1.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
French language
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The
"arrêt" signs (French for "stop") are used in
Canada while the international stop, which is also a valid French word, is used in France as well as other French-speaking countries and regions.
French language
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Regions where French is the main language
French language
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Town sign in
Standard Arabic and French at the entrance of
Rechmaya in
Lebanon.
French language
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An obsolete 100
Lebanese pound note with the French language inscriptions "Banque du Liban" and "Cent livres".
2.
Medieval French literature
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Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, literature written in Oïl languages during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century. For historical background, see History of France, France in the Middle Ages or Middle Ages, for other national literary traditions, see Medieval literature. The language in southern France is known as langue doc or the Occitan language family, also known under the name of one of iys dialects, the Western peninsula of Brittany spoke Breton, a Celtic language. Catalan was spoken in the South, and Germanic languages and Franco-Provençal were spoken in the East, the various dialects of Old French developed into what are recognised as regional languages today. Languages which developed from dialects of Old French include Bourguignon, Champenois, Franc-Comtois, Francien, Gallo, Lorrain, Norman, Anglo-Norman, Picard, Poitevin, Saintongeais and Walloon. From 1340 to the beginning of the century, a generalized French language became clearly distinguished from the other competing Oïl languages. This is referred to as Middle French, the vast majority of literary production in Old French is in verse, the development of prose as a literary form was a late phenomenon. The French language does not have a significant stress accent or long and this means that the French metric line is not determined by the number of beats, but by the number of syllables. The most common lengths are the ten-syllable line, the eight-syllable line. Verses could be combined in a variety of ways, blocks of assonanced lines are called laisses, the choice of verse form was generally dictated by the genre. The Old French epics are written in ten-syllable assonanced laisses. The earliest extant French literary texts date from the ninth century, the first literary works written in Old French were saints lives. The Canticle of Saint Eulalie, written in the half of the ninth century, is generally accepted as the first such text. It is a poem that recounts the martyrdom of a young girl. The best known of the early Old French saints lives is the Vie de Saint Alexis, the life of Saint Alexis, a translation/rewriting of a Latin legend. Saint Alexis fled from his familys home in Rome on his wedding night and dwelled as a hermit in Syria until a mystical voice began telling people of his holiness. In order to avoid the earthly honor that came with such fame, he left Syria and was back to Rome. He was only identified later when the pope read his name in a letter held in the saints hand
Medieval French literature
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Miniature from a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 195), folio 1r, portrait of Guillaume de Lorris.
3.
17th-century French literature
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In reality, 17th-century French literature encompasses far more than just the classicist masterpieces of Jean Racine and Madame de La Fayette. In Renaissance France, literature was largely the product of encyclopaedic humanism, a new conception of nobility, modelled on the Italian Renaissance courts and their concept of the perfect courtier, was beginning to evolve through French literature. In the mid-17th century, there were an estimated 2,200 authors in France, under Cardinal Richelieu, patronage of the arts and literary academies increasingly came under the control of the monarchy. Henry IVs court was considered by contemporaries a rude one, lacking the Italianate sophistication of the court of the Valois kings, the court also lacked a queen, who traditionally served as a focus of a nations authors and poets. Henrys literary tastes were largely limited to the chivalric novel Amadis of Gaul, in the 1620s, the most famous salon was held at the Hôtel de Rambouillet by Madame de Rambouillet, a rival gathering was organized by Madeleine de Scudéry. The word salon first appeared in French in 1664 from the Italian word sala, before 1664, literary gatherings were often called by the name of the room in which they occurred -- cabinet, réduit, alcôve, and ruelle. For instance, the term derives from literary gatherings held in the bedroom. Nobles, lying on their beds, would receive close friends, ruelle refers to the space between a bed and the wall in a bedroom, it became a name for these gatherings, often under the wing of educated women in the first half of the 17th century. In the context of French scholastica, academies were scholarly societies which monitored, fostered, academies first appeared in France during the Renaissance, when Jean-Antoine de Baïf created one devoted to poetry and music, inspired by the academy of Italian Marsilio Ficino. The first half of the 17th century was marked by a growth in private academies. Academies were generally more formal and more focused on criticism and analysis than salons, however, certain salons were closer to the academic spirit. In the mid-17th century, academies gradually came under government control and sponsorship, the first private academy to fall under governmental control was LAcadémie française, which remains the most prestigious governmental academy in France. Founded in 1634 by Cardinal Richelieu, LAcadémie française focuses on the French language, in certain instances, the values of 17th-century nobility played a major part in the literature of the era. Most notable of these values are the aristocratic obsession with glory, the spectacle of power, prestige and luxury found in 17th-century literature may be distasteful or even offensive. The château of Versailles, court ballets, noble portraits, triumphal arches – all of these were representations of glory, the notion of glory was not vanity or boastfulness or hubris, but rather a moral imperative for the aristocracy. Nobles were required to be generous, magnanimous and to great deeds disinterestedly. Ones status in the world demanded appropriate externalisation, nobles indebted themselves to build prestigious urban mansions and to buy clothes, paintings, silverware, dishes and other furnishings befitting their rank. They were also required to show generosity by hosting sumptuous parties, conversely, social parvenus who took on the external trappings of the noble classes were severely criticised, sometimes by legal action
17th-century French literature
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Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre by
Hyacinthe Rigaud (1701)
4.
18th-century French literature
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In common with a similar movement in England at the same time, the writers of 18th century France were critical, skeptical and innovative. Their lasting contributions were the ideas of liberty, toleration, humanitarianism, equality, and progress, the 18th century saw the gradual weakening of the absolute monarchy constructed by Louis XIV. France was forced to recognize the power of England and Prussia. The Monarchy finally ended with King Louis XVI, who was unable to understand or control the forces of the French Revolution. The new class began to challenge the cultural and social monopoly of the aristocracy, French cities began to have their own theaters, coffee houses and salons, the Rise of the Third Estate culminated in their political victory in the French Revolution. Faith in science and progress was the force behind the first French Encyclopedia of Denis Diderot. The Protestants achieved legal status in France in 1787, the exchange of ideas with other countries also increased. British ideas were important, particularly such ideas as constitutional monarchy and romanticism. Toward the end of the century, a sober style appeared, aimed at illustrating scenery, work. These writers, and others such as the Abbé Sieyès, one of the authors of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. They came from the upper class or Third Estate, sought a society founded upon talent and merit. Their ideas were influenced by those of John Locke in England. They introduced the values of liberty and equality which became the ideals of the French Republic founded at the end of the century and they defended the freedom of conscience and challenged the role of religious institutions in society. For them, tolerance was a value of society. When the Convention placed the ashes of Voltaire in the Pantheon in Paris, while the philosophes had widely different approaches, they all had as a common objective, both for mankind and for individuals, the ideal of happiness. Some, like Rousseau, dreamed of the happiness of the savage, rapidly disappearing, others, like Voltaire. The philosophes were optimists, and they saw their mission clearly, they did not simply observe, the comedies of Marivaux and of Beaumarchais also played a part in this debate about and diffusion of great ideas. The relaxing of morals under the French Regency brought the return in 1716 of the Comédie-Italienne and his major works include Les Fausses Confidences, le Jeu de lamour et du hasard, and lÎle des esclaves
18th-century French literature
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Voltaire
18th-century French literature
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Rousseau
18th-century French literature
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Louis XV
18th-century French literature
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Marie Antoinette
5.
