Thread 24708229

What are France's foundational authors? The ones who defined what French literature is.
I've got Rousseau, Céline and then...? Chrétien de Troyes? Montaigne?

Also post other countries' foundational authors.

Jules Verne
Marquis De Sade

>>24708229 (OP)
Celine is a vulgar piece of shit

>>24708248
Your personal views on the man have nothing to do with what the OP is saying thoughbeit. He clearly was the most influential 20th century French author

Why were all of france's greatest literary figures anglophiles?
>Voltaire and Montisque were anglophiles who admired england and its system of government
>The french revolutionaries were inspired by the american anglo revolutionaries and by the glorious revolution of 1688
>France's romantic writers were all influenced by Walter scott and Charles Maturin

>>24708312
Voltaire and Montesquieu are hardly the greatest French writers, and Voltaire was a notorious shitbag who hated anything French.
Politically speaking, the French revolutionaries were inspired by French Enlightenment writers first and foremost. Also they were freemasons so they were anything but French in spirit, and many of them were paid by foreign forces (the only one we can be sure wasn't a plant was Robespierre).
France's romantic writers' biggest inspirations were Rousseau and Chateaubriand.

>>24708229 (OP)
Víctor Hugo, Balzac, maybe Villon
The nameless composer of La Chanson de Roland

>>24708323
Walter Scott was literally one of france's most well read writers
The french revolution was inspirec by the glorious revolution
>On 30 November 1789, just after the outbreak of the French Revolution, one Monsieur Navier stood up to address the Patriotic Society of Dijon, the chief city of Burgundy. “Why should we be ashamed, Gentlemen,” he asked his auditors, “to acknowledge that the Revolution which is now es-tablishing itself in our country, is owing to the example given by England a century ago? It was from that day we became acquainted with the political constitution of that island, and the prosperity with which it was accompanied; it was from that day our hatred of despotism derived its energy. In securing their own happiness, Englishmen have prepared the way for that of the universe. Whilst on all sides tyrants were attempting to extinguish the sacred flame of liberty, our neighbors with intrepid watchfulness and care cherished it in their bosoms. We have caught some of these salutary sparks; and this fire enflaming every mind, is extending itself all over Europe, for ever to reduce to ashes those shackles with which despotism has oppressed mankind.”1

>>24708344
>Walter Scott was literally one of france's most well read writers
>Source: my ass
But it doesn't matter either way:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantisme_fran%C3%A7ais
+ https://www.persee.fr/doc/bamed_0240-8805_1980_num_18_1_1749 (two can play at that game)
Have fun reading.

>The french revolution was inspirec by the glorious revolution
>Quotes a literal nobody
And who cares either way? A historical moment inspiring another one is hardly anything new. It's logical that they a precedent to justify their actions going forward. Politically speaking, they had other aims and like I said, were first and foremost inspired by Enlightenment writers (as well as Rousseau).

>>24708364
>In the 1820s, no French name was in France "more known and glorious [ 92 ] " than the name of Walter Scott - among the people as well as among the intellectual and artistic elite. Never had a foreigner aroused such enthusiasm [ 92 ] .

>Scott's imitation initially affected the historical novel [ 93 ] . One hundred and fifty historical novels appeared from April toAugust 1822" Nowadays, only historical novels are written ," states Le Globe .July 23, 1825[ 94 ] .

>Vigny , Mérimée , Balzac tried it. Quentin Durward inspired Victor Hugo to write Notre-Dame de Paris , published in 1831 [ 95 ] .

>But, as Louis Maigron shows in Le Roman historique à l'époque romantique , Scott's influence in France is far from being limited to the historical novel. It is the whole art of the novel , until then restricted to the analysis of love and the individual, which owes Scott a quantity of novelties: ravages wrought by passions other than love (ambition, vanity, egoism, pride) [ 96 ] , interest in society, in social passions [ 97 ] , dramatic composition, picturesque descriptions, natural and lively dialogues

>>24708427
And like I said, it doesn't matter.

Charles Dickens, George Eliot, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce were greatly inspired by the French.

French novels were constantly being copied during the Victorian era :
https://journals.openedition.org/cve/4497

Most of your writers were writing in French, if not in Latin before Chaucer. The father of the Arthurian novels was French (Chretien de Troyes), Walter Scott was greatly influence by medieval French literature. The entire concept of the English novel needs the French as a base.
This is a retarded assumptions equivalent to saying "my pokemon card is better than yours".

