Insights
Napoleon Bonaparte occupied an unusual place in French literature. He was a historical ruler, a military strategist, a lawgiver, a defeated emperor, and a…
Daniel Lesueur is the name attached to a substantial body of French fiction, poetry, journalism, and social commentary. Behind that masculine pen name stood…
Pierre Louÿs occupies a distinctive place in French fin-de-siècle literature. His poems are sensual, theatrical, and steeped in images of antiquity, yet they…
Jules Renard’s diaries offer a remarkably sharp portrait of French rural life at the turn of the twentieth century. Rather than presenting the countryside as a…
In the 19th century, literature written in the language of Provence became the center of a remarkable cultural revival. The Félibrige movement brought together…
Victor Segalen occupies a distinctive place in French literature of empire. Born in Brest in 1878, trained as a naval doctor, and sent to Polynesia and China,…
Jules Laforgue occupies a distinctive place in late nineteenth-century French poetry. His work is filled with moons, trains, boulevards, cafés, illness,…
Camille Flammarion occupies a distinctive place in nineteenth-century French literature. He was an astronomer, science writer, lecturer, and imaginative…
The letters exchanged by George Sand and Gustave Flaubert preserve one of the most revealing literary friendships of nineteenth-century France. Their…
The early French novel emerged from a lively mixture of courtly fiction, heroic romance, moral reflection, travel narrative, and short prose tales. It did not…