Machine generated contents note: Preface; Acknowledgements; Chronology; 1. Villon: a dying man; 2. Rabelais: the uses of laughter; 3. Montaigne: self-portrait; 4. Corneille: heroes and kings; 5. Racine: in the labyrinth; 6. Molière: new forms of comedy; 7. La Fontaine: the power of fables/fables of power; 8. Madame de Lafayette: the birth of the modern novel; 9. Voltaire: the case for tolerance; 10. Rousseau: man of feeling; 11. Diderot: the enlightened sceptic; 12. Laclos: dangerous liaisons; 13. Stendhal: the pursuit of happiness; 14. Balzac: 'All is true'; 15. Hugo: the divine stenographer; 16. Baudelaire: the streets of Paris; 17. Flaubert: the narrator vanishes; 18. Zola: the poetry of the real; 19. Huysmans: against nature; 20. Mallarme;: the magic of words; 21. Rimbaud: somebody else; 22. Proust: the self, time and art; 23. Jarry: the art of provocation; 24. Apollinaire: impresario of the new; 25. Breton and company: surrealism; 26. Ce;line: night journey; 27. Sartre: writing in the world; 28. Camus: a moral voice; 29. Beckett: filling the silence; 30. French literature into the twenty-first century; Notes; Further reading.
The Cambridge introduction to French literature by Brian Nelson. ISBN 9780521715096. Published by Cambridge University Press in 2015. Publication and catalogue information, links to buy online and reader comments.