French literature Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Jennifer Birkett and James Kearns

Critical Essay by Jennifer Birkett and James Kearns

SOURCE: Birkett, Jennifer, and James Kearns. “Changing Forms and Subjects.” In A Guide to French Literature: From Early Modern to Postmodern, pp. 200-75. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.

In the following essay, Birkett and Kearns provide a detailed history of modern French literature, including an overview of novels, plays, and poetry.

I the Novel

1914-39: New Ideas and Forms

The most profound challenge to the Naturalist legacy in the novel came from Marcel Proust (1871-1922) in À la recherche du temps perdu (published 1913-27). All of Proust's early work was in one form or another a preparation for this novel, which he began writing in July 1909.¹ Reading Ruskin had confirmed his sense of the over-riding importance of art; translating him had reinforced the apprenticeship of writing also evident in his pastiches of the style of major French writers.² In the fragments of Jean Santeuil, he described the pleasure derived from identifying elements common to sensations in the...
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