France is the largest country in the EU by area (552,000 square
kilometers) and the second largest by population (67 million). France enjoys a centuries-long status as a global center of art, science, and philosophy.
Some other facts:
- France is the world’s most popular tourist destination and the Louvre is the most visited museum in the world
- It hosts the world's fifth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites
- Europe’s highest mountain is Mont Blanc in the French Alps
- Paris Gare du Nord is Europe’s busiest railway station
- The French rail network is the second largest in Europe, and the ninth biggest in the world
And about our subject: France has more Nobel Prize winners in Literature than any other country. With 15 French individuals winning the prestigious award since 1901, it’s fair to say that France has produced some of the world’s most influential writers and thinkers. France stands consistently at the summit of world literature. Novelists
like Balzac and Zola have written large series of novels which mirror
society in a particular period; Flaubert has single-handedly molded the
modern novel; Voltaire, Diderot, Proust, Camus and Sartre have blended
their art with philosophy; and Breton, Queneau, Robbe-Grillet and Perec
have been at the forefront of Modernism.
Their historical achievements leave the French convinced that their mission is to civilize Europe and the world. The French feel sadness at the decline of French compared to English - French was once the internationally accepted language of diplomacy and was spoken widely on four continents (until 1362, even the English aristocracy spoke it!). American-English seems anti-intellectual to the French.
France is EU-oriented, but also wishes to keep considerable independence. It is anxious to retain its place on the world-stage. There is a strong defense of French and European culture. Like the Japanese, the French believe they are unique.
Here are the best French novels until WWI:
1. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-1564)
Like in the case of Kafka, there is a word coined after the name of Rabelais: "Rabelaisian," which means as much as "marked by gross robust humor, extravagance of caricature, or bold naturalism." France is the country of exquisite dinners and high-flown love, but Rabelais turns these on their head. The two giants, father and son, of his novel cram and fornicate their way through the world. The novels stinks an hour in the wind, filled as it is with crudity, scatological humor, and vulgar insults. It is a celebration of what Bakhtin has called "the carnival of the grotesque." For example, as soon as the giant Gargantua is born from his mother's left ear, he calls for beer; later, 17,913 cows are required for the provision of his daily milk. His first garment includes a codpiece "the length of a yard," to the delight of his three nurses. When he is sent to Paris for his education, he is so annoyed by the crowds that he drowns thousands of them in a flood of piss (the survivors laugh so much, the city is renamed "Par Ris"). Also the language is extravagant, making it one of the most difficult books written in French literature: wordplay and risqué humor abound, and Rabelais invents hundreds of new words. That calls for a good modern translation - the older versions available for free at Gutenberg etc. simply will not do. I recommend the Penguin Classics translation by M.A. Screech. [For readers of Dutch: there is an excellent Dutch translation available for free at the DBNL (Digital Library of Dutch Letters)].
2. The Princess of Cleves, by Madame de Lafayette (1678)
This enigmatic novel, set in the court society of the Ancien Regime, is a warning against love. We follow a young woman from her entry into court - she has received a strict moral education from her mother and finds the gossipy and jealous court society difficult to fathom. At a very young age she is forced to accept a husband she doesn't love. Soon after that, she falls in love with another man, Nemours. When she confesses this to her husband, he dies of the shock. But although she is free now, she refuses to marry Nemours. Love, on both sides, has an obsessive quality, and this cannot be allowed by the princes as it will destroy them both. In the end she makes the controversial decision to reject both lover and society and enter a convent. The behavior of the princess is difficult to explain and has given rise to a long list of disagreements among readers. For example, is Madame de Cleves virtuous, frigid, or egotistical? Is her confession of love for another man to her husband an act of sincere courage, or a desire to wound? Is her husband an unfortunate innocent or a paranoid egoist? Is Nemours a devoted lover trying to win a coy mistress or a cynical playboy? Try to find out for yourself by reading this ambiguous novel.