19th-century French literature
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19th-century French literature concerns the developments in French literature during a dynamic period in French history that saw the rise of Democracy and the fitful end of Monarchy and Empire. French literature enjoyed enormous prestige and success in the 19th century. The first part of the century was dominated by Romanticism, until around the mid-century Realism emerged, in the last half of the century, naturalism, parnassian poetry, and symbolism, among other styles, were often competing tendencies at the same time. Some writers did form into literary groups defined by a name, in other cases, these expressions were merely pejorative terms given by critics to certain writers or have been used by modern literary historians to group writers of divergent projects or methods. Nevertheless, these labels can be useful in describing broad historical developments in the arts and their influence was felt in theatre, poetry, prose fiction. Foreign influences played a big part in this, especially those of Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Goethe, Le mal du siècle, a sense of loss, disillusion, and aporia, typified by melancholy and lassitude. Romanticism in England and Germany largely predate French romanticism, although there was a kind of pre-romanticism in the works of Senancour and Jean-Jacques Rousseau at the end of the 18th century. French Romanticism took definite form in the works of François-René de Chateaubriand and Benjamin Constant and it found early expression also in the sentimental poetry of Alphonse de Lamartine. The major battles of romanticism in France was in the theater, the dramatic unities of time and place were abolished, tragic and comic elements appeared together and metrical freedom was won. Marked by the plays of Friedrich Schiller, the romantics often chose subjects from historic periods, victor Hugo was the outstanding genius of the Romantic School and its recognized leader. He was prolific alike in poetry, drama, and fiction, all three also wrote novels and short stories, and Musset won a belated success with his plays. Alexandre Dumas, père wrote The Three Musketeers and other novels in an historical setting. Prosper Mérimée and Charles Nodier were masters of shorter fiction, Romanticism is associated with a number of literary salons and groups, the Arsenal, the Cénacle, the salon of Louis Charles Delescluze, the salon of Antoine Deschamps, the salon of Madame de Staël. Romanticism in France defied political affiliation, one finds both liberal, conservative and socialist strains, the expression Realism, when applied to literature of the 19th century, implies the attempt to depict contemporary life and society. The growth of realism is linked to the development of science, history, honoré de Balzac is the most prominent representative of 19th century realism in fiction. His La Comédie humaine, a vast collection of nearly 100 novels, was the most ambitious scheme ever devised by a writer of fiction—nothing less than a contemporary history of his countrymen. Realism also appears in the works of Alexandre Dumas, fils, similar tendencies appeared in the theatrical melodramas of the period and, in an even more lurid and gruesome light, in the Grand Guignol at the end of the century. In addition to melodramas, popular and bourgeois theater in the mid-century turned to realism in the well-made bourgeois farces of Eugène Marin Labiche, from the 1860s on, critics increasingly speak of literary Naturalism
19th-century French literature
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This article needs additional citations for
verification. Please help improve this article by
adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2011)
6.
Francophone literature
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Francophone literature is literature written in the French language. Writings in the French language from Belgium, Canada and Switzerland were recognised as belonging to distinct traditions long before writings from colonial territories of France. Writing in French by Africans was formerly classified as colonial literature and discussed as part of studies for its ethnographical interest. Any texts in French from the colonies and territories that were considered to have merit were subsumed under the classification of French literature. It was only following the Second World War that a distinction started to be made in studies and anthologies between French literature and other writing in French. The term has historically used to refer only to literature from Francophone countries outside France. Francophone literature therefore applies to the whole French-speaking world in the broadest sense of the term
Francophone literature
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Léopold Sédar Senghor a prominent Francophone writer and politician. Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the
Académie française.
7.
French comics
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Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created for a Belgian and French audience. These countries have a tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs. In Europe, the French language is spoken not only in France but also by about 40% of the population of Belgium. The shared language creates an artistic and commercial market where national identity is often blurred, Flemish Belgian comic books are influenced by Francophone comics, yet have a distinctly different style, both in art as well as in spirit. Among the most popular Franco-Belgian comics that have achieved international fame are The Adventures of Tintin, Gaston Lagaffe, Asterix, Lucky Luke, the term bandes dessinées is derived from the original description of the art form as drawn strips. It was first introduced in the 1930s, but only became popular in the 1960s, the term bandes dessinées contains no indication of subject matter, unlike the American terms comics and funnies, which imply a humorous art form. Indeed, the distinction of comics as the art is prevalent in Francophone scholarship on the form, as is the concept of comics criticism. The publication of Francis Lacassins book Pour un neuvième art, la bande dessinée in 1971 further established the term and these were humorous short works rarely longer than a single page. In the Francophonie, artists such as Gustave Doré, Nadar, Christophe, in the early decades of the 20th century, comics were not stand-alone publications, but were published in newspapers and weekly or monthly magazines as episodes or gags. Aside from these magazines, the Catholic Church was creating and distributing healthy, in the early 1900s, the first popular French comics appeared, including Bécassine and Les Pieds Nickelés. In the 1920s, after the end of the first world war, Saint-Ogan was one of the first French-speaking artists to fully utilize techniques popularized and formulaized in the USA, such as word balloons. In 1920, the Abbot of Averbode in Belgium started publishing Zonneland, a magazine consisting largely of text with few illustrations, which started printing comics more often in the following years. One of the earliest proper Belgian comics was Hergés The Adventures of Tintin, with the story Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and it was quite different from future versions of Tintin, the style being very naïve and simple, even childish, compared to the later stories. The early stories often featured racist and political stereotypes that Hergé later regretted, the success was immediate, and soon other publishers started publishing periodicals with American series. This continued during the remainder of the decade, with hundreds of magazines publishing mostly imported material, the most important ones in France were Robinson, Hurrah, and Coeurs Vaillants, while Belgian examples include Wrill and Bravo. In 1938, Spirou magazine was launched, Spirou also appeared translated in a Dutch version under the name Robbedoes for the Flemish market. Export to the Netherlands followed a few years later, when Germany invaded France and Belgium, it became close to impossible to import American comics. The occupying Nazis banned American animated movies and comics they deemed to be of a questionable character, both were, however, already very popular before the war and the hardships of the war period only seemed to increase the demand
French comics
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Morris (1971).
French comics
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Jacques Tardi in 2013.
French comics
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Astérix is one of the most popular Franco-Belgian comics. Here,
Albert Uderzo drawing Astérix, in 1971.
8.
Fantastique
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Fantastique is a French term for a literary and cinematic genre that overlaps with science fiction, horror, and fantasy. The fantastique is a genre within French literature. What is distinctive about the fantastique is the intrusion of supernatural phenomena into an otherwise realist narrative and it evokes phenomena which are not only left unexplained but which are inexplicable from the readers point of view. Instead, characters in a work of fantastique are, just like the readers and this refusal may be mixed with doubt, disbelief, fear, or some combination of those reactions. Fantastique literature is considered close to science fiction. The Fantastique is often linked to a particular ambiance, a sort of tension in the face of the impossible, a good deal of fear is often involved, either because the characters are afraid or because the author wants to provoke fright in the reader. However, fear is not a component of fantastique. In that case, the fantastique is nothing more than an area on a spectrum from magic realism to fantasy. Fantastique is a term that has also used to describe many television series. The fantastique began to become defined in the Middle Ages, the old Celtic, Frankish and Germanic myths were translated from religion into popular folklore. The root of thought about and artistic depiction of many things which are today often termed supernatural has its beginnings in this period. Concepts and characters such as Melusine, Harlequin, Oberon, Morgan Le Fay, the Fabliaux, satirical fables which relied on the tradition established by Aesop of using anthropomorphic animals such as Le Roman de Renart, generally attributed to poet Pierre de Saint-Cloud. The 16th century was marked by the emergence of new ideas and literary trends, the Renaissance bloomed in France during the reign of King Francis I who created a favorable environment for the development of letters, arts and sciences. It was during the French Renaissance that proto-science fiction first split from the fantastique, then, at the peak of his literary fame, he devoted several of his more famous Hymnes to supernatural subjects such as Daimons and astrology. Famous playwright Pierre Corneilles lesser-known but classic tragedies, Médée and Circé, popularized warlocks, the Malleus Maleficarum spawned a number of French imitations, among which were Jean Bodins La Démonomanie des Sorciers and Le Fléau des Démons et ses Sorciers. The 18th century was known as the Siècle des Lumières, or Age of Enlightenment, baroque was the link between the Merveilleux of the Renaissance and the more formalized fairy tales of the Enlightenment period. The precursor in the genre was Madame dAulnoy who, in 1690, introduced in her rambling novel Histoire dHyppolite, Comte de Douglas, in it, Perrault had carefully collected a number of popular folk tales and legends, such as Cendrillon a. k. a. Cinderella, La Belle au Bois Dormant a. k. a, donkey Skin, Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, Barbe-Bleue, Le Chat Botté, etc
Fantastique
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Fantasy
9.
