Description: This comprehensive new guide maps the history of French literature from Rabelais, Ronsard and Montaigne to Beckett, Perec, Duras and Koltes. A sharp and lively chronological narrative develops original readings of authors and texts and discusses the literary, historical, and socio-cultural contexts of their production. Changes in the technology and organization of printing and publishing, the growth of literacy and the changing nature of the reading public are all charted, along with the development and transformation of literary genres by the creative energies of individual writers. Plays, poetry and prose by the great writers of the French literary tradition are discussed alongside work recovered from the canonical margins by new scholarship and different critical perspectives. Attention is given to new directions in contemporary thought, women's writing, and Francophone literature. A Guide to French Literature is a richly comprehensive introduction and guide to the diversity, complexity, and pleasure of French literature.

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