)
Michel Butor - La Modification
Marguerite Yourcenar - Memoires d'Hadrien
Alain Robbe-Grillet - Dans le labyrinthe
Georges Perec - La vie mode d'emploi
Robert Pinget - Passacaille
Poetry
Francois Villon - Les Testaments
Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and other poets of "La Pleiade" - poems
La Fontaine - The Fables
Victor Hugo - Les Contemplations
Alphonse de Lamartine - Meditations poetiques
Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du mal
Paul Verlaine - Jadis et naguere
Arthur Rimbaud - Une Saison en Enfer
Stephane Mallarme - Un coup de des 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
Moliere - Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, Dom Juan
Jean Racine - Phedre, 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
Eugene Ionesco - The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros
Jean Genet - The Maids, The Blacks
Non-fiction
Michel de Montaigne - The Essays
Blaise Pascal - Les Pensees
Francois de La Rochefoucauld - The Maxims
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The Social Contract
Francois-Rene 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 Sorciere
Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
Jean-Paul Sartre - Existentialism is a Humanism, Being and Nothingness
Literary criticism
Roland Barthes
Paul Benichou
Jacques Derrida
Julia Kristeva
Jacques Lacan
Jean-Francois 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
Litterature francophone virtuelle (ClicNet) online texts
Athena Textes Francais 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"