French Literature
This page covers French literature. McKee Library's collection includes numerous titles by French authors. We have included a selection of these titles in our reading list, linked below. The resources below cover the general topic, however, more information is available if you search for individual authors by name in the databases.
- French Literature McKee Library Reading ListAn French literature reading list. This is not an exhaustive list, rather a list of titles available in McKee Library's collection.
French Literature
- French Collection: McKee LibraryThe McKee Library French Collection consists of 105 titles and 189 volumes of works mostly written in French. The collection spans 255 years, with its earliest book published in 1711 and the most recent in 1966. It includes works by notable authors such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Flaubert. Although most of the titles are written in French, a few are written in Italian, English, German, and Latin. The collection covers a variety of subjects including history, philosophy, and literary criticism and also contains novels, memoirs, poetry, and plays.
- Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France)Gallica is the digital library of the National Library of France and its partners. Online since 1997, it is enriched every week with thousands of new features and today offers access to several million documents.
Resources
- French influence in AmericaThe first report of the new empire that France sought to carve for herself came from the pen of Champlain, who has been compared, both as a soldier and as a writer, to Caesar.
- French LiteratureFrench literature, the body of written works in the French language produced within the geographic and political boundaries of France. The French language was one of the five major Romance languages to develop from Vulgar Latin as a result of the Roman occupation of western Europe.
- French Literature Subject Guide: Gale Fine Arts CollectionA collection of resources on the topic of French literature in the Gale Fine Arts Collection.
- French Literature: Credo ReferenceA French literature topic guide from Credo Reference.
Emile Zola
Emile Zola: A Concise Biography
In this program from the Famous Authors series, the audience is offered an overview of the life and work of Emile Zola, starting with an introduction to the writer's parents and his important boyhood friendship with Paul Cezanne. The film discusses Zola's attachment to themes of nature and liberty. Eventually he was hired by the French publisher Hachette and began gaining social and literary success in Paris. The program also discusses the Dreyfus Affair, in which Zola courageously and publicly defended a Jewish military officer wrongly accused of treason. (37 minutes)
La Bête Humaine
No one can love her children like she does, can they? With a wonderful husband, two animated kids and an extended family who regard her as one of their own, Ella counts as her blessings. Yet when her soul mate Joe tragically drowns, her life is turned upside down without warning, and she finds that the luck, which she had thought would last forever, has run out. When Joes beautiful ex-wife, who three years earlier deserted their children, arrives at the funeral Ella fears the worst. She is right to. Ella discovers she must struggle with her own grief, whilst battling to remain with the children and the life which she loves. Questioning her own role as a mother, and trying to do what is right, all she is sure of is that she needs her family to make it through each day. Yet when pushed to the limits of love, Ella must decide whether she is, after all, the best mother for her children?
Author's Works & Perspectives
Bel-Ami
Guy de Maupassant's scandalous tale of an opportunistic young man corrupted by the allure of power, Bel-Ami is translated with an introduction by Douglas Parmee in Penguin Classics. Young, attractive and very ambitious, George Duroy, known to his admirers as Bel-Ami, is offered a job as a journalist on La Vie francaise and soon makes a great success of his new career. But he also comes face to face with the realities of the corrupt society in which he lives - the sleazy colleagues, the manipulative mistresses and wily financiers - and swiftly learns to become an arch-seducer, blackmailer and social climber in a world where love is only a means to an end. Written when Maupassant was at the height of his powers, Bel-Ami is a novel of great frankness and cynicism, but it is also infused with the sheer joy of life - depicting the scenes and characters of Paris in the belle epoque with wit, sensitivity and humanity. Douglas Parmee's translation captures all the vigour and vitality of Maupassant's novel. His introduction explores the similarities between Bel-Ami and Maupassant himself and demonstrates the skill with which the author depicts his large cast of characters and the French society of the Third Republic. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was born in Normandy. By the late 1870s, the first signs of syphilis had appeared, and Maupassant had become Flaubert's pupil in the art of prose. He led a hectic social life, and in 1891, having tried to commit suicide, he was committed to an asylum in Paris, where he died two years later. If you enjoyed Bel-Ami, you might like William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, also available in Penguin Classics.
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
"Ugly and unwanted by the outside world, Quasimodo, the hunchback lives under the protection of the priest in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, France. Then his quiet life is destroyed by the priest's evil plans for a beautiful gypsy girl. The priest needs Quasimodo's help, but the hunchback has other ideas"--P. [4] of cover.
Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
An eccentric Englishman accepts a challenge to circle the globe with unprecedented speed. Exotic locales, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and comic relief provide a fantastic blend of adventure, entertainment and suspense.
