French literature facts for kids
French literature is all the amazing stories, poems, and plays written in France. It also includes works written in the French language by authors from other countries. Many countries around the world speak French, like Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Algeria, and Morocco. When literature is written in French but not from France itself, it's often called Francophone literature.
Contents
The Story of French Literature
The French language grew from Latin, which was spoken by the ancient Romans. French is a Romance language, just like Spanish and Italian. It was also shaped by older languages like Celtic and Frankish.
French literature has a very long and rich history. It became very important in Europe, especially during the Middle Ages. Over time, French writing continued to grow and change. It has influenced many other literatures around the world.
French Nobel Prize Winners
Many French or French-speaking authors have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. This is a very famous award given to writers who have created amazing works. Here are some of them:
- 1901 - Sully Prudhomme (He was the very first person to win this Nobel Prize for literature!)
- 1904 - Frédéric Mistral (He wrote in a language called Occitan, which is spoken in parts of southern France.)
- 1911 - Maurice Maeterlinck (He was from Belgium.)
- 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 (He chose not to accept the prize.)
- 1969 - Samuel Beckett (He was Irish and wrote in both English and French.)
- 1985 - Claude Simon
- 2000 - Gao Xingjian (He writes in Chinese.)
Famous French Books and Plays
French literature has many classic works that people still read and study today. Here are some of the most famous ones, grouped by type and time period.
Well-Known French Fiction Books
- 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 series of novels including 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), and many other short stories
- Émile Zola - Les Rougon-Macquart (a novel series including 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
Famous French Poems
- 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
Well-Known French Plays
- 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
Important French Non-Fiction Books
- 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
Related pages
- French culture
- French art
- List of French language authors
- List of French language poets
- French science fiction
- Fantastique
Images for kids
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Paul Verlaine (far left) and Arthur Rimbaud (second to left) in an 1872 painting by Henri Fantin-Latour.
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Samuel Beckett Walk, Paris (France). He won the Nobel Prize in 1969.
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A seminar with Claude Simon in Cerisy, France. He won the Nobel Prize in 1985.
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A French contemporary literature workshop in Cerisy, France, 1980.
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See also
In Spanish: Literatura francesa para niños