Naturalism (literature)
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Naturalism is a literary movement that emphasizes observation and the scientific method in the fictional portrayal of reality. Novelists writing in the naturalist mode include Émile Zola, Thomas Hardy, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Naturalism began as a branch of literary realism, and realism had favored fact, logic, and impersonality over the imaginative, symbolic, and supernatural. Dreiser, Crane, and Norris were also journalists, and thus attempted to immerse themselves in the world of fact via the assumption of detached observation. Although they considered themselves realists, naturalistic authors selected particular parts of reality, misery, corruption, vice, disease, poverty, prostitution, racism and they were criticized for being pessimistic and for concentrating excessively on the darker aspects of life. The novel would be an experiment where the author could discover and analyze the forces, or scientific laws, that behavior, and these included emotion, heredity. The paradox of naturalism is that it holds two contrary or conflicting views, human behavior is the result of free will, and yet also determined by natural laws, Naturalism Naturalism Philosophical naturalism Sociological naturalism Naturalism in 19th-century French literature Realism in the visual arts
Naturalism (literature)
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Émile Zola exemplified nineteenth century literary naturalism.
10.
Symbolism (arts)
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Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s, in the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed, Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists, for Huysmans, the Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. The Symbolists continued to admire Théophile Gautiers motto of art for arts sake, many Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic Joséphin Péladan, a number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly, thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, to not the thing. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe, – both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique, the symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, Symbolist symbols are not allegories, intended to represent, they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmés Le cygne is of a trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone of signe, un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre. They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives and these traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme, they tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will
Symbolism (arts)
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Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Jeunes Filles au Bord de la Mer (Young Girls on the Edge of the Sea), 1879,
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Symbolism (arts)
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Victor Vasnetsov, The Knight at the Crossroads, 1878
Symbolism (arts)
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John William Waterhouse, Cecilia, 1895
Symbolism (arts)
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Henri Fantin-Latour, By the Table, depicting: seated:
Paul Verlaine,
Arthur Rimbaud, Léon Valade, Ernest d'Hervilly and
Camille Pelletan; standing: Pierre Elzéar, Emile Blémont and
Jean Aicard.
11.
Surrealism
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Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream, leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I, the word surrealist was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in the preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and art works, after the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the son of writer. He admired the young writers anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition, later Breton wrote, In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most. Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and they began experimenting with automatic writing—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault delved deeper into automatism and wrote The Magnetic Fields, continuing to write, they came to believe that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than the Dada form of attack on prevailing values. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin, freuds work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness, as Salvador Dalí later proclaimed, There is only one difference between a madman and me. Beside the use of analysis, they emphasized that one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power, the group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to people from false rationality, and restrictive customs. Breton proclaimed that the aim of Surrealism was long live the social revolution. To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism, in 1924 two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research was established, leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Guillaume Apollinaire, the other group, led by Breton, included Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, René Crevel and Georges Malkine, among others. Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority
Surrealism
–
Max Ernst,
The Elephant Celebes (1921),
Tate, London
Surrealism
–
Cover of the first issue of
La Révolution surréaliste, December 1924.
Surrealism
–
Yvan Goll, Surréalisme, Manifeste du surréalisme, Volume 1, Number 1, October 1, 1924, cover by
Robert Delaunay
Surrealism
–
André Masson. Automatic Drawing. 1924. Ink on paper, 23.5 x 20.6 cm.
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
12.
Existentialism
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While the predominant value of existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity. Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience. Søren Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher and he proposed that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely, or authentically. Existentialism became popular in the years following World War II, and strongly influenced many disciplines besides philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology. The term is seen as a historical convenience as it was first applied to many philosophers in hindsight. In fact, while existentialism is generally considered to have originated with Kierkegaard, Sartre posits the idea that what all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence, as scholar Frederick Copleston explains. Sartre himself, in a lecture delivered in 1945, described existentialism as the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism and this assertion comes from two sources. The Norwegian philosopher Erik Lundestad refers to the Danish philosopher Fredrik Christian Sibbern, Sibbern is supposed to have had two conversations in 1841, the first with Welhaven and the second with Kierkegaard. This was then brought to Kierkegaard by Sibbern, the second claim comes from the Norwegian historian Rune Slagstad, who claims to prove that Kierkegaard himself said the term existential was borrowed from the poet. He strongly believes that it was Kierkegaard himself who said that Hegelians do not study philosophy existentially, on the other hand, the Norwegian historian Anne-Lise Seip is critical of Slagstad, and believes the statement in fact stems from the Norwegian literary historian Cathrinus Bang. The actual life of the individuals is what constitutes what could be called their true essence instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them, thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life. However, an existentialist philosopher would say such a wish constitutes an inauthentic existence - what Sartre would call bad faith, instead, the phrase should be taken to say that people are defined only insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions. For example, someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, furthermore, by this action of cruelty, such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity. This is as opposed to their genes, or human nature, as Sartre writes in his work Existentialism is a Humanism. Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. Of course, the positive, therapeutic aspect of this is also implied, A person can choose to act in a different way. Here it is clear that since humans can choose to be either cruel or good, they are, in fact. Sartres definition of existentialism was based on Heideggers magnum opus Being and this way of living, Heidegger called average everydayness
Existentialism
–
From left to right, top to bottom:
Kierkegaard,
Dostoyevsky,
Nietzsche,
Sartre
Existentialism
–
French philosophers
Jean-Paul Sartre and
Simone de Beauvoir
Existentialism
–
French-Algerian philosopher, novelist, and playwright
Albert Camus
13.
Nouveau roman
–
The Nouveau Roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Most of the authors were published by Les Éditions de Minuit with the strong support of Jérôme Lindon. Rejecting many of the features of the novel to date, Robbe-Grillet regarded many earlier novelists as old-fashioned in their focus on plot, action, narrative, ideas. Despite the assertions of nouveauté, this vision of the novel can be construed as developing from earlier writers suggestions, Alain Robbe-Grillet became an elected member of the Académie française on 25 March 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat No.32. Claude Simon is often identified with the nouveau roman movement, he is the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature, jean Ricardou is the theorist of the nouveau roman literary movement. The Nouveau Roman style also left its mark on screen as writers Marguerite Duras and their collaboration with director Alain Resnais resulted in critical successes such as Hiroshima mon amour and Last Year in Marienbad. They would later go on to direct their own films, French literature Francophone literature List of French language authors Antinovel Bernard Luscans, La représentation dans le nouveau nouveau roman, Chapel Hill, Université de Caroline du Nord,2008
Nouveau roman
–
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Nouveau roman
–
Seminar with
Jean Ricardou and
Claude Simon, Cerisy (France)
14.