>But, as Louis Maigron shows in Le Roman historique à l'époque romantique , Scott's influence in France is far from being limited to the historical novel. It is the whole art of the novel , until then restricted to the analysis of love and the individual, which owes Scott a quantity of novelties: ravages wrought by passions other than love (ambition, vanity, egoism, pride) [ 96 ] , interest in society, in social passions [ 97 ] , dramatic composition, picturesque descriptions, natural and lively dialogues
That seems a laughable and retarded leap in logic when all of these were present in French novels long before Walter Scott

>>24708475
The french revolution owes its concepts entirely to english republicans like algernon sidney, cromwell and to voltaire and montisque who were anglophiles
Stop coping buddy
French loved cromwell so much they wrote a play about his life

>>24708613
Yes let's just forget Rousseau, Condorcet, the Encyclopédistes (Diderot and d'Alembert especially), Claude Adrien Helvétius, Gabriel Bonnot de Mably...
Rousseau’s theories on the social contract, general will, and popular sovereignty are at the root of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
The Enlightenment and its ideas was the root cause of the French Revolution (and arguable started under Louis XIV, by Louis XIV himself).

Your language wouldn't even be what it is if you didn't larp as French after getting buckbroken by the Normans. One can hardly talk about "English literature" before Chaucer. And you're still here trying to appropriate for yourself everything French to justify your literature not being as highly regarded as the French one while simutaneously not knowing anything about French literature or history (the only things you could possibly know are the ones that relate to English history, which is why you latch on to the few details that concern your kind when talking about it).

You will never have deeply original culture, your language will always be tied to French, you will never have Napoleon or Jeanne d'Arc.
>B-B-But like, isn't this French thing soooooo English???
You will never be French. Sorry to break it to you.

>>24708229 (OP)
Villon, Ronsard, Rabelais, Montaigne, Bossuet, Pascal, Racine, Corneille, Molière, Sade, Chateaubriand, Hugo, Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Huysmans, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Valéry, Proust

>>24708861
Why the FUCK is there always someone copy-pasting a long list of French writers in these threads lol
I meant writers who completely changed French literature and influenced almost every authors who came after them
French lit post-Rousseau is mostly 'Rousseauiste', until Céline comes along, and then it's mostly 'Céliniste'

To expand on that:
Rousseau completely turns inward and his emotional transparency and narcissism become a model. He also popularizes the art of autobiographies. His tension between civilization and authenticity threads through writers like Hugo, Zola and Proust. And many other things I'm sure.
While Céline basically turns French literature away from idealism and towards cynicism, and modern French writing is just the continuation of Céline's revolutional breaking of high-minded 'prout-Proust' literature (as he called it).

As good as Bossuet's prose is (from what I read of the History of the variations of the Protestant Churches), I don't think he had the same impact lol.
It basically boils down to who would you put if you had to make a Mount Rushmore of French literature. I don't expect to answer if you don't know do not worry, just saying for the future anons (if others respond).

I think the guy who wrote La Chanson de Roland, like the other guy said, would probably fit

>>24708229 (OP)
>Also post other countries' foundational authors
ok then

>>24709040
part 2

>>24709040
>>24709041
satanic bullshit

>>24708659
>rousseau
Anglophile
>french
Anglophiles throughout history
Dominated by anglo BVLLS
Less than 50 years after the norman conquest norman writers were seething on how normans were adopting anglo fashions like long hair and moustaches

the only reason henry of navarre won is because english BVLLS like walter raleigh helped huguenots win
Our local french anon is seething despite the fact that english and french buccaneer BVLLs fought alongside each other in the carribean to dominate the spanish

>>24709321
>Rousseau
>Anglophile
Go read a fucking book you mongoloid. Rousseau was a proud French patriot who didn't give two shits about England.
>inb4 hurr durrr he was Swiss so he can't be a French patriot, I'm a retard who hasn't read his Confessions
You're probably pulling this out of your ass after reading of his friendship with Hume. And I'm being REALLY generous here with the assumption that you read anything.

I'm not gonna read the rest of your nose drivel. Your responses are always extremely short because you conveniently avoid most of my arguments. At least we both know how profoundly retarded you are.

The Anglo constantly has to compare himself to the French due to extreme jealousy at his inferior language, literature and history.

