Middle Ages
In the 11th century, the first texts in French appeared:the Songs of Gesta. Premature forms of poetry, their authors narrated heroic exploits. These poems are classified into three groups:French, Breton and Classical.
The French cycle deals mainly with those who fought in the service of religion. The central figure is Charlemagne, transformed into a hero of Christianity. The most famous epic poem, composed in the early twelfth century, is The Song of Roland.
The Breton cycle is based on Celtic folklore. The main poet was Chrétien de Troyes who lived at the end of the twelfth century.
The classical or ancient cycle is the least original group. The best known work is the Romance of Alexander.
Simultaneously with Canções de Gesta, popular literature created fabliaux, which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, satires - among them, Le Roman de Renard, based on the collections of fables from the twelfth century -, and the Roman de la rose, written by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (or Meung). The influence of this text extended through Europe until the 17th century.
The best medieval lyric poet was François Villon, whose influence lasted until the 20th century.
The evolution from religious to profane medieval literature is most clearly seen in the thirteenth-century theater, the date of the first pastoral work and comic opera. The miracles of the Virgin were a favorite subject during the 14th century, but in the following century, theatrical productions were freed from ecclesiastical influence.
Before the 16th century, some historians also stand out, among them Godofredo de Villehardouin and Jean de Joinville, chroniclers of the Crusades. Christine de Pisan, author of courtly chronicles in elegant verse, and Alain Chartier, chronicler in verse of the disastrous Battle of Agincourt, were eclipsed by Jean Froissart who described the world of knightly orders. Philippe de Comines's Memoirs (1524) is the first account of political events from the point of view of a statesman.
The Renaissance
The most important of the early poets of the Renaissance was Maurice Scève, a 16th century writer, but the heyday of this period was only reached with the group of poets known as la Pléyade whose mentor was Pierre de Ronsard. On the other hand, Joachim du Bellay helped to prepare the arrival of Classicism.
The new ideas of the Renaissance - and especially the new concept of Humanism - appeared for the first time in the writings of François Rabelais, famous for his vivacity and talent, while Michel de Montaigne presented himself as the prototype of the erudite humanist.
Classic Period
The 17th century is the classic age of literature. One of the main figures of the period was François de Malherbe. Two factors influenced the acceptance of Malherbe's literary concepts:the salon of the Marquise de Rambouillet, considered the founder of Preciosismo, and the French Academy, which became state-owned in 1635 and was responsible for publishing the first dictionary. Another influential woman was the Marquise de Maintenon.
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was the leading literary critic and theorist of the classical period. Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, the most famous orator of the time, also stands out.
Pierre Corneille became the first of the great French masters of classical tragedy. His successor, Jean Baptiste Racine, was more valued. Molière would be recognized as the master of comedy.
It is worth noting the contribution of the Jansenists, a Puritan Catholic group. The leading figures of Jansenism are the philosopher, physicist, mathematician and mystic Blaise Pascal, the theological polemicists Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, in addition to the moralists Jean de la Bruyère and François de la Rochefoucauld. Jean de la Fontaine is considered one of the greatest fabulists of all time, while the best novelist of the time — mainly due to the psychological exploration of her characters — was Madame de La Fayette.
The century of lights
In the 18th century, the precursors of the Enlightenment were François de Salignac de la Mothe Fenélon, Bernard le Bovier Fontenelle and Pierre Bayle. However, who best embodies the spirit of this century is Voltaire. The writer Denis Diderot was in charge of designing and systematizing human knowledge in the Encyclopedia. A notorious book from this time, The Spirit of the Laws (1748-1750), by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, continues to influence modern political thought.
In fiction, Antrine François Prévost, Pierre de Marivaux and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos stand out. In poetry, the biggest name was André Chénier.
The work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau anticipated revolutionary ideas and inaugurated Romanticism. In the period of reaction that followed the French Revolution, the main writers were Count Joseph de Maistre and Viscount François René de Chateaubriand.
Romanticism
Of the numerous literary groups that emerged in the 19th century, the most important were the Romantics. Madame de Staël's novels anticipated the Romanticism of the next generation, formed by Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Dumas (father), Théophile Gautier and the poets Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset and Charles Nodier.