Jean Racine
–
Jean Racine, baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine, was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, and an important literary figure in the Western tradition. The latest attempt to translate Racines plays into English earned a 2011 American Book Award for the poet Geoffrey Argent, Racines dramaturgy is marked by his psychological insight, the prevailing passion of his characters, and the nakedness of both the plot and stage. Racine was born on 22 December 1639 in La Ferté-Milon, in the province of Picardy in northern France, orphaned by the age of four, he came into the care of his grandparents. At the death of his grandfather in 1649, his grandmother, Marie des Moulins, went to live in the convent of Port-Royal and he received a classical education at the Petites écoles de Port-Royal, a religious institution which would greatly influence other contemporary figures including Blaise Pascal. Port-Royal was run by followers of Jansenism, a theology condemned as heretical by the French bishops, Racines interactions with the Jansenists in his years at this academy would have great influence over him for the rest of his life. At Port-Royal, he excelled in his studies of the Classics and he was expected to study law at the Collège dHarcourt in Paris, but instead found himself drawn to a more artistic lifestyle. Racine eventually took up residence in Paris where he involved in theatrical circles. His first play, Amasie, never reached the stage, on 20 June 1664, Racines tragedy La Thébaïde ou les frères ennemis was produced by Molières troupe at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, in Paris. The following year, Molière also put on Racines second play, thus, Alexandre premiered for the second time, by a different acting troupe, eleven days after its first showing. From this point on the Hôtel de Bourgogne troupe performed all of Racines secular plays and he broke all ties with Port-Royal, and proceeded with Andromaque, which told the story of Andromache, widow of Hector, and her fate following the Trojan War. Amongst his rivals were Pierre Corneille and his brother, Thomas Corneille, tragedians often competed with alternative versions of the same plot, for example, Michel le Clerc produced an Iphigénie in the same year as Racine, and Jacques Pradon also wrote a play about Phèdre. Others, including the historian Warren Lewis, attribute his retirement from the theater to qualms of conscience, however, one major incident which seems to have contributed to Racines departure from public life was his implication in a court scandal of 1679. He got married at about time to the pious Catherine de Romanet. He and his wife eventually had two sons and five daughters, around the time of his marriage and departure from the theater, Racine accepted a position as a royal historiographer in the court of King Louis XIV, alongside his friend Boileau. He kept this position in spite of the scandals he was involved in. In 1672, he was elected to the Académie française, eventually gaining much power over this organization. Two years later, he was bestowed the title of treasurer of France, and he was distinguished as an ordinary gentleman of the king. Because of Racines flourishing career in the court, Louis XIV provided for his widow, Jean Racine died in 1699 from cancer of the liver
Jean Racine
–
For other uses, see
Jean Racine (disambiguation).
Jean Racine
–
Jean Racine
Jean Racine
–
Jean Racine on the 1989
USSR commemorative stamp
15.
Stendhal
–
Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Born in Grenoble, Isère, he was a child, disliking his unimaginative father and mourning his mother, whom he passionately loved. He spent the happiest years of his life at the Beyle country house in Claix near Grenoble and his closest friend was his younger sister, Pauline, with whom he maintained a steady correspondence throughout the first decade of the 19th century. The military and theatrical worlds of the First French Empire were a revelation to Beyle and he was named an auditor with the Conseil dÉtat on 3 August 1810, and thereafter took part in the French administration and in the Napoleonic wars in Italy. He travelled extensively in Germany and was part of Napoleons army in the 1812 invasion of Russia, Stendhal witnessed the burning of Moscow from just outside the city. Stendhal was appointed Commissioner of War Supplies and sent to Smolensk to prepare provisions for the returning army and he crossed the Berezina River by finding a usable ford rather than the overwhelmed pontoon bridge, which probably saved his life and those of his companions. Stendhal arrived in Paris in 1813, largely unaware of the fiasco that the retreat had become. Stendhal became known, during the Russian campaign, for keeping his wits about him and he also maintained his daily routine, shaving each day during the retreat from Moscow. After the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau, he left for Italy and he formed a particular attachment to Italy, where he spent much of the remainder of his career, serving as French consul at Trieste and Civitavecchia. His novel The Charterhouse of Parma, written in 52 days, is set in Italy, Stendhal was a dandy and wit about town in Paris, as well as an inveterate womaniser who was obsessed with his sexual conquests. His genuine empathy towards women is evident in his books, Simone de Beauvoir spoke highly of him in The Second Sex. One of his works is On Love, a rational analysis of romantic passion that was based on his unrequited love for Mathilde, Countess Dembowska. This fusion of, and tension between, clear-headed analysis and romantic feeling is typical of Stendhals great novels, he could be considered a Romantic realist, Stendhal suffered miserable physical disabilities in his final years as he continued to produce some of his most famous work. Modern medicine has shown that his problems were more attributable to his treatment than to his syphilis. Stendhal died on 23 March 1842, a few hours after collapsing with a seizure on the streets of Paris and he is interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre. Before settling on the pen name Stendhal, he published under pen names, including Louis Alexandre Bombet. The only book that Stendhal published under his own name was The History of Painting, from the publication of Rome, Naples, Florence onwards, he published his works under the pseudonym M. de Stendhal, officier de cavalerie. He borrowed this nom de plume from the German city of Stendal, birthplace of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, in 1807 Stendhal stayed near Stendal, where he fell in love with a woman named Wilhelmine, whom he called Minette, and for whose sake he remained in the city
Stendhal
–
Stendhal, by Olof Johan Södermark, 1840
Stendhal
–
A plaque on a house in
Vilnius where Stendhal stayed in December 1812 during
Napoleon 's retreat from Russia.
Stendhal
–
Stendhal's depiction of "crystallization" in the process of falling in love.
16.
Gustave Flaubert
–
Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary, his Correspondence, the celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. Flaubert was born on 12 December 1821, in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy and he was the second son of Anne Justine Caroline and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, director and senior surgeon of the major hospital in Rouen. He began writing at an age, as early as eight according to some sources. He was educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen, and did not leave until 1840, in Paris, he was an indifferent student and found the city distasteful. He made a few acquaintances, including Victor Hugo, toward the end of 1840, he traveled in the Pyrenees and Corsica. In 1846, after an attack of epilepsy, he left Paris, from 1846 to 1854, Flaubert had a relationship with the poet Louise Colet, his letters to her have survived. After leaving Paris, he returned to Croisset, near the Seine, close to Rouen and he made occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress. According to his biographer Émile Faguet, his affair with Louise Colet was his only serious romantic relationship, with his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp, he traveled in Brittany in 1846. In 1849–50 he went on a journey to the Middle East, visiting Greece. He spent five weeks in Istanbul in 1850 and he visited Carthage in 1858 to conduct research for his novel Salammbô. Flaubert was very open about his activities with prostitutes in his writings on his travels. He suspected that a chancre on his penis was from a Maronite or a Turkish girl and he also engaged in intercourse with male prostitutes in Beirut and Egypt, in one of his letters, he describes a pockmarked young rascal wearing a white turban. Flaubert was a worker and often complained in his letters to friends about the strenuous nature of his work. He was close to his niece, Caroline Commanville, and had a close friendship and he occasionally visited Parisian acquaintances, including Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Ivan Turgenev, and Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. The 1870s were a time for Flaubert. Prussian soldiers occupied his house during the War of 1870, after her death, he fell into financial difficulty due to business failures on the part of his nieces husband
Gustave Flaubert
–
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
–
The house where Flaubert was born
Gustave Flaubert
–
Flaubert, photographed by
Nadar
Gustave Flaubert
–
Portrait by
Eugène Giraud.
17.