>>24709341
The """frenchman""" has to cope with the fact that all his famous literary figures were anglophiles
We know you're diminishing montisque and voltaire because you know they loved england and english culture
We know you don't want to acknowledge that the only reason henry of navarre won is because english BVLLS helped him
We know you don't want to acknoledge that the smartest and most nordic french, the huguenots, moved to britain, germany, and scandinavia
Something tells me you're a moorberian descendant living in france and not an actual frenchman

>The Lettres philosophiques first introduced the French to British writers and thinkers such as Jonathan Swift, Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare, who before then had been barely known in France.[12] The success of Lettres philosophiques and the resulting wave of Anglomanie made all things English the rage in France, with English food, English styles and English gardens being especially popular.[12] Ultimately, the popularity of Anglomanie led to a backlash, with H. L. Fougeret de Monbron publishing Préservatif contre l'anglomanie (The Antidote to Anglomania) in 1757, in which he argued for the superiority of French culture and attacked British democracy as mere "mobocracy".[13]
LOL

>>24709368
>During the Enlightenment (17th-18th centuries), France was seen as the cultural and intellectual leader of Europe. French language became the lingua franca of diplomacy, and English aristocrats, intellectuals, and royals imitated French manners, fashion, and philosophy. This Francophilia peaked in the 18th century, when the British elite often preferred French for conversation, correspondence, and literature, and when French thinkers and artistic models shaped English tastes
>AAAACCCKKKKK

>>24709399
>In 1847, Baudelaire became acquainted with the works of Poe, in which he found tales and poems that had, he claimed, long existed in his own brain but never taken shape. Baudelaire saw in Poe a precursor and tried to be his French contemporary counterpart.[34] From this time until 1865, he was largely occupied with translating Poe's works; his translations were widely praised. Baudelaire was not the first French translator of Poe, but his "scrupulous translations" were considered among the best. These were published as Histoires extraordinaires (Extraordinary stories) (1856), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires (New extraordinary stories) (1857), Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym, Eureka, and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses (Grotesque and serious stories) (1865). Two essays on Poe are to be found in his Œuvres complètes (Complete works) (vols. v. and vi.).
>>AAAACCCKKKKK

>>24709419
>Thinks Poe is English
>--ack!

>Edward Gibbon was fluent in French as he was spent part of his youth in Lausanne, was greatly influenced by the French Enlightenment and was so influenced by French culture that has often been described as being "bi-cultural".[32]
>ACK

>David Hume was fluent in French and was influenced by the French Enlightenment. He despised British culture and strongly preferred speaking French to English. He is loved in France, where he is known as "Le Bon Hume".
>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

>>24709419
I think you‘re playing more than a little fast and loose with the definition of anglo here

>>24709419
>Oscar Wilde was describe as an "ardent Francophile" who spent much of his time in Paris.[35]
>AAAACCCKKKK

>Charles Dickens was a Francophile who often vacationed in France and in a speech delivered in Paris in 1846 in French called the French "the first people in the universe".[33]
>BLAAAAARGHGHGAAACCCCCK

Just nuke the fucking thread already

Edger Allen Poe

>>24708312
Céline was also quite the Anglophile, having dedicated Guignol's Band to London. He spoke fluent English and felt more in tune with Great Britain's climate (because he was a mystic racist).
He also liked tried a bit to have Journey to the end of the night adapted in Hollywood

>>24709431
>>24709435
Poe was an american, a nation sounded by brits, of british descent :)
>Voltaire circulated throughout English high society, meeting Alexander Pope, John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and many other members of the nobility and royalty.[49] Voltaire's exile in England greatly influenced his thinking. He was intrigued by Britain's constitutional monarchy in contrast to French absolutism and by the country's greater freedom of speech and religion.[50] He was influenced by the writers of the time and developed an interest in English literature, especially Shakespeare, who was still little known in continental Europe.[51] Despite pointing out Shakespeare's deviations from neoclassical standards, Voltaire saw him as an example for French drama, which, though more polished, lacked on-stage action. Later, as Shakespeare's influence began growing in France, Voltaire tried to set a contrary example with his own plays, decrying what he considered Shakespeare's barbarities.

>Voltaire may have been present at the funeral of Isaac Newton[a] and met Newton's niece Catherine Conduitt.[48] In 1727, Voltaire published two essays in English, Upon the Civil Wars of France, Extracted from Curious Manuscripts and Upon Epic Poetry of the European Nations, from Homer Down to Milton.[48] He also published a letter about the Quakers after attending one of their services.[52]

>Further success followed in 1732 with his play Zaïre, which when published in 1733 carried a dedication to Fawkener praising English liberty and commerce.[57] He published his admiring essays on British government, literature, religion, and science in Letters Concerning the English Nation (London, 1733).[58] In 1734, they were published in Rouen as Lettres philosophiques, causing a huge scandal.[59][b] Published without approval of the royal censor, the essays lauded British constitutional monarchy as more developed and more respectful of human rights than its French counterpart, particularly regarding religious tolerance. The book was publicly burnt and banned, and Voltaire was again forced to flee Paris.[24]
>AAAACCCKKKKK

>>24709447
Nta but no. Read his pamphlets. He thought they were synonymous with Jews

>>24709433
America is a nation founded by british people, on british whig values, and poe was of 100% british stock
How was he not an "anglo"?

