Efnisyfirlit

• Cover
• Half title
• Title page
• Imprints page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology
• Chapter 1 Villon: a dying man
• A fictional will
• ‘The Ballad of the Hanged’
• Chapter 2 Rabelais: the uses of laughter
• Laughter, satire and language
• Laughter, the marketplace and the body
• Chapter 3 Montaigne: self-portrait
• ‘…it is my own self that I portray’
• ‘Our most great and glorious achievement is to live our life fittingly’
• Chapter 4 Corneille: heroes and kings
• Le Cid
• The ‘Roman’ tragedies
• Chapter 5 Racine: in the labyrinth
• The world of Racinian tragedy
• Phèdre
• Chapter 6 Molière: new forms of comedy
• Comedy high and low
• Comedy of character: Tartuffe
• ‘Normative’ comedy
• Comedy and/as fantasy
• Chapter 7 La Fontaine: the power of fables/fables of power
• The Fables: art and ideology
• The Poet and the King
• Chapter 8 Madame de Lafayette: the birth of the modern novel
• Chapter 9 Voltaire: the case for tolerance
• The Enlightenment
• Voltaire and Enlightenment
• Voltaire at Ferney
• The best of all possible worlds
• Chapter 10 Rousseau: man of feeling
• Critique of society
• La Nouvelle Héloïse
• Autobiography
• Chapter 11 Diderot: the enlightened sceptic
• The mind of a sceptic
• Experimental fiction
• Chapter 12 Laclos: dangerous liaisons
• Sexual games
• A polyphonic novel
• Interpretation
• Chapter 13 Stendhal: the pursuit of happiness
• After Waterloo
• A divided self
• Tranquillity
• Chapter 14 Balzac: ‘All is true’
• The Human Comedy
• Old Goriot: the beginning
• Old Goriot: the end
• Chapter 15 Hugo: the divine stenographer
• Drama
• Poetry
• The novel
• Chapter 16 Baudelaire: the streets of Paris
• Modernity and the city
• Parisian scenes
• Chapter 17 Flaubert: the narrator vanishes
• Madame Bovary: a visit to a ball
• Sentimental Education: a visit to a brothel
• Chapter 18 Zola: the poetry of the real
• Scientific observation and poetic vision
• Social class
• The body and sex
• The public writer
• Chapter 19 Huysmans: against nature
• The Decadent dandy
• A journey
• Chapter 20 Mallarmé: the magic of words
• Chapter 21 Rimbaud: somebody else
• The poet as seer
• ‘The Drunken Boat’
• Bohemia, London, Brussels, Africa
• Chapter 22 Proust: the self, time and art
• ‘When a man is asleep…’
• A goodnight kiss
• ‘…a piece of madeleine’
• ‘…a sort of drunkenness’
• Chapter 23 Jarry: the art of provocation
• Ubu
• Anarchism, Dadaism, Absurdism
• Chapter 24 Apollinaire: impresario of the new
• Tradition and modernity
• ‘Zone’
• Chapter 25 Breton & Company: Surrealism
• Rebellion of the mind
• Paris Peasant and Nadja
• Significance and legacy
• Chapter 26 Céline: night journey
• Elements of a life
• A nightmare journey
• The form of expression
• Chapter 27 Sartre: writing in the world
• Early years
• Nausea
• Commitment
• Chapter 28 Camus: a moral voice
• The outsider
• Morality and politics
• Chapter 29 Beckett: filling the silence
• Finding a voice
• Waiting for Godot
• Chapter 30 French literature into the twenty-first century
• New novel, new criticism
• A return to tradition
• Literature as play
• Duras and other women writers
• Autobiography/autofiction
• Francophone writing
• French fiction today
• Notes
• Further reading
• Index of authors and titles
• Index of genres, movements and concepts
• Cambridge Introductions to…