Marcel Proust
–
He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Proust was born in Auteuil at the home of his great-uncle on 10 July 1871 and he was born during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponded with the consolidation of the French Third Republic. Prousts father, Adrien Proust, was a prominent pathologist and epidemiologist, studying cholera in Europe and he wrote numerous articles and books on medicine and hygiene. Prousts mother, Jeanne Clémence Weil, was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family from Alsace, literate and well-read, she demonstrated a well-developed sense of humour in her letters, and her command of English was sufficient to help with her sons translations of John Ruskin. Proust was raised in his fathers Catholic faith and he was baptized and later confirmed as a Catholic, but he never formally practiced that faith. He later became an atheist and was somewhat of a mystic, by the age of nine, Proust had had his first serious asthma attack, and thereafter he was considered a sickly child. Proust spent long holidays in the village of Illiers, in 1882, at the age of eleven, Proust became a pupil at the Lycée Condorcet, but his education was disrupted by his illness. Despite this he excelled in literature, receiving an award in his final year, thanks to his classmates, he was able to gain access to some of the salons of the upper bourgeoisie, providing him with copious material for In Search of Lost Time. As a young man, Proust was a dilettante and a social climber whose aspirations as a writer were hampered by his lack of self-discipline. His reputation from this period, as a snob and an amateur, contributed to his troubles with getting Swanns Way. It is through Mme Arman de Caillavet that he made the acquaintance of Anatole France, Proust had a close relationship with his mother. To appease his father, who insisted that he pursue a career, after exerting considerable effort, he obtained a sick leave that extended for several years until he was considered to have resigned. He never worked at his job, and he did not move from his parents apartment until after both were dead and his life and family circle changed markedly between 1900 and 1905. In February 1903, Prousts brother, Robert Proust, married and his father died in November of the same year. Finally, and most crushingly, Prousts beloved mother died in September 1905 and she left him a considerable inheritance. His health throughout this period continued to deteriorate, Proust spent the last three years of his life mostly confined to his bedroom, sleeping during the day and working at night to complete his novel. He died of pneumonia and an abscess in 1922. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, Proust was involved in writing and publishing from an early age
Marcel Proust
–
The novelist in 1900
Marcel Proust
–
Marcel Proust (seated),
Robert de Flers (left) and
Lucien Daudet (right), ca. 1894.
Marcel Proust
–
Jean Béraud, La Sortie du
lycée Condorcet
Marcel Proust
–
102 Boulevard Haussmann, Paris, where Marcel Proust lived from 1907 to 1919
18.
Samuel Beckett
–
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century, Becketts work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd. Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and he was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. The Becketts were members of the Anglican Church of Ireland, the family home, Cooldrinagh in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court built in 1903 by Samuels father, William. Samuel Beckett was born on Good Friday,13 April 1906, to William Frank Beckett, a quantity surveyor and descendant of the Huguenots, and Maria Jones Roe, a nurse, Beckett had one older brother, Frank Edward Beckett. At the age of five, Beckett attended a local playschool, where he started to learn music, in 1919, Beckett went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. A natural athlete, Beckett excelled at cricket as a left-handed batsman, later, he was to play for Dublin University and played two first-class games against Northamptonshire. As a result, he became the only Nobel literature laureate to have played first class cricket, Beckett studied French, Italian, and English at Trinity College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927. He was elected a Scholar in Modern Languages in 1926, Beckett graduated with a BA and, after teaching briefly at Campbell College in Belfast, took up the post of lecteur danglais at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris from November 1928 to 1930. While there, he was introduced to renowned Irish author James Joyce by Thomas MacGreevy and this meeting had a profound effect on the young man. Beckett assisted Joyce in various ways, one of which was research towards the book that became Finnegans Wake, in 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay entitled Dante. Becketts close relationship with Joyce and his family cooled, however, Becketts first short story, Assumption, was published in Jolass periodical transition. In 1930, Beckett returned to Trinity College as a lecturer, in November 1930, he presented a paper in French to the Modern Languages Society of Trinity on the Toulouse poet Jean du Chas, founder of a movement called le Concentrisme. It was a parody, for Beckett had in fact invented the poet and his movement that claimed to be at odds with all that is clear. Beckett later insisted that he had not intended to fool his audience, when Beckett resigned from Trinity at the end of 1931, his brief academic career was at an end. He spent some time in London, where in 1931 he published Proust, two years later, following his fathers death, he began two years treatment with Tavistock Clinic psychoanalyst Dr. Wilfred Bion. Aspects of it became evident in Becketts later works, such as Watt, in 1932, he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, but after many rejections from publishers decided to abandon it
Samuel Beckett
–
Beckett in 1977
Samuel Beckett
–
Samuel Beckett Walk, Paris (France).
Samuel Beckett
–
Portrait of Samuel Beckett by
Reginald Gray, painted in Paris, 1961 (from the collection of Ken White, Dublin).
Samuel Beckett
–
Tomb of Samuel Beckett at the Cimetière de
Montparnasse
19.
Albert Camus
–
Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, Camus did not consider himself to be an existentialist despite usually being classified as a follower of it, even in his lifetime. In a 1945 interview, Camus rejected any ideological associations, No, Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked. Camus was born in French Algeria to a Pied-Noir family and studied at the University of Algiers, in 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons to denounce two ideologies found in both the USSR and the USA. Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in Dréan in French Algeria and his mother was of Spanish descent and could only hear out of her left ear. His father, Lucien, an agricultural worker of Alsatian descent, was wounded in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during World War I. Lucien died from his wounds in an army hospital on 11 October. Camus and his mother, a house cleaner, lived without many basic material possessions during his childhood in the Belcourt section of Algiers. In 1923, Camus was accepted into the Lycée Bugeaud and eventually was admitted to the University of Algiers, after he contracted tuberculosis in 1930, he had to end his football activities, he had been a goalkeeper for a prominent Algerian university team. In addition, he was able to study part-time. To earn money, he took odd jobs, as a tutor, car parts clerk. Camus joined the French Communist Party in early 1935, seeing it as a way to fight inequalities between Europeans and natives in Algeria. He did not suggest he was a Marxist or that he had read Das Kapital, in 1936, the independence-minded Algerian Communist Party was founded. Camus joined the activities of the Algerian Peoples Party, which got him into trouble with his Communist party comrades, Camus then became associated with the French anarchist movement. The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting in 1948 of the Cercle des Étudiants Anarchistes as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist thought, Camus wrote for anarchist publications such as Le Libertaire, La révolution Prolétarienne, and Solidaridad Obrera, the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT. Camus stood with the anarchists when they expressed support for the uprising of 1953 in East Germany and he again allied with the anarchists in 1956, first in support of the workers uprising in Poznań, Poland, and then later in the year with the Hungarian Revolution
Albert Camus
–
Portrait from
New York World-Telegram and Sun Photograph Collection, 1957.
Albert Camus
–
Albert Camus's gravestone
Albert Camus
–
The monument to Camus built in the small town of
Villeblevin, France where he died in an automobile accident on 4 January 1960
20.