>>24709452
>N-N-NO I SWEAR IT WAS ON PURPOSE!!!
>HERE'S A BUNCH OF SHIT ABOUT VOLTAIRE AGAIN!!

>>24708229 (OP)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:16th-century_French_male_writers

>>24709464
>The influence of Sir Walter Scott was strongly felt in all branches of French Romantic literature. The dramatists went repeatedly to the Waverley Novels for their plots, and many of the more original plays of the period show positive traces of the influence of Scott in character, dialogue and incident. The poets and novelists learned from Scott the art of portraiture and of landscape painting. To this must be added the far greater skill of combining character and background in such a manner as to bring out the salient traits of the former. This was Scott's greatest and most original contribution. Hugo, one of the first French writers to come under the influence of the author of Waverley, was also unquestionably the most strongly affected. His early critical writings show the keen interest with which he followed the translations of the Waverley. Furthermore, it was from his first readings of Scott that Hugo conceived the method of novel-writing which he was to use with such great success in his later prose works. The current Romantic interest in the picturesque stemmed largely from Scott. The glittering pageantry of the Middle Ages, the spirited account of battles and tournaments, all of which were already to be found in their own literature, came to French writers principally through the medium of Scott. Coupled with this search for the picturesque in all its forms was the quest for local colour. The combination of these two elements in Scott and their further development in Hugo, gave to French fictional literature a verisimilitude hitherto unattained.
>ACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

>The painting's subject Ossian purportedly was a blind Scottish poet who lived in the 3rd century CE. In the 1760s, James Macpherson published texts supposedly by Ossian, which Macpherson claimed to have rediscovered and translated from Gaelic into English.[8][9] The translated works' success in Britain was followed by a spread of enthusiasm for Ossian throughout Europe. One of the poems was translated into French as early as 1762, and the collected works were translated in 1777. It was the Italian translation, however, by Melchiorre Cesarotti which the future French emperor Napoleon read.[10] Napoleon became a fervent admirer of Ossian; it was even said that he carried a copy of Ossian's work into battle.[4]
ACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

>>24709468
>>24709469
>English novels were not only influenced by French ones--some were simply uncredited translations. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens were among many British novelists explicitly or implicitly influenced by French literature in the 1860s, as reviews began to place novels side-by-side rather than in separate columns, sometimes under such appealing headings as ‘The Dregs of French and English Romance’.
>AAACCCCKKKKKK

>Entire article: https://journals.openedition.org/cve/4497
>AAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Alright I don't care anymore

>>24709456
I read the pamphlets. He wrote Guignol's Band after his pamphlets. He always liked England and England and the English language play a part in all of his major novels. In Journey to the end of the night when he teaches English to the asylum director and in America, in Mort à Crédit wherein he goes twice to England, the first of which offers us the best scene of the whole novel when traveling on the shaky boat with his parents and of course Guignol's Band; that he previously wanted to simply name "Londres".

>>24709474
>Scott completed Quentin Durward within five months of finishing Peveril of the Peak, and readers had difficulty believing that the 'Author of Waverley' could have produced another novel quite so quickly. It was perhaps for this reason that sales were initially slow despite Quentin Durward being Scott's most critically acclaimed novel since Ivanhoe. Scott's expressed his disappointment in a letter: 'If it had been a bad book I would not have cared, but we must think what is to be done.'

>The slow sales of Quentin Durward in England stood in stark contrast to its reception in France, where it caused a similar sensation to Waverley in Scotland and Ivanhoe in England. French women adopted the fashion of wearing gowns in the Stuart tartan, and Scott became the talk of Paris. The vogue for the novel spread to Italy then swept across Europe, eventually awakening renewed interest in Britain, where demand soon outstripped supply.
ACKKKKKKKKKK

>>24709479
I haven't read Guignol's Band, but I know that it's the same period of his life as London (that I read). And it's simply a biographical period of his life. Most of his novels are biographical in nature. He was himself in London in WWI.
I know he's referenced Shakespeare though.
The only time he expresses his real opinions on England or the US it's always extremely negative. No doubt he enjoyed the old English literature, but in his pamphlets he shits all over the new one (and all over their history)

>>24709500
>but in his pamphlets he shits all over the new one (and all over their history)
That guy in Journey to the end of the night is obessed with monmouth's rebellion.

