A guide to French literature

This guide maps the history of French literature from Rabelais, Ronsard and Montaigne to Beckett, Perec, Duras and Koltés. A chronological narrative develops original readings of authors and texts and discusses the literary, historical and socio-cultural contexts of their production. Changes in the technology and organization of printing and publishing, the growth of literacy and the changing nature of the reading public are charted, along with the development and transformation of literary genres by the creative energies of individual writers. The authors emphasize the interconnections of social and political history and the history of literary language, mapping out the terrain on which the subjects of French literature constantly reinvent themselves in writing. Plays, poetry and prose by the great writers of the French literary tradition are discussed alongside work recovered from the canonical margins by new scholarship and different critical perspectives. Attention is given to new directions in contemporary thought, women's writing and francophone literature.