Culture of France
–
The culture of France and of the French people has been shaped by geography, by profound historical events, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. France, and in particular Paris, has played an important role as a center of culture since the 17th century, first in Europe. From the late 19th century, France has also played an important role in cinema, fashion, cuisine, the importance of French culture has waxed and waned over the centuries, depending on its economic, political and military importance. French culture today is marked both by regional and socioeconomic differences and strong unifying tendencies. Some action has taken by the government in order to promote French culture. For instance, they have established a system of subsidies and preferential loans for supporting French cinema, the Toubon law, from the name of the conservative culture minister who promoted it, makes it mandatory to use French in advertisements directed to the general public. France counts many regional languages, some of them being different from standard French, such as Breton. Some regional languages are Roman, like French, such as Occitan, many of these languages have enthusiastic advocates, however, the real importance of local languages remains subject to debate. In April 2001, the Minister of Education, Jack Lang and he announced that bilingual education would, for the first time, be recognized, and bilingual teachers recruited in French public schools to support teaching these other languages. In French schools, pupils are expected to learn at least two languages, the first of which is typically German or English. A revision of the French constitution creating official recognition of languages was implemented by the Parliament in Congress at Versailles in July 2008. France is a country where freedom of thought and of religion is preserved, by virtue of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. A2011 European poll found that a third of the French population does not believe there is any sort of spirit, in 2011, in a poll published by Institut français dopinion publique 65% of the French population describes itself as Christians, and 25% as not adhering any religion. According to Eurobarometer poll in 2012 Christianity is the largest religion in France accounting 60% of French citizens, Catholics are the largest Christian group in France, accounting for 50% of French citizens, while Protestants make up 8%, and other Christians make up 2%. Non believer/Agnostic account for 20%, Atheist 13%, and Muslim 6%, France guarantees freedom of religion as a constitutional right, and the government generally respects this right in practice. A long history of violent conflict between groups led the state to break its ties to the established Catholic Church early in the last century, the government adopted a strong commitment to maintaining a totally secular public sector. Long the established religion, the Roman Catholic Church has historically played a significant role in French culture. Kings were considered head of the church and state, most French people are Roman Catholic Christians, however, many of them are secular but still place high value on Catholicism
Culture of France
–
Masterpiece painting by
Eugène Delacroix called
Liberty Leading the People portrays the
July Revolution using the stylistic views of
Romanticism. Since Liberty is part of the motto "
Liberté, égalité, fraternité ", as the French put it, this painting has become the primary symbol of the
French Republic.
Culture of France
–
Notre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral where the
kings of France were crowned until 1825.
Culture of France
–
The
Grande Mosquée in Paris.
Culture of France
–
A sweet
crêpe. Crêpes are originally from
Brittany.
21.
History of France
–
The first written records for the history of France appear in the Iron Age. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language, over the course of the 1st millennium BC the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. Afterwards a Gallo-Roman culture emerged and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman Empire, in the later stages of the Roman Empire, Gaul was subject to barbarian raids and migration, most importantly by the Germanic Franks. The Frankish king Clovis I united most of Gaul under his rule in the late 5th century, Frankish power reached its fullest extent under Charlemagne. The war formally began in 1337 following Philip VIs attempt to seize the Duchy of Aquitaine from its holder, Edward III of England. Despite early Plantagenet victories, including the capture and ransom of John II of France, among the notable figures of the war was Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who led French forces against the English, establishing herself as a national heroine. The war ended with a Valois victory in 1453, victory in the Hundred Years War had the effect of strengthening French nationalism and vastly increasing the power and reach of the French monarchy. During the period known as the Ancien Régime, France transformed into an absolute monarchy. During the next centuries, France experienced the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, Henry, King of Navarre, scion of the Bourbon family, would be victorious in the conflict and establish the French Bourbon dynasty. A burgeoning worldwide colonial empire was established in the 16th century, French political power reached a zenith under the rule of Louis XIV, The Sun King, builder of Versailles Palace. In the late 18th century the monarchy and associated institutions were overthrown in the French Revolution, the country was governed for a period as a Republic, until the French Empire was declared by Napoleon Bonaparte. France was one of the Triple Entente powers in World War I, fighting alongside the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Japan, the United States and smaller allies against Germany and the Central Powers. France was one of the Allied Powers in World War II, the Third Republic was dismantled, and most of the country was controlled directly by Germany while the south was controlled until 1942 by the collaborationist Vichy government. Living conditions were harsh as Germany drained away food and manpower, Charles de Gaulle led the Free France movement that one-by-one took over the colonial empire, and coordinated the wartime Resistance. Following liberation in summer 1944, a Fourth Republic was established, France slowly recovered economically, and enjoyed a baby boom that reversed its very low fertility rate. Long wars in Indochina and Algeria drained French resources and ended in political defeat, in the wake of the Algerian Crisis of 1958, Charles de Gaulle set up the French Fifth Republic. Into the 1960s decolonization saw most of the French colonial empire become independent, while smaller parts were incorporated into the French state as overseas departments, since World War II France has been a permanent member in the UN Security Council and NATO. It played a role in the unification process after 1945 that led to the European Union
History of France
–
Cave painting in
Lascaux
History of France
–
Massalia (modern
Marseille) silver coin with Greek legend, a testimony to
Greeks in pre-Roman Gaul, 5th–1st century BC.
History of France
–
Vercingetorix surrenders to
Julius Caesar after
Alesia. Painting by Lionel-Noël Royer, 1899.
History of France
–
Gaulish soldiers
22.
France in the Middle Ages
–
From the 13th century on, the state slowly regained control of a number of these lost powers. The crises of the 13th and 14th centuries led to the convening of an assembly, the Estates General. From the Middle Ages onward, French rulers believed their kingdoms had natural borders, the Pyrenees, the Alps and this was used as a pretext for an aggressive policy and repeated invasions. The belief, however, had little basis in reality for not all of territories were part of the Kingdom. France had important rivers that were used as waterways, the Loire, the Rhone and these rivers were settled earlier than the rest and important cities were founded on their banks but they were separated by large forests, marsh, and other rough terrains. Before the Romans conquered Gaul, the Gauls lived in villages organised in wider tribes, the Romans referred to the smallest of these groups as pagi and the widest ones as civitates. These pagi and civitates were often taken as a basis for the imperial administration and these religious provinces would survive until the French revolution. Discussion of the size of France in the Middle Ages is complicated by distinctions between lands personally held by the king and lands held in homage by another lord, the domaine royal of the Capetians was limited to the regions around Paris, Bourges and Sens. The great majority of French territory was part of Aquitaine, the Duchy of Normandy, the Duchy of Brittany, the Comté of Champagne, the Duchy of Burgundy, and other territories. Philip II Augustus undertook a massive French expansion in the 13th century, only in the 15th century would Charles VII and Louis XI gain control of most of modern-day France. The weather in France and Europe in the Middle Ages was significantly milder than during the preceding or following it. Historians refer to this as the Medieval Warm Period, lasting from about the 10th century to about the 14th century, part of the French population growth in this period is directly linked to this temperate weather and its effect on crops and livestock. At the end of the Middle Ages, France was the most populous region in Europe—having overtaken Spain, in the 14th century, before the arrival of the Black Death, the total population of the area covered by modern-day France has been estimated at around 17 million. The population of Paris is controversial, josiah Russell argued for about 80,000 in the early 14th century, although he noted that some other scholars suggested 200,000. The higher count would make it by far the largest city in western Europe, the Black Death killed an estimated one-third of the population from its appearance in 1348. The concurrent Hundred Years War slowed recovery and it would be the mid-16th century before the population recovered to mid-fourteenth century levels. The vast majority of the population spoke a variety of vernacular languages derived from vulgar Latin. Modern linguists typically add a group within France around Lyon
France in the Middle Ages
–
A view of the remains of the
Abbey of Cluny, a
Benedictine monastery, was the centre of monastic life revival in the
Middle Ages and marked an important step in the cultural rebirth following the
Dark Ages.
France in the Middle Ages
France in the Middle Ages
–
Godefroy de Bouillon, a French knight, leader of the
First Crusade and founder of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem.
France in the Middle Ages
–
Philip II victorious at
Bouvines thus annexing Normandy and Anjou into his royal domains. This battle involved a complex set of alliances from three important states, the Kingdoms of France and England and the Holy Roman Empire.
23.
