The Plague was written by Albert Camus (1913–60), one of the most gifted and influential writers and philosophers in the French language of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957. Camus was born in… Read More ›
French Literature
Analysis of André Gide’s The Pastoral Symphony
La symphonie pastorale, translated as The Pastoral Symphony (1931), but just as often called by its French title by English-speaking critics, is part of a group of firstperson narratives called récits. Récits are characterized by a simple and ironic text… Read More ›
Analysis of Marguerite Duras’s The North China Lover
The North China Lover was published late in the French author’s life (1914–96). The short novel primarily revisits the events of Marguerite Duras’s 1984 celebrated novel The Lover (L’Amant), and tells of a pivotal love affair between an unnamed teenage… Read More ›
Analysis of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Night Flight
This work marks the second novel written by France’s long-loved author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–44). The author’s first novel, Southern Mail (Courrier sud), appeared in 1929. His masterpiece, The Little Prince (Le petit prince) was published a year before the author’s… Read More ›
Analysis of Paul Bourget’s The Night Cometh
Prominent among his later fiction, Paul Bourget’s (1852–1935) The Night Cometh takes as its focus competing worldviews of life and the burden of death. Set in a World War I-era hospital, the novel’s narrator, Marsal, is a doctor who cannot… Read More ›
Analysis of André Breton’s Nadja
Written when the French writer André Breton (1896–1966) was 32 years old, Nadja is a novel that lies between poetry and fiction and thus embodies, as do all of Breton’s writings, what he set out to reveal in his Manifesto… Read More ›
Analysis of Jean Genet’s The Miracle of the Rose
The French novel The Miracle of the Rose was written by Jean Genet (1910–86) in 1943 while the author was imprisoned in La Santé penitentiary in Paris for theft. Published in 1946, this autobiographical work is based on the author’s… Read More ›
Analysis of André Malraux’s Man’s Hope
Man’s Hope by the French writer André Malraux (1901–76) was first serialized in the communist daily Ce Soir from November 3 to December 7, 1937. The novel was then published in book form at the end of 1937. Owing to… Read More ›
Analysis of André Malraux’s Man’s Fate
Winner of the Goncourt prize in 1933, the most prestigious French literary award, Man’s Fate by André Malraux (1901–76) is part of an intriguing trilogy, including The Conquerors (1928) and The Royal Way (1930). Similar to these two earlier works,… Read More ›
Analysis of Marguerite Duras’s The Lover
The novelistic memoir The Lover by Marguerite Duras (1914–96) is a modernist story of sexual coming of age in French colonial Vietnam. It is also a portrait of the young author. It is the most accessible and by far the… Read More ›
Analysis of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince
This last novel by the popular French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–44) is ostensibly a children’s book, set in the author’s familiar and cherished landscape of the Sahara of northern Africa. Although the central character is a pilot, this tale… Read More ›
Analysis of André Gide’s Lafcadio’s Adventures
The prodigious French Nobel laureate André Gide (1869–1951) originally published Lafcadio’s Adventures in La Nouvelle Revue Française in four installments, from January through April 1914; it appeared as a book later the same year. In 1933 Gide adapted it for… Read More ›
Analysis of François Mauriac’s A Knot of Vipers
Considered by many to be the best novel by France’s François Mauriac (1885–1970), A Knot of Vipers contains those recurring central themes of alienation, error, and delusion, or simply “sin,” seen in most of his stories. The work also reveals… Read More ›
Analysis of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night
The 1932 publication of the cynical and darkly comic Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) sent immediate shock waves into a French literary world still reeling from the social and artistic disruptions of World War… Read More ›
Analysis of Alain Robbergrillet’s Jealousy
Born in Brest, France, into a family with a strong background in the sciences, Alain Robbergrillet (1922–2008) was an agricultural engineer by training but became one of the leading exponents of what was known as the nouveau roman, or “new… Read More ›
Analysis of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
The reclusive French writer Marcel Proust, now considered by many scholars as the greatest novelist of the 20th century, labored for more than 14 years and died while still adding to what would eventually be a seven-volume masterpiece. The novel… Read More ›
Analysis of André Gide’s The Immoralist
Despite André Gide’s claims otherwise, his novel The Immoralist is clearly autobiographical. Gide (1869–1951), one of the most significant novelists of the first half of the 20th century and winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize in literature, went to great… Read More ›
Analysis of Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
With her controversial 1986 novel I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, one of the most respected of Guadeloupe’s several powerful writers, Maryse Condé 1934– ) has produced one of the African diaspora’s literary classics. I, Tituba explores the interwoven psychosocial,… Read More ›
Analysis of Paul Bourget’s The Disciple
The Disciple, one of Paul Bourget’s (1852–1935) greatest literary achievements and his most famous novel, marked a change in the author’s literary development. Prior to this work, his fiction consisted of highly dramatic tales set in high society; with The… Read More ›
Analysis of François Mauriac’s The Desert of Love
One of François Mauriac’s first novels, establishing his literary fame, The Desert of Love exhibits a recurring concern in his works, that of the tortures of the flesh and its world of loneliness and separation, as suggested by the title…. Read More ›
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