The Cambridge Companion to French Literature Lyons Hardback 9781107036048

The Cambridge Companion to French LiteratureAuthor(s): John D. Lyons\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781107036048, 978-1107036048\nSynopsis\nIn this authoritative and accessible account of French literature, sixteen essays by leading specialists offer provocative insights into French literary culture, its genres, movements, themes, and historic turning points, including the cultural and linguistic challenges of today's multi-ethnic France. The French have, over the centuries, invented and reinvented writing, from the Arthurian romances of Chrtien de Troyes to Montaigne's Essays, which gave the world a new literary form and a new standard for writing about personal thought and experience; from the highly polished tragedies of French classicism to the satirical novels of the Enlightenment; from Proust's explorations of social and sexual mores to the 'New Novel' of the late twentieth century; and fr.