Early Modern France
–
The Kingdom of France in the early modern period, from the Renaissance to the Revolution, was a monarchy ruled by the House of Bourbon. This corresponds to the so-called Ancien Régime, the territory of France during this period increased until it included essentially the extent of the modern country, and it also included the territories of the first French colonial empire overseas. In the mid 15th century, France was significantly smaller than it is today, in addition, certain provinces within France were ostensibly personal fiefdoms of noble families. The late 15th, 16th and 17th centuries would see France undergo a massive territorial expansion, France also embarked on exploration, colonisation, and mercantile exchanges with the Americas, India, the Indian Ocean, the Far East, and a few African trading posts. The administrative and legal system in France in this period is called the Ancien Régime. The Black Death had killed an estimated one-third of the population of France from its appearance in 1348, the concurrent Hundred Years War slowed recovery. It would be the early 16th century before the population recovered to mid-14th century levels and these demographic changes also led to a massive increase in urban populations, although on the whole France remained a profoundly rural country. Paris was one of the most populated cities in Europe, other major French cities include Lyon, Rouen, Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Marseille. These centuries saw several periods of epidemics and crop failures due to wars, between 1693 and 1694, France lost 6% of its population. In the extremely harsh winter of 1709, France lost 3. 5% of its population, in the past 300 years, no period has been so proportionally deadly for the French, both World Wars included. Linguistically, the differences in France were extreme, before the Renaissance, the language spoken in the north of France was a collection of different dialects called Oïl languages whereas the written and administrative language remained Latin. Nevertheless, in 1790, only half of the spoke or understood standard French. The southern half of the continued to speak Occitan languages, and other inhabitants spoke Breton, Catalan, Basque, Dutch. In the north of France, regional dialects of the various langues doïl continued to be spoken in rural communities, during the French revolution, the teaching of French was promoted in all the schools. The French used would be that of the system, which differed from the French spoken in the courts of France before the revolution. Like the orators during the French revolution, the pronunciation of every syllable would become the new language, France would not become a linguistically unified country until the end of the 19th century. The Peace of Etaples marks, for some, the beginning of the modern period in France. The invasion of Italy by Charles VIII in 1494 began 62 years of war with the Habsburgs, in 1445, the first steps were made towards fashioning a regular army out of the poorly disciplined mercenary bands that French kings traditionally relied on
Early Modern France
–
Francis I by
Jean Clouet
Early Modern France
–
France on the eve of the modern era (1477). The red line denotes the boundary of the French kingdom, while the light blue the royal domain.
Early Modern France
–
Henry IV of France by
Frans Pourbus the younger.
Early Modern France
–
Louis XIV King of France and of Navarre By
Hyacinthe Rigaud (1701)
24.
French Wars of Religion
–
Approximately 3,000,000 people perished as a result of violence, famine and disease in what is accounted as the second deadliest European religious war. Unlike all other wars at the time, the French wars retained their religious character without being confounded by dynastic considerations. At the conclusion of the conflict in 1598, Huguenots were granted rights and freedoms by the Edict of Nantes. The wars weakened the authority of the monarchy, already fragile under the rule of Francis II and then Charles IX, apart from previously mentioned names, the wars have been variously described as the Eight Wars of Religion, or simply the Wars of Religion. However, the Massacre of Vassy in 1562 is agreed to begin the French Wars of Religion, during this time, complex diplomatic negotiations and agreements of peace were followed by renewed conflict and power struggles. Humanism, until the late 1520s, served as a ground for the French Protestant Reformation. The spirit of the Renaissance interested Francis I and he encouraged the study of the classics by establishing royal professorships in Paris, equipping more people with the knowledge necessary to understand the classics. Francis I had no qualms with the religious order. Through the Concordat of Bologna, Pope Leo X increased the power of the king over the church, nomination of clergy depended upon the kings choice, in France, unlike in Germany, the nobles supported the policies and the status quo of their time. The establishment of the college and the spread of the printing press served the purposes of the Reformation. The printing press made mass production of inexpensive and fueled the spread of knowledge in all disciplines. Interest in the classics soared and literature was available to a wider audience. The accessibility coupled with romanticism for the knowledge from the past that built empires, precise language and eloquence were valued among scholars and true understanding of the classics meant studying them from the originals. Theological and religious thoughts were disseminated at an unprecedented pace, ideas about the Reformation were widespread in France by 1519. John Froben, a humanist printer, published a collection of Luther’s works, in one correspondence, he reported that 600 copies of such works were being shipped to France and Spain and were sold in Paris. The humanist perspective on understanding Scriptures had theological and ecclesiastical implications, studying Scriptures in the original flourished in the Renaissance period. This contrasted the heavy reliance of the church on the Vulgate - the Latin translation of the Bible. The Meaux Circle was formed by a group of humanists including Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Guillaume Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, in the effort to reform preaching, the Meaux circle was joined by Vatable, a Hebraist and Guillaume Budé the classicist and librarian to the king
French Wars of Religion
–
Depiction of the
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre by
François Dubois
French Wars of Religion
–
After an initial period of tolerance,
Francis I started the repression against Protestants.
French Wars of Religion
–
Massacre of Mérindol in 1545 as imagined by
Gustave Doré (1832–1883).
French Wars of Religion
–
Contemporary woodcut of the
executions of Protestants at Amboise.
25.
Louis XIV of France
–
Louis XIV, known as Louis the Great or the Sun King, was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France and Navarre from 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest of any monarch of a country in European history. In the age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIVs France was a leader in the centralization of power. Louis began his rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs, under his rule, the Edict of Nantes, which granted rights to Huguenots, was abolished. The revocation effectively forced Huguenots to emigrate or convert in a wave of dragonnades, which managed to virtually destroy the French Protestant minority. During Louis reign, France was the leading European power, and it fought three wars, the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg. There were also two lesser conflicts, the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions, warfare defined Louis XIVs foreign policies, and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled by a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique, in peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military, Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was named Louis Dieudonné and bore the title of French heirs apparent. At the time of his birth, his parents had married for 23 years. His mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631, leading contemporaries thus regarded him as a divine gift and his birth a miracle of God. Sensing imminent death, Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order in the spring of 1643, in defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his sons behalf. His lack of faith in Queen Annes political abilities was his primary rationale and he did, however, make the concession of appointing her head of the council. Louis relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time, contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre, and it is likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother. This long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis journal entries, such as, but attachments formed later by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed merely by blood
Louis XIV of France
–
Louis XIV by
Hyacinthe Rigaud (1701)
Louis XIV of France
–
Louis-Dieudonné,
Dauphin of France, in 1643 by
Claude Deruet
Louis XIV of France
–
Louis XIV as a child, unknown painter
Louis XIV of France
–
1655 portrait of Louis, the Victor of the Fronde, portrayed as the god
Jupiter
26.