From the same period came the poet Pierre Jean de Béranger, the novelist George Sand - a pioneer of the social novel and one of the first feminists in history -, the historian Jules Michelet and some precursors of Socialism such as Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Pierre Proudhon and Louis Blanc. At an intermediate level are the works of historians François Guizot, Adolphe Thiers and Augustin Thierry, and the texts of Benjamin Constant.
Realism
Honoré de Balzac is considered the author who provides the transition between the romantic and the realist currents, integrated by Stendhal, Gustave Flaubert and Prosper Mérimée.
The realist Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve is considered the best French critic. His essays are prime examples of sociological and psychological criticism.
Parnassianism and Symbolism
The Parnassian poets Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme and José de Heredia reacted against Romanticism. Their work is more a return to Classicism than an innovation.
Baudelaire exerted a strong influence on the Symbolists, also pejoratively called decadents. The most important poets of this period were Paul Verlaine, Henri de Régnier, Stéphane Mallarmé, Isidore Ducasse (a Uruguayan who called himself Count de Lautréamont), Tristan Corbière, Charles Cros and Jules Laforgue. The most influential symbolist was Arthur Rimbaud who wrote his most representative poems before he turned 19.
Also in prose some writers sought symbolist effects, among them the literary critic Remy de Gourmont, Édouard Dujardin and the poet Henri de Régnier.
Naturalism
At the end of the 19th century, the current called Naturalism emerged, led by the historian and critic Hippolyte Taine and the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt.
Naturalism was adopted by Émile Zola, the most significant writer of this movement. In the field of short narrative, the most important author was Guy de Maupassant.
The work of the critic and historian Ernest Renan influenced the novelists Pierre Loti, Maurice Barrès and Anatole France.
The 20th century
In the 20th century, French literature diversified through individualist writers, among them Marcel Proust, author of In Search of Lost Time, one of the best novels ever written. The independence of thought can also be seen in Romain Rolland, André Gide and other authors such as Roger Martin du Gard, Francis Jammes and François Mauriac and Jean Cocteau, the latter a man who exercised his creativity in different artistic fields. Jean Giraudoux is considered a great stylist. The work of Jules Romains portrays the collective soul of society and Guillaume Apollinaire exerted a marked influence on modern art. Also noteworthy are the Catholic poet, playwright and apologist Paul Claudel and Paul Valéry who began as a symbolist and was one of the best psychological poets of his time.
Other famous prose writers are Henry de Montherlant, author of elegant novels, and Colette, whose keen insight unites her with the realists.
After World War I, the war theme occupies the works of Henri Barbusse and Roland Dorgelès, precursors of the anti-war books of the late 1920s. The essayist André Maurois wrote about the war in a humorous tone. Georges Duhamel treated the subject with irony and the works of Jean Giono show a militant pacifism and an antipathy to the hegemony of machines.
At the time of the artistic avant-gardes, a rebellion broke out against all traditional artistic forms. Dadaism and Surrealism emerge, the latter led by André Breton. Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard and Philippe Soupault are poets who participated in the surrealist movement.
Other novelists employed different resources to express the spirit of their times. Many are worth mentioning:André Malraux, the aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry — who came to be considered the best writer of his generation —, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Marguerite Yourcenar, Françoise Sagan and Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, whose works changed the French public opinion on political issues. Important poets of this century were Saint-John Perse and René Char.
In the 1940s, the philosophical and literary movement called Existentialism developed, integrated, among others, by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Albert Camus sought to find a worthy meaning for life without resorting to hypocrisy or false moralism, while revealing a nihilistic and hopeless view of the human condition. In his novel The Plague, a metaphor for the Nazi occupation and an appeal to dignity, Camus revealed his disbelief in men by writing the phrase "the natural is the microbe". Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 and died, aged 47, in a car accident.
In the 1950s, two schools of experimental literature emerged:the Antiteatro and the Teatro do Absurdo, whose main examples are the works of Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet.
Parallel to the anti-theatre, the nouveau roman was born, which manifested itself mainly in the narrative and theoretical works of Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Michel Butor.
In 1960 a new school of literary criticism appears, Structuralism, based on the work of the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Its greatest exponent was Roland Barthes. The last critical trend is known as Deconstruction and its pioneer is the philosopher and critic Jacques Derrida.
French Civilization