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
The life of Victor Hugo, one of the giants of French literature, is a study in contrasts. This program chronicles how a man born into humble circumstances became a staunch monarchist and then a political liberal and supporter of the French republic. Though he lived many years in exile, Hugo was considered the conscience of the Republic, and his fame as a political force rivaled his renown as the author of plays, prose, and poetry. As a writer, he conquered the stage for Romanticism with his play Hernani and captured the imagination of untold millions with his epic novel Les Misérables. Readings from Hugo’s vast oeuvre are included throughout the program. (25 minutes)
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
"Ugly and unwanted by the outside world, Quasimodo, the hunchback lives under the protection of the priest in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, France. Then his quiet life is destroyed by the priest's evil plans for a beautiful gypsy girl. The priest needs Quasimodo's help, but the hunchback has other ideas"--P. [4] of cover.
Les Miserables
It has been said that Victor Hugo has a street named after him in virtually every town in France. A major reason for the singular celebrity of this most popular and versatile of the great French writers is "Les Miserables "(1862). In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean--a man unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert--Hugo achieves the sort of rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre. "Les Miserables "is at once a tense thriller that contains one of the most compelling chase scenes in all literature, an epic portrayal of the nineteenth-century French citizenry, and a vital drama--highly particularized and poetic in its rendition but universal in its implications--of the redemption of one human being.
Victor Hugo on Things That Matter
Victor Hugo on Things That Matter gives English speakers the social, historical, cultural, and biographical context that is essential for enjoying the writing and art of this genius of nineteenth-century France. The book's topical organization lets readers investigate Hugo's ideas about private and personal concerns--love, children, grief, nature, God--as well as public and politically important issues--liberty and democracy, tyranny, social justice, humanity, peace, and war. Unlike other Hugo anthologies, Victor Hugo on Things That Matter offers introductions and notes in English and includes twenty-five of Hugo's watercolors and drawings. Readers will find key Hugo texts in the original French, along with the following supplemental information in English: an overview of Hugo's importance and his private and public personas; introductions to each chapter; historical and cultural explanatory notes; a time line of Hugo's life and work; suggestions for further reading. Marva Barnett is professor at the University of Virginia, where she also serves as director of the Teaching Resource Center.
Guy de Maupassant
Maupassant: Four Fantastic Stories
This series dramatizes four short stories from the 19th-century author Guy de Maupassant, the master of "fantastic" literature, which explores the ambiguity between reality and phantoms of the mind. Likewise, his portrayal of the petite bourgeoisie offers a scathing criticism of his subjects and their world. The series allows a glimpse of 19th-century French society and facilitates an appreciation of French culture and history through literature. In French. 4-part series.
Bel-Ami
Guy de Maupassant's scandalous tale of an opportunistic young man corrupted by the allure of power, Bel-Ami is translated with an introduction by Douglas Parmee in Penguin Classics. Young, attractive and very ambitious, George Duroy, known to his admirers as Bel-Ami, is offered a job as a journalist on La Vie francaise and soon makes a great success of his new career. But he also comes face to face with the realities of the corrupt society in which he lives - the sleazy colleagues, the manipulative mistresses and wily financiers - and swiftly learns to become an arch-seducer, blackmailer and social climber in a world where love is only a means to an end. Written when Maupassant was at the height of his powers, Bel-Ami is a novel of great frankness and cynicism, but it is also infused with the sheer joy of life - depicting the scenes and characters of Paris in the belle epoque with wit, sensitivity and humanity. Douglas Parmee's translation captures all the vigour and vitality of Maupassant's novel. His introduction explores the similarities between Bel-Ami and Maupassant himself and demonstrates the skill with which the author depicts his large cast of characters and the French society of the Third Republic. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was born in Normandy. By the late 1870s, the first signs of syphilis had appeared, and Maupassant had become Flaubert's pupil in the art of prose. He led a hectic social life, and in 1891, having tried to commit suicide, he was committed to an asylum in Paris, where he died two years later. If you enjoyed Bel-Ami, you might like William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, also available in Penguin Classics.
Une Vie
Jeanne, fille unique tr s choy e du baron et de la baronne Le Perthuis des Vauds, avait tout pour tre heureuse. Son mariage avec Julien de Lamare, rustre et avare, se r v lera une catastrophe. Sa vie sera une suite d' preuves et de d sillusions. Ce roman, le premier de Guy de Maupassant, est une peinture remarquable des moeurs provinciales de la Normandie du xixe si cle: hobereaux, domestiques, paysans y sont d crits avec beaucoup de r alisme.