French Revolution
–
Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, the causes of the French Revolution are complex and are still debated among historians. Following the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War, the French government was deeply in debt, Years of bad harvests leading up to the Revolution also inflamed popular resentment of the privileges enjoyed by the clergy and the aristocracy. Demands for change were formulated in terms of Enlightenment ideals and contributed to the convocation of the Estates-General in May 1789, a central event of the first stage, in August 1789, was the abolition of feudalism and the old rules and privileges left over from the Ancien Régime. The next few years featured political struggles between various liberal assemblies and right-wing supporters of the intent on thwarting major reforms. The Republic was proclaimed in September 1792 after the French victory at Valmy, in a momentous event that led to international condemnation, Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. External threats closely shaped the course of the Revolution, internally, popular agitation radicalised the Revolution significantly, culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins. Large numbers of civilians were executed by revolutionary tribunals during the Terror, after the Thermidorian Reaction, an executive council known as the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795. The rule of the Directory was characterised by suspended elections, debt repudiations, financial instability, persecutions against the Catholic clergy, dogged by charges of corruption, the Directory collapsed in a coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799. The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution, almost all future revolutionary movements looked back to the Revolution as their predecessor. The values and institutions of the Revolution dominate French politics to this day, the French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not merely national, for it aimed at benefiting all humanity. Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and democracies and it became the focal point for the development of all modern political ideologies, leading to the spread of liberalism, radicalism, nationalism, socialism, feminism, and secularism, among many others. The Revolution also witnessed the birth of total war by organising the resources of France, historians have pointed to many events and factors within the Ancien Régime that led to the Revolution. Over the course of the 18th century, there emerged what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas called the idea of the sphere in France. A perfect example would be the Palace of Versailles which was meant to overwhelm the senses of the visitor and convince one of the greatness of the French state and Louis XIV. Starting in the early 18th century saw the appearance of the sphere which was critical in that both sides were active. In France, the emergence of the public sphere outside of the control of the saw the shift from Versailles to Paris as the cultural capital of France. In the 1750s, during the querelle des bouffons over the question of the quality of Italian vs, in 1782, Louis-Sébastien Mercier wrote, The word court no longer inspires awe amongst us as in the time of Louis XIV
French Revolution
–
The
August Insurrection in 1792 precipitated the last days of the monarchy.
French Revolution
–
The French government faced a fiscal crisis in the 1780s, and King Louis XVI was blamed for mishandling these affairs.
French Revolution
–
Caricature of the Third Estate carrying the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) on its back.
French Revolution
–
The meeting of the Estates General on 5 May 1789 at Versailles.
27.
Napoleonic wars
–
The wars resulted from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and the Revolutionary Wars, which had raged on for years before concluding with the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. Napoleon became the First Consul of France in 1799, then Emperor five years later, inheriting the political and military struggles of the Revolution, he created a state with stable finances, a strong central bureaucracy, and a well-trained army. The British frequently financed the European coalitions intended to thwart French ambitions, by 1805, they had managed to convince the Austrians and the Russians to wage another war against France. At sea, the Royal Navy destroyed a combined Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in October 1805, Prussian worries about increasing French power led to the formation of the Fourth Coalition in 1806. France then forced the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to sign the Treaties of Tilsit in July, although Tilsit signified the high watermark of the French Empire, it did not bring a lasting peace for Europe. Hoping to extend the Continental System and choke off British trade with the European mainland, Napoleon invaded Iberia, the Spanish and the Portuguese revolted with British support. The Peninsular War lasted six years, featured extensive guerrilla warfare, the Continental System caused recurring diplomatic conflicts between France and its client states, especially Russia. Unwilling to bear the consequences of reduced trade, the Russians routinely violated the Continental System. The French launched an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. The resulting campaign witnessed the collapse and retreat of the Grand Army along with the destruction of Russian lands. In 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in a Sixth Coalition against France, a lengthy military campaign culminated in a large Allied army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. The Allies then invaded France and captured Paris in the spring of 1814 and he was exiled to the island of Elba near Rome and the Bourbons were restored to power. However, Napoleon escaped from Elba in February 1815 and took control of France once again, the Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June. The Congress of Vienna, which started in 1814 and concluded in 1815, established the new borders of Europe and laid out the terms, Napoleon seized power in 1799, creating a de facto military dictatorship. The Napoleonic Wars began with the War of the Third Coalition, Kagan argues that Britain was irritated in particular by Napoleons assertion of control over Switzerland. Furthermore, Britons felt insulted when Napoleon stated that their country deserved no voice in European affairs, for its part, Russia decided that the intervention in Switzerland indicated that Napoleon was not looking toward a peaceful resolution of his differences with the other European powers. The British quickly enforced a blockade of France to starve it of resources. Napoleon responded with economic embargoes against Britain, and sought to eliminate Britains Continental allies to break the coalitions arrayed against him, the so-called Continental System formed a league of armed neutrality to disrupt the blockade and enforce free trade with France
Napoleonic wars
–
Top:
Battle of Austerlitz Bottom:
Battle of Waterloo
Napoleonic wars
–
"Maniac-raving's-or-Little Boney in a strong fit" by
James Gillray. His caricatures ridiculing Napoleon greatly annoyed the Frenchman, who wanted them suppressed by the British government.
Napoleonic wars
–
The British
HMS Sandwich fires to the French
flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of
Trafalgar. The Bucentaure also fights
HMS Victory (behind her) and
HMS Temeraire (left side of the picture). In fact, HMS Sandwich never fought at Trafalgar and her depiction is a mistake by
Auguste Mayer, the painter.
Napoleonic wars
–
European strategic situation in 1805 before the War of the Third Coalition
28.
French Third Republic
–
It came to an end on 10 July 1940. Harsh reparations exacted by the Prussians after the war resulted in the loss of the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine, social upheaval, and the establishment of the Paris Commune. The early governments of the Third Republic considered re-establishing the monarchy, but confusion as to the nature of that monarchy, thus, the Third Republic, which was originally intended as a provisional government, instead became the permanent government of France. The French Constitutional Laws of 1875 defined the composition of the Third Republic and it consisted of a Chamber of Deputies and a Senate to form the legislative branch of government and a president to serve as head of state. The period from the start of World War I to the late 1930s featured sharply polarized politics, Adolphe Thiers called republicanism in the 1870s the form of government that divides France least, however, politics under the Third Republic were sharply polarized. On the left stood Reformist France, heir to the French Revolution, on the right stood conservative France, rooted in the peasantry, the Roman Catholic Church and the army. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 resulted in the defeat of France, after Napoleons capture by the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan, Parisian deputies led by Léon Gambetta established the Government of National Defence as a provisional government on 4 September 1870. The deputies then selected General Louis-Jules Trochu to serve as its president and this first government of the Third Republic ruled during the Siege of Paris. After the French surrender in January 1871, the provisional Government of National Defence disbanded, French territories occupied by Prussia at this time did not participate. The resulting conservative National Assembly elected Adolphe Thiers as head of a provisional government, due to the revolutionary and left-wing political climate that prevailed in the Parisian population, the right-wing government chose the royal palace of Versailles as its headquarters. The new government negotiated a settlement with the newly proclaimed German Empire. To prompt the Prussians to leave France, the government passed a variety of laws, such as the controversial Law of Maturities. The following repression of the communards would have consequences for the labor movement. The Orléanists supported a descendant of King Louis Philippe I, the cousin of Charles X who replaced him as the French monarch in 1830, his grandson Louis-Philippe, Comte de Paris. The Bonapartists were marginalized due to the defeat of Napoléon III and were unable to advance the candidacy of any member of his family, the Bonaparte family. Legitimists and Orléanists came to a compromise, eventually, whereby the childless Comte de Chambord would be recognised as king, consequently, in 1871 the throne was offered to the Comte de Chambord. Chambord believed the monarchy had to eliminate all traces of the Revolution in order to restore the unity between the monarchy and the nation, which the revolution had sundered apart. Compromise on this was if the nation were to be made whole again
French Third Republic
–
A French propaganda poster from 1917 is captioned with an 18th century quote: "Even in 1788, Mirabeau was saying that War is the National Industry of Prussia."
French Third Republic
–
Flag
French Third Republic
–
The
Sacré-Cœur Basilica was built as a symbol of the Ordre Moral.
French Third Republic
–
In France, children were taught in school not to forget the lost provinces of
Alsace-Lorraine, which were coloured in black on maps.
_-_Philippe_Binant_Archives.JPG)
_-_Philippe_Binant_Archives.jpg)