[Translated by Robin Buss (Penguin Classics) and Terence Cave (Oxford's World Classics)]
Manon Lescaut is a tale of absolutely uncontrollable passion for a bewitchingly beautiful young woman who is 100% immoral. She is an empty-headed minx, who doesn’t love anyone and who will do anything to avoid poverty. When he is gripped by Manon's sensual charms, after spotting her as a voluptuous siren chained in a gang of female inmates, Des Grieux is only seventeen, a mere boy, Manon is even younger than that, but she has already had a good measure of sexual experience as we are told. Des Grieux is an aristocrat, but despite his breeding and good taste he is unable to resist his sexual passion. The love affair is an unmitigated disaster for the family of Des Grieux: he elopes with the girl, abandoning his family, his career and his principles. Manon develops into a demanding sybarite and liar, and pulls him down into a life of crime and deceit, even taking a rich older lover to pay the bills of the young couple. The events which follow lead eventually to imprisonment, murder, and the flight of the couple to the New World. Des Grieux’s passion for Manon never falters, as a fatal addiction, a sign of his nobility of character. Manon, from her side, can neither resist him nor return his love. She remains an elusive figure, addicted to pleasure, satisfied at her conquest of a man of rank, but just as easily leaving him again and again when circumstances make that necessary. The taut story is a prime example of fast moving narration, pulling the reader from calamity to escape to new calamity, and then on to the final tragedy. The novel ends with a melodramatic burial scene: Des Grieux breaks his sword and digs Manon's grave in the sand; he takes off his clothes to enshroud her body and then lies sprawling naked on the grave in abject torment.
[Translated by Leonard Tancock (Penguin Classics) and Angela Scholar (Oxford's World Classics)]
4. Candide, by Voltaire (1759)
A picaresque novella written to refute the tenets of the German philosopher Leibniz, who claimed that mankind lives in "the best of all possible worlds (created by God)." Voltaire was an agnostic who loathed the abuse of power and hypocrisy of the Church and he didn't agree at all that "everything was (already) for the best." So in his story he piles misfortune on misfortune and disaster on disaster to show how terrible the world really can be. Candide is a young man like a blank leaf, very naive, in love with Cunegonde - when they are separated, he travels around the world searching for her. During his perambulations, he gradually learns about life and becomes more mature. The point of view of Leibniz is represented by Candide's teacher, the philosopher Pangloss ("easy tongue"), who comes to grief, first by catching syphilis, later by being hanged. Voltaire graphically shows us the cruelty and savagery of humans who steal, rape, murder, torture, enslave, and cheat. He also includes historical happenings such as the Seven Years' War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake (and tsunami). Candide moves at neck-breaking speed, condensing whole novels into its chapters. It is full of sharp wit and provides an insightful portrayal of the human condition. In the end, Candide marries Cunegonde and they live on a farm. There they "cultivate their garden," which is the best we can do, as it leaves no time for idle speculation and as it serves the practical purpose of really making things gradually somewhat better.
[Translated by Theo Cuffe (Penguin Classics) and Roger Pearson (Oxford's World Classics)]
5. Dangerous Liaisons, by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1782)
Another novel about amoral characters, a story about sex, deceit and manipulation in the upper ranks of society. Les Liaisons Dangereuses was written only seven years before the Revolution of 1789, when high heads would start rolling. The bawdy excesses of the leisure class were infamous (this was also the age of the Marquis de Sade), and Les Liaisons Dangereuses only added oil to the fire. The main characters are the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, former lovers and now partners in crime. Valmont is a notorious rake, a man who seduces women for sport. The Marquise is a wealthy aristocratic widow who has maintained an air of social respectability. But she is all the more dangerous. In their jaded existence, both derive no pleasure from sex anymore, but instead need the headier kick of destroying the lives of other people. Valmont is set on seducing the young, virtuous and married Madame de Tourvel, a difficult feat he sees as the ultimate triumph. Meanwhile, the Marquise wants revenge on a man who left her, M. de Gercourt, so she pushes Valmont to seduce a young woman, the fifteen year old Cecile, who is to marry De Gercourt in a few month's time – her enemy will be covered in shame when after the marriage it is made public that he has been preemptively cuckolded. Valmont’s reward will be the rekindling of his former love affair with the Marquise. Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil are absolutely ruthless, they lie effortlessly in letters to their victims, then gleefully relate their successes in epistles to each other. But things do not entirely go as planned... Valmont and the Marquise will finally stand as enemies opposite each other. This scandalous web of intrigue, infidelity, corruption and lust for power is expertly told in the form of letters between the various characters, letters which are just as full of lies and tricks as the characters themselves.
[Read the translation by Helen Constatine in Penguin Classics or by Douglas Parmee in Oxford World Classics. See my post on films based on classical novels for a discussion of film adaptations.]
