History of Modern French Literature

Christopher Prendergast is professor emeritus of French literature at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of King's College and the British Academy. He is the general editor of the Penguin Proust, and his many books include Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic (Princeton).

• Contents List of Contributors, ix Introduction (1): Aims, Methods, Stories, 1 Christopher Prendergast Introduction (2): The Frenchness of French Literature, 20 David Coward Erasmus and the "First Renaissance" in France, 47 Edwin M. Duval Rabelais and the Low Road to Modernity, 71 Raymond Geuss Marguerite de Navarre: Renaissance Woman, 91 Wes Williams Ronsard: Poet Laureate, Public Intellectual, Cultural Creator, 113 Timothy J. Reiss Du Bellay and La deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse, 137 Hassan Melehy Montaigne: Philosophy before Philosophy, 155 Timothy Hampton Moliere, Theater, and Modernity, 171 Christopher Braider Racine, Phedre, and the French Classical Stage, 190 Nicholas Paige Lafayette: La Princesse de Cleves and the Conversational Culture of Seventeenth-Century Fiction, 212 Katherine Ibbett From Moralists to Libertines, 229 Eric Mechoulan Travel Narratives in the Seventeenth Century: La Fontaine and Cyrano de Bergerac, 250 Judith Sribnai The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, 269 Larry F. Norman Voltaire's Candide: Lessons of Enlightenment and the Search for Truth, 291 Nicholas Cronk Disclosures of the Boudoir: The Novel in the Eighteenth Century, 312 Pierre Saint-Amand Women's Voices in Enlightenment France, 330 Catriona Seth Comedy in the Age of Reason, 351 Susan Maslan Diderot, Le neveu de Rameau, and the Figure of the Philosophe in Eighteenth-Century Paris, 371 Kate E. Tunstall Rousseau's First Person, 393 Joanna Stalnaker Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self-Invention: Stendhal and Balzac, 414 Aleksandar Stevic Hugo and Romantic Drama: The (K)night of the Red, 436 Sarah Rocheville and Etienne Beaulieu Flaubert and Madame Bovary, 451 Peter Brooks Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud: Poetry, Consciousness, and Modernity, 470 Clive Scott Mallarme and Poetry: Stitching the Random, 495 Roger Pearson Becoming Proust in Time, 514 Michael Lucey Celine/Malraux: Politics and the Novel in the 1930s, 534 Steven Ungar Breton, Char, and Modern French Poetry, 554 Mary Ann Caws Cesaire: Poetry and Politics, 575 Mary Gallagher Sartre's La Nausee and the Modern Novel, 595 Christopher Prendergast Beckett's French Contexts, 615 Jean-Michel Rabate Djebar and the Birth of "Francophone" Literature, 634 Nicholas Harrison Acknowledgments, 653 Index, 655

"In this splendid essay anthology, Prendergast gathers a stellar cast of scholars to provide a wide-ranging and thoughtful introduction to French literature... [E]very contribution here brings the history of French literature to vivid life, providing rich insights and inviting well-repaid rereading."--Publishers Weekly "[A] survey of 400 years of literature in French that is both useful and interesting... [A]nyone preparing to teach a French literature survey for the first time will find the book a godsend."--Choice