>>24709504
I don't really remember it. Still doesn't change the fact that he calls them the Jews of Europe

>>24709500
Why on earth would you read Londres before Guignol's band?
>muh biographical nature
He chose episodes of his life, he chose to only talk about his linguistic stay in England and not in Germany in Mort à Crédit. The Celtic folk movement coming from England have influenced him a lot and it shows.

Have you noticed he shits on everyone with hysteric rage in the pamphlets? Although he has subscribed to the idea of an England rotten with Jewishness in that time period, he consistently have been mystified by England and its landscapes and people. His idea of légèreté, is often associated with folk elements from medieval England and Arthurian legends.

His fascination faded a bit away in the end of his career, prolly more because they bombed Europe than because of the pamphlets.

>>24709531
>Why on earth would you read Londres before Guignol's band?
Because I don't care about the chronology or anything like that. These books are not connected either way.

And all you're telling me is that he was well read, and probably enjoyed a good amount of English literature, like anybody who reads does.

He does shit on everyone in his pamphlets but he clearly means all of it. He's clearly telling you one thing: Fuck England (just as he tells you Fuck France).

You can be influenced by a country's literature and respect its people to some extent without being an Anglophile. Otherwise I'd be a Germanophile, Francophile, Anglophile, Italianophile (?), Japanophile (?) and Russophile. Stop it with the retardation. I'm sure he loved their literature but he clearly had very little respect for what England became (or even was to some extent).
This entire thread is pure dogshit.

>>24709563
>Because I don't care about the chronology or anything like that. These books are not connected either way.

London is an unfinished, unpublished version of his exile in England that he completely rewrote for Guignol's band. It's not about chronology but how you choose to spend your time…

I told you it went beyond literature. He was also attracted by English myths, decorum and society. He wanted to emigrate there when he was young. Journey to the end of the night was influenced by Russian literature but I'm not telling you he was a Russophile.

>This entire thread is pure dogshit.
I guess it's your way to telling me goodbye fag

>>24708231
KEK. are you 13?

>>24709586
Yes and I'm sure French writer number 2000 deserves to be in the English Pantheon. I mean seriously, the seething frog was right when he said Anglos constantly have to look at the French through an Anglo POV.
No I'm not French BTW. I don't even read authors from my own country.

>I guess it's your way to telling me goodbye fag
No it's my way of calling (You) retarded.

The goodbye is now

OP here.
My dad has been infinitely more useful than any of you autists.
I'm gonna continue on with my research on my own since you're all worthless illiterate bugmen who need to boil in very hot rivers of shit.
>Proof?
No one has disputed my controversial assumption that the two most important authors of the last centuries are Rousseau and Céline.
Anyways, I'm leaving the thread.

>>24709598
> Yes and I'm sure French writer number 2000 deserves to be in the English Pantheon
Of course not, Celine is quintessentially French. Don't get worked up on something I didn't say.
>No I'm not French BTW
I am
> The goodbye is now
Lmao

>>24709457
Because he probably wasn‘t thinking of the Mayflower or the Continental Congress while writing Ulalume (also he was half Irish)

>>24708229 (OP)
Rabelais is the greatest French writer, although Molieré is more liked and influential.

>>24709619
>irish
Anglo Irish protestants are british people
Why do foreigners confuse them with irish gaels so often?

>>24708229 (OP)
Proust but people get filtered hard by his prose.
Also lmaoing at Br*t*sh fags thinking their god-forsaken island had any literary relevance at all outside of Shakespeare and whose culture and society wasn't almost entirely modelled after France for most of its history.
>b-but Poe
You know it's bad when you gotta pretend American writers are British bahahaha

>>24709884
>Americans of British descent are not...le british
By those standards people from quebec have nothing to do with france
typical medbug

>>24709884
Proust is the only good French writer and even he suffered from the unfathomable pretension endemic to French literature.

>>24709897
Are Belgian writers or artists considered French? Are the swiss French?
Language =/= culture

I love French literature
I am still doing my Maupassant read through
I hope I'll be done by the end of the year

>>24708229 (OP)
let's start with five before the enlightenment. i'd go with the chanson de roland, rabelais, montaigne, moliere and racine. i think all of those are quite difficult to dispute.

>>24710137
>Are Belgian writers or artists considered French? Are the swiss French?
Yes

>>24708229 (OP)
The most influential within France are Victor Hugo, Rabelias, and Voltaire. Outside of France I think you need to include Jules Verne and Saint-Exupéry (both mediocre, but influential for how people see French lit), Camus, and of course Houellebecq

>>24711638
>Jules Verne and Saint-Exupéry (both mediocre, but influential for how people see French lit)
Actually Jules Verne is seen as merely a children's author outside of France
Within France he's more highly respected

>>24709066
nope that would be islam