6. Jacques the Fatalist and his Master, by Denis Diderot (written 1765-80, published 1795)
Diderot was the driving force behind the Enlightenment and the huge Encyclopedie, but he also wrote several works of fiction - often these could only be published posthumously due to censorship. Although educated as a Jesuit, he later became a deist and finally atheist. In this novel, Diderot explores the problems of destiny and free will. The "fatalism" of the title should not mislead. It has nothing to do with fate or Destiny, or with the Wheel of Fortune or Providence. Diderot rather points at biological and psychological fatalism, that is, how much we are conditioned by our mental make-up and by our DNA, to say it in modern terms - and how should a rational man live with the consequences. The other aspect of the novel is that it is strongly self-referential, in the way of Tristam Shandy and Don Quixote (from which it also borrows the "master and servant on a trip" convention). Jacques has to tell his master about his love life, but due to constant interruptions, he doesn't get anywhere. The novel is more a disjointed conversation between two thinly drawn protagonists, into which Diderot inserts chance meetings with other characters who only appear one time, never to return. It is very modern in an experimental way. In his essay The Art of the Novel Milan Kundera argues that Jacques le Fataliste is one of the masterpieces of the form, and I fully agree. This novel deserves to be better known.
[Translated by Martin Hall (Penguin Classics) and David Coward (Oxford's World Classics)]
7. Adolphe, by Benjamin Constant (1816)
Adolphe by tells the story of an introverted young man, harboring a melancholy outlook on life. At 22, he has just completed his studies in Gottingen and now is hanging around in D** before returning to sterner duties at home. Inspired by a friend, he relieves his boredom by courting an older woman, Ellénore, the beautiful Polish mistress of the Comte de P**. First she refuses him, then she acquiesces and after that her ardor grows larger than his. She leaves the Comte and her two children for the much younger Adolphe. But now Adolphe becomes worried: he realizes he is sacrificing his future. Ellénore, however, loves him more than ever. Their all-consuming relationship drives a wedge between them and society. Will he be able to break loose from her? This novella does away with all descriptions and focuses solely on detailed accounts of states of mind. Adolphe and Ellénore are all the time analyzing and rationalizing their thoughts and feelings, something which seems very French to me, in an interesting way. By doing so, Adolphe has become the first psychological novel ever written.
[Translated by Leonard Tancock (Penguin Classics) and Margaret Mauldon (Oxford's World Classics)]
The Bildungsroman of Julien Sorel, an intelligent and ambitious young man, inspired by Napoleon's example, who comes from a poor family and fails to understand much about the ways of the world he sets out to conquer. As he harbors many romantic illusions, he inevitable becomes a pawn in the machinations of the ruthless and influential people around him. His adventures are a satire of early 19th-century French society, a monarchic society of fixed social classes, accusing the aristocracy and Catholic clergy as hypocritical and materialist. Part One of the novel describes how this carpenter's son, who gets a good education from the local priest, becomes the tutor of the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of his village. He starts a love affair with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife, which ends when it is revealed to the village by her chambermaid, Elisa, who is also in love with Julien. He is ordered to enter a seminary in Besançon, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. In Part Two, at the recommendation of the head of the seminary, Julien becomes private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Catholic legitimist. He now gets romantically involved with the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde, who is torn between her attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. When after many ups and downs, the romantic liaison is on the verge of success, Madame de Rênal breaks it up by accusing Julien of being a social climber who only uses women. Out of revenge, Julien shoots her (although not fatally), but he is imprisoned and sentenced to death. In prison, Madame de Rênal visits him and their love is rekindled, but it is too late...
[There is a good free translation available at ebooks@Adelaide by Scott-Moncrieff (who is also famous for his Proust translations)]
9. Pere Goriot, by Honore de Balzac (1835)
Le Père Goriot ("Old Goriot" or "Father Goriot") is a fierce criticism of the money-and-greed dominated society that France had become in the 19th century. The hero is a social climber, the student Rastignac. The novel is set in the Paris of 1819, in the Maison Vauquer, a poor boarding house in Paris' rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève. Eugène de Rastignac lives there together with several other characters, of whom the most important are the elderly Goriot, a retired businessman who dotes on his two daughters who have married status and money and don't want to see him anymore; and Vautrin, a mysterious criminal in hiding. The novel is filled with descriptions of corruption and greed. Balzac quotes the price for everything, from the room rents on different floors of the boarding house to the cost of a meal or a horse-drawn carriage. Money rules the world after the success of capitalism through the Industrial Revolution, and has also infiltrated aristocratic society. Rather than studying his law books, Rastignac tries a shortcut to wealth by having himself introduced into high society by his cousin, Madame de Beauséant. There he meets Goriot's daughters, Anastasie (married to rank, a count) and Delphine (married to money, a banker) and falls in love with the second one. Vautrin, at the same time, pushes him to court a young woman in the boarding house, Victorine, whose family fortune is blocked only by her brother - of course, he offers to clear the way for Rastignac. The student balks at the idea of murder, but listens attentively to the lessons about the harsh realities of modern society that Vautrin teaches him. Le Père Goriot is a "bildungsroman:" the initially naive Rastignac is tutored by Vautrin, Madame de Beauséant and others in the truth of society and the ruthless strategies required for success. First repulsed by these unpleasant realities, Rastignac eventually embraces them.
