The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel
From 1800 to the Present

A unique and valuable insight into the novel in French over the past two centuries.

Timothy Unwin (Edited by)

9780521499149, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 October 1997

308 pages
22.6 x 15.1 x 1.9 cm, 0.46 kg

This volume offers a unique and valuable insight into the novel in French over the past two centuries. In a series of essays, acknowledged experts discuss a variety of topics including nineteenth-century realism, women and fiction, popular fiction, experiment and innovation, war and the Holocaust, the Francophone novel, and postmodern fiction. They offer a challenging reassessment of major figures, while deliberately reading traditional views of literary history against the grain. Theoretical discussion is combined with close reading of texts and exploration of context, comparison with other genres and other literatures, and reference to novels from earlier periods. This companionable introduction includes a chronology and guide to further reading. From it emerges a strong sense of the vitality and energy of the modern French novel, and of the debates surrounding it.

Chronology
Note on literary prizes
Note on presentation
1. On the novel and the writing of literary history Timothy Unwin
2. Novels of testimony and the invention of the modern French novel Jann Matlock
3. Reality and its representation in the nineteenth-century novel Alison Finch
4. Women and fiction in the nineteenth century Margaret Cohen
5. Popular fiction in the nineteenth century David Coward
6. Decadence and the fin-de siècle novel Laurence M. Porter
7. The Proustian revolution Christie McDonald
8. Formal experiment and innovation David H. Walker
9. Existentialism, engagement, ideology Steven Ungar
10. War and the Holocaust Denis Boak
11. From serious to popular fiction Stephen F. Noreiko
12. The colonial and postcolonial Francophone novel Françoise Lionnet
13. The French Canadian novel Denis Boak
14. Gender and sexual identity in the modern French novel Jane Winston
15. Postmodern French fiction: practice and theory Johnnie Gratton
General bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]