French 380
The 19th Century
The First Half of the 19th Century…
The Rise of Romanticism
- a philosophical and literary doctrine.
Madame de Staël (1766-1817)… De l’Allemagne (On Germany)
- presented the principle ideas of romanticism
- Contrary to classical norms, emotions and feelings take precedence
in this new literary trend.
- René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
René (1802) & Atala (1801)
Themes of Solitude
- mal du siecle (malaise of the century)
- The melancholy and unsteadiness of his generation jolted by all
the political and social changes.
Themes of Alienation
- Deception, revolt against bourgeois society mark all the
literature of that following century.
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ch/Chateaub.html
The Great Novelists of the 19th Century
a. Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
- a poet and dramatist
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame(1831), Les Misérables (1862)
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http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/vhugo.htm
b. Stendhal (1783-1842)
- He studies the conflict between the hero and society and the
disillusionment which is the fate of the individual.
- Le Rouge et le Noir (1830)
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http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/stendhal.htm
c. George Sand (1804-1876)
- The pseudonym of a baroness, Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin
- Numerous romantic love affairs with such notable characters as
Frédéric Chopin, the Polish composer.
- Her novels were inspired by rustic life and sentimentality.
- Indiana (1832), La Mare au Diable (1846)
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http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gsand.htm
d. Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897)
- Wrote of the customs of the Midi, the south of France.
- Tartarin de Tarascon (1872), Lettres de mon Moulin (1866)
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http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/daudet.htm
e. Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)
- Wrote historical novels.
- The Count of Monte-Cristo and The Three Musketeers (1844-45)
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http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/adumas1.htm
f. Jules Verne
- Created the science fiction novel.
- Anticipated the future wrought by scientific and technical progress.
- From the Earth to the Moon (1865), A Journey to the Center of the
Earth (1864), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873)
-
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/verne.htm
-----------The 19 Century was marked by a flourishing of science and technology.
The model of physical sciences where the concrete and real are observed
minutely exerts a strong influence on literature.
th
The authors reacted against the romantic idealism and the cult of the
imagination.
-----------The Second Half of the 19th Century…
The Rise of Realism
- A literary doctrine that aims at depicting objective reality.
- A new school represented in the century’s novels.
a. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)
- a tableau of French society of his period (The Human Comedy),
champion of detailed description of realism in prose, inventor
of complicated plots and an entire world of fictitious characters
(3,000 in all). Some of these characters were Father Goriot,
Eugénie Grandet, and Cousin Bette.
- He studies 19th century society and how the power of money
elevates people to places of privilege more so than nobility in
the 18th century.
- La Comédie humaine (1842), La Cousin Bette (1846)
-
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/balzac.htm
b. Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
- wrote some of the masterpieces of realism.
- Madame Bovary (1857), Salammbô (1862), L’éducation
Sentimentale (1869), Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881)
-
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/flaubert.htm
c. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
- A short-story writer. He was careful to describe with precision
and to choose the exact word.
- Stylistic master of the French language.
-
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/maupassa.htm
Realism  Naturalism
- Naturalism involves the use of scientific method in the creation of
literature.
- Describe reality in all of its details and even in its repulsive and
vulgar realities.
a. Edmund (1822-1896) and Jules (1830-1870) Goncourt
- brothers of the naturalist school who wrote several novels
together.
- Journal des Goncourt (1887-96)
-
http://www.bartleby.com/65/go/Goncourt.html
b. Emile Zola (1840-1902)
- gives much importance to social conditions and material
conditions, seeing in them the origins of human passion.
- Paints an enormous tableau of his period. Unfavored milieux
(social). Class conflict created by the industrial revolution.
- Social engagement, L’Affaire Dreyfus (1887), a pro-Semite
(Jewish) work.
- La Ventre de Paris (1874, The Belly of Paris), L’Assommoir
(1877), Germinal (1885), La Bête Humaine (1890, The Beast of
Man)
-
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ezola.htm
French poetry is transformed by these movements…
Gérard de Nerval (1805-1855)
- the world of dream is a reality.
- Past in the present
- Les Chimères (1854),Les Illuminés (1852)
-
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ne/Nerval-G.html
The Romantic Poets…
- Victor Hugo (1802-1885),
- Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869),
- Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863),
- Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
a. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
- Baudelaire adds pessimism to romanticism. His subjective
and mystical vision of the world, a symbolist poet
- His sensibility very close to our century and modernism.
- Les fleurs du mal (1857, The Flowers of Evil)
-
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/baudelai.htm
c. Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
-
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/verlaine.htm
d. Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
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http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rimbaud.htm
e. Lantréamont (1846-1870)
f. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898)
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http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mallarme.htm
g. Jules Michelet (1798-1874)
- A modern historian. Anti-clerical and liberal.
- Histoire de France (History of France)
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Michelet