[A.J. Krailsheimer, Oxford World's Classics]
10. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
Madame Bovary probably is the most beautifully written novel ever. Gustave Flaubert weighed his words on a gold scale, as if writing poetry and not prose. He sought the best words for each situation, wanting them to be unchangeable, and made so many revisions that he only advanced one or two pages a week. That style is the opposite of romantic - it is clinically realistic. Flaubert offers a painstaking description of bourgeois life in mid-19th c. France and along the way he transforms his sordid materials about adultery and suicide into something poetic. The story is simple. Charles Bovary is a plodding, dull country doctor, practicing medicine in the environs of Rouen in Normandy. He marries a farmer's daughter, the beautiful and very young Emma, who has been brought up in a convent and has received all her knowledge of the world from romantic tales. But Charles is no prince on a white horse but a simple and practical man and after the birth of a little daughter, out of necessity Emma settles down to a life of boredom. Flaubert makes us acutely feel the meaninglessness and emptiness of her existence. Madame Bovary is in fact the greatest study in alienation and boredom in world literature. It is often thought of as an immoral novel about adultery like Lady Chatterley's Lover, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The bourgeois types that surround Emma Bovary in the village are all selfish and self-serving. Flaubert demonstrates how hypocritical moral standards are, concocted to support the status quo. The merchant and moneylender Lheureux purposefully lends Emma so much money and allows her to buy so many luxury goods on credit, that in the end he can claim Dr. Bovary's assets. This is what drives Emma to suicide, not the end of her affair with Leon. Finally, she has nobody she can rely on, everyone only tries to take advantage of her. She dies a terrible, lonely death, described in clinical detail by Flaubert who was the son of a medical doctor. Emma is not an immoral woman - what her case demonstrates is that the culture around her itself has no values.
[Translated by Lydia Davis, Penguin Random House (there is another Penguin translation, which I did not like, so be sure to get the right one); another translation I liked is the free one at Gutenberg by Eleanor Marx-Aveling (the daughter of Karl Marx)]
11. Bel Ami, by Guy de Maupassant (1885)
Although he is more commonly known as a writer of short stories, Maupassant’s satire about the life of a Parisian journalist in late-nineteenth century France is a fun novel about cold-blooded social climbing, with a generous admixture of sex and seduction as ladders to success. "Bel Ami" ("Beautiful Boy") is the nickname of Georges Duroy, a penniless soldier just returned from French Algeria who comes to Paris to make his fortune in journalism. He soon learns an important lesson, that the most important part of the Parisian population are the women, not the men. Georges starts on the lowest sport of the ladder, but quickly climbs up the social scale via the various women who fall for his charms, finally ending with the daughter of the super-rich owner of the newspaper he works for as journalist. As the husband of millionaire's daughter Suzanne the world of politics will lie open for him, perhaps he will even become a minister... Georges has cunningly built his success on the hypocrisy, decadence and corruption of society, but his rise to power has above all been made possible by the powerful and wealthy women around him. Readers who would like to see Georges punished for his unscrupulousness might be dissatisfied, but Maupassant is too much of a realist to fall into such a trap. The world is cruel, and that is what he wanted to show us - wealth and glory are often for the unworthy.
[Margaret Mauldon, Oxford World's Classics; keep away from the free translations on Gutenberg etc, as these are unreliable (shortened and inaccurate)]
The acknowledged masterpiece of the international decadent movement, a trend anticipated in the work of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Flaubert's Salammbo, after which the greatest decadent writers Huysmans, Wilde and d'Annunzio appeared. À rebours broke free from Naturalism and already contains many themes that became associated with the Symbolist aesthetic. The decadent period in European literature coincided with the Belle Epoque (1880-1914), ironically the period of the greatest flowering of bourgeois culture. There is little story in the novel. We get a catalog of the tastes and inner life of Jean des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive aesthete and antihero who loathes 19th-century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal artistic world of his own creation. The text describes in detail the luxurious decor in which he sequesters himself, and lists all his aesthetic enthusiasms. But Des Esseintes also suffers from a personality disorder, he is torn between intense yearnings for relatedness and for withdrawal - he is ultimately a sick hero. He has a misogynistic view of women (considering them all as a sort of "Salomes") and as an act of defiance against his parents and family he refuses to have children. His "intimate shelter" is in fact an act of regression - but that is in itself also a form of decadence. À rebours is the ultimate example of "decadent" literature.
