The Cambridge History of French Literature

William Burgwinkle is a Reader in Old French and Occitan at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Nicholas Hammond is the author of several books and articles on seventeenth-century French literature. His books include Playing with Truth: Language and the Human Condition in Pascal's Pensées (Oxford University Press, 1994), Creative Tensions: An Introduction to Seventeenth-Century French Literature (Duckworth, 1997), Fragmentary Voices: Memory and Education at Port-Royal (Gunter Narr, 2004) and Gossip, Sexuality and Scandal in France, 1610–1715 (Peter Lang, 2011). He is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Pascal (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Emma Wilson is a Reader in contemporary French literature and film at the University of Cambridge.

'… a valuable and impressive introduction to the rich heritage of French literature.' Contemporary Review

• Introduction; 1. Manuscripts and manuscript culture; 2. The troubadours: the Occitan model; 3. The Chansons de geste; 4. Saints' lives, violence and community; 5. Myth and the matière de Bretagne; 6. Sexuality, shame and the genesis of romance; 7. Medieval lyric: the trouvères; 8. The grail; 9. Women authors of the Middle Ages; 10. Crusades and identity; 11. Rhetoric and historiography: Villehardouin's 'La Conquête de Constantinople'; 12. Humour and the obscene; 13. Travel and orientalism; 14. Allegory and interpretation; 15. History and fiction: the narrativity and historiography of the Matter of Troy; 16. Mysticism; 17. Prose romance; 18. Rhetoric and theatre; 19. The rise of metafiction in the late Middle Ages; 20. What does Renaissance mean?; 21. Sixteenth-century religious writing; 22. Sixteenth-century poetry; 23. Sixteenth-century theatre; 24. Women writers in the sixteenth century; 25. Sixteenth-century prose narrative; 26. Sixteenth-century thought; 27. Sixteenth-century travel writing; 28. Sixteenth-century margins; 29. Tragedy: early- to mid-seventeenth century; 30. Tragedy: mid- to late-seventeenth century; 31. Seventeenth-century comedy; 32. Seventeenth-century poetry; 33. Seventeenth-century philosophy; 34. Seventeenth-century women writers; 35. Moraliste writing in the seventeenth century; 36. Seventeenth-century prose narrative; 37. Seventeenth-century religious writing; 38. Seventeenth-century margins; 39. What is Enlightenment?; 40. The eighteenth-century novel; 41. The eighteenth-century conte; 42. Eighteenth-century comic theatre; 43. Eighteenth-century theatrical tragedy; 44. Eighteenth-century women writers; 45. Eighteenth-century philosophy; 46. Libertinage; 47. Eighteenth-century travel; 48. Eighteenth-century margins; 49. The Roman personnel; 50. Romanticism: arts, literature and history; 51. Realism; 52. French poetry 1793–1863; 53. Symbolism; 54. Madness and writing; 55. Literature and the city in the nineteenth century; 56. Nineteenth-century travel writing; 57. Philosophy and ideology in nineteenth-century France; 58. Naturalism; 59. Impressionism: art, literature and history (1870–1914); 60. Decadence; 61. Avant-garde: text and image; 62. Autobiography; 63. The modern French novel; 64. The contemporary French novel; 65. Existentialism; 66. Modern French thought; 67. French drama in the twentieth century; 68. Twentieth-century poetry; 69. Francophone writing; 70. Writing and postcolonial theory; 71. Travel writing 1914–2010; 72. French cinema 1895–2010; 73. Writing, memory and history; 74. Holocaust writing and film; 75. Women writers, artists and filmmakers; 76. Popular culture and the case of the bande dessinée; 77. Literature, film and new media; Bibliography; Index.