French and Francophone Languages and Literatures

Conceived for the general reader, this volume presents French literature not as a simple inventory of authors or titles, but rather as a historical and cultural field viewed from a wide array of contemporary critical perspectives. The book consists of 164 essays by American and European scholars, and covers the history of French literature from 842 to 1989.

In this lucid and innovative volume, three distinguished scholars trace this history of French literature from its beginnings to the present day. From the oral, unstable anonymous works of the early Middle Ages via the emergence of a print culture in the Renaissance, through to the attempted codification of genres and styles in the nineteenth century and the resourceful experimentation of the twentieth, A Short History of French Literature demonstrates the world importance of French literature, and the extraordinary richness of its range. The three main parts of the volume cover the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, and the Modern period, and offer wide-ranging, personal, and detailed coverage of major writers and movements. Writing for the interested general reader as much as for students, the authors range expertly between authors and their works, historical events, and literary movements, offering as a whole an authoritative and innovative account of the history of French literature.

With more than two hundred entries by leading intellectuals in the French- and English-speaking world, this new volume presents the authoritative guide to twentieth-century French thought. Unrivaled in its scope and depth, The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought covers and critiques the intellectual figures, movements, and publications that helped shape and define fields as diverse as history and historiography, psychoanalysis, film, literary theory, cognitive and life sciences, literary criticism, philosophy, and economics. The contributors also discuss developments in French thought on such subjects as pacifism, fashion, gastronomy, technology, and urbanism. More than just a reference volume, The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought offers original and imaginative explorations of a variety of topics. Contributors include prominent French thinkers, many of whom have played an integral role in the development of French thought, and American, British, and Canadian scholars who have been vital in the dissemination of French ideas. The book brings together such pairings as Etienne Balibar on Althusser; Jean Baudrillard on the futures of theory; Judith Butler on Hegel in France; Régis Debray on mediology; Julia Kristeva on Proust; Michael Morange on the life sciences; Paul Ricoeur on ethics; Elisabeth Roudinesco on psychoanalysis; and Roger Shattuck on humanisms. The book is divided into four parts: Movements and Currents (including all the major schools of thought, such as the Annales, deconstruction, Gaullism, négritude, the New Right, psychoanalysis, and structuralism); Themes (ideas that helped define intellectual work in the twentieth century, such as anti-Semitism, the avant-garde, everyday life, film theory, and nationalism); Intellectuals (including critical accounts of the lives and work of such figures as Aron, Barthes, de Beauvoir, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Levinas, and Proust); and Dissemination (covering influential journals, television shows, radio programs, and newspapers).