[Margaret Mauldon, Oxford World's Classics]
13. L'œuvre (The Masterwork aka His Masterpiece; lit. "The Work") by Émile Zola (1886)
L'œuvre is the fourteenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It is the story of a contemporary painter, Claude Lantier, and his struggle to paint a great work that will reflect his talent and genius. It is also an accurate portrayal of the Parisian art world in the mid-nineteenth century, between 1855 and 1870. Claude Lantier is a revolutionary artist whose work is misunderstood by an art-going public hidebound by traditional subjects, techniques and representations. But the biggest problem is in himself: he is unable to finish his great painting, he just keeps changing it and adding to it, often incongruous elements, and then completely repainting it. In the end, he becomes so anguished and frustrated that he is driven to suicide. So it is the story of a groundbreaking artist unable to live up to his potential, a theme that fits in the Rougon-Macquart series, which shows how heredity works on a family, and how several members of that family show obsessive compulsive behavior and a predisposition to self-destruction. Many critics have seen in Claude Lantier a portrait of the Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, who was a friend of Zola (until he read the present novel), but that is a mistake. Zola used some youthful memories from Aix-en-Provence he shared with Cézanne, but the character of Lantier is most of all a compound based on Claude Monet and Édouard Manet (plus lots of imagination). For example, Claude Lantier's first painting in the book is based on Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, and we also get a long and interesting description of the Salon des Refusés from 1863. Zola doesn't call Lantier's style "Impressionism," but "Open Air school" as Monet advocated painting not in the studio, but indeed in the open air, etc. What makes this novel so interesting is not only the fictional struggle of one artist, but above all the depiction of the bohemian art world of 19th-century Paris. Besides painting, Zola also looks at contemporary sculpture, literature (Zola gives us something like a self-portrait in the character of the novelist Pierre Sandoz), architecture, music and journalism, as well as the commodification of art in the unscrupulous behavior of art dealers. In short, a vast panorama of the French art world, that in my view is superior to more popular novels by Zola such as Germinal and L'assommoir, not to speak of Thérèse Raquin.
[Thomas Walton, Oxford World's Classics; as 19th c. translations of Zola were heavily censored, pick a modern translation and not one of the free ones on Gutenberg etc.]
14. The Great Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier (1913)
Le Grand Meaulnes, of which the title literally means "The Great Meaulnes", is the only work written by the French author Alain-Fournier (Henri Alban Fournier) before he was killed at age 27 in one of the early battles of WWI. It is a true masterpiece of nostalgia. The novel is narrated by François Seurel, son of a schoolmaster in a village in the Sologne, a region of pools and marshes in north-central France. François (age 15) is captivated by the charismatic new schoolboy Augustin Meaulnes (17 years old), who is known as “the great Meaulnes" not only for his large stature, but also the daring feats he pulls off. On a solitary excursion through the countryside, Meaulnes looses his way and stumbles upon a mysterious country estate where a strange wedding celebration is underway. There Meaulnes also chances to meet a young woman of otherworldly beauty, Yvonne de Galais, for whom he conceives a transcendent love. But abruptly, the party breaks up and Meaulnes has to return to the village, where he takes François in his confidence. To his dismay, Meaulnes discovers that he cannot retrace the route to the country estate, which has become "lost," an unobtainable romantic ideal, and a symbol of perfect happiness on the borderline of childhood and adulthood. He keeps hopelessly trying with the help of François, and it is the narrator who a few years later succeeds in locating the castle after Meaulnes has already left the village. Meaulnes is called back, he revisits the estate and later even marries Yvonne - but the perfect happiness he believed to find has evaporated due to the experiences he himself has had in the meantime. The novel is therefore permeated by a feeling of irrevocable loss: the loss of the pure dreams of charmed youth to cruel experience, the loss of idealized love to the sordid reality of the flesh, and the realization of the evanescence of the world around us - and even our memories of that world.
[Robin Buss, Penguin Classics]
