Jump to content

Contemporary French literature

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
FrenchandFrancophone literature
by category
History
Movements
Writers
Countries and regions
Portals

French
LanguageandLiterature

Authors•Lit categories

French literary history

Medieval
16th century•17th century
18th century•19th century
20th century•Contemporary

Literature by country

France•Quebec
Postcolonial•Haiti
Franco-American

Portals

France•Literature
French literature Wikisource

This article is aboutFrench literaturefrom the year 2000 to the present day.

Overview[edit]

The economic, political and social crises of contemporary France -terrorism, violence, immigration, unemployment, racism, etc.—and (for some) the notion that France has lost its sense of identity and international prestige—through the rise of American hegemony, the growth of Europe and ofglobal capitalism(French:mondialisation)—have created what some critics (likeNancy Huston) have seen as a new form of detachednihilism,reminiscent of the 50s and 60s (Beckett,Cioran). The best known of these authors isMichel Houellebecq,whoseAtomised(French:Les particules élémentaires) was a major international phenomenon. These tendencies have also come under attack. In one of her essays, Nancy Huston criticises Houellebecq for his nihilism; she also makes an acerbic censure of his novels in her workThe teachers of despair(French:Professeurs de désespoir).[citation needed]

Although the contemporary social and political context can be felt in recent works, overall, French literature written in past decades has been disengaged from explicit political discussion (unlike the authors of the 1930s–1940s or the generation of 1968) and has focused on the intimate and the anecdotal.[citation needed]It has tended to no longer see itself as a means of criticism or world transformation, with some notable exceptions (such asMichel HouellebecqorMaurice Dantec).[citation needed]

Other contemporary writers during the last decade have consciously used the process of "autofiction"(similar to the notion of"faction") to renew the novel (Christine Angotfor example). "Autofiction" is a term invented bySerge Doubrovskyin 1977. It is a new sort of romanticised autobiography that resembles the writing of the romantics of the nineteenth century. A few other authors may be perceived as vaguely belonging to this group:Emmanuel Carrère,Alice Ferney,Annie Ernaux,Olivia Rosenthal,Anne Wiazemsky,andVassilis Alexakis.In a related vein,Catherine Millet's 2002 memoirThe Sexual Life of Catherine M.gained much press for its frank exploration of the author's sexual experiences.[1]

Contemporary French authors include:Jonathan Littell,David Foenkinos,Jean-Michel Espitallier,Christophe Tarkos,Olivier Cadiot,Chloé Delaume,Patrick Bouvet,Charles Pennequin,Nathalie Quintane,Frédéric-Yves Jeannet,Nina Bouraoui,Hubries le Dieu,Arno Bertina,Edouard Levé,Bruno Guiblet,Christophe Fiat,andTristan Garcia.

Many of the most lauded works in French over the last decades have been written by individuals from former French colonies or overseas possessions. ThisFrancophone literatureincludes the novels ofAhmadou Kourouma(Côte d'Ivoire),Tahar ben Jelloun(Morocco),Patrick Chamoiseau(Martinique),Amin Maalouf(Lebanon),Mehdi Belhaj Kacem(Tunisia),Assia Djebar(Algeria) andMohamed Mbougar Sarr(Senegal).

France has a number of importantliterary awardsGrand Prix du roman de l'Académie française,Prix Décembre,Prix Femina,Prix Flore,Prix Goncourt,Prix Interallié,Prix Médicis,andPrix Renaudot.[2]In 2011 a new, controversial, award was created calledPrix des prix littéraires( "Prize of Literary Prizes" ) which picks its winner from among the winners of these prizes.[3]

Extrême contemporain[edit]

The termextrême contemporainis a French expression used to indicate French literary production published in France in the last 10 years. Theextrême contemporainis, then, an ever-shifting concept.

This term was used for the first time by French writer Michel Chaillou in 1987.[4]This simple and convenient definition hides a complex and chaotic literary situation, both from the chronological point of view (the temporal boundaries of theextrême contemporainare in continuous shifting) and for the hetereogeneity of present French literary production, which cannot be defined in a clear and homogeneous way. The termextrême contemporain,therefore, is all-inclusive. The literary production of this period is characterized by a transitory quality; because of the manifolded nature of such an immense corpus of texts, the identification of specific tendencies is inevitably partial and precarious.

Therefore, to define theextrême contemporainas aliterary movementwould be very improper: it is a mere term of convenience used by commentators and not by the authors themselves.

Theextrême contemporaincan be seen as a "literary constellation" hardly organized in schemes. In some cases, authors of theextrême contemporainfollow an "aesthetics of fragments": their narration is broken into pieces or they show, like Pascal Quignard, for instance, a preference for short sentences. The "apportionment" of knowledge can also be carried out by the use of a chaotic verbal stream, theinterior monologue,tropisms,repetition and endophasy. The feeling of uncertainty experience by writers leads him to put in question the notion of novel and its very form, preferring the more general notion ofrécit.Then, a return to reality takes place: inPierre Bergounioux's works, readers witness the cultural upsetting concerning generations which follow one another;François Bondescribes the exclusion from social and industrial reality; many authors of crime stories, likeJean-Patrick ManchetteandDidier Daeninckx,describe social and political reality, and so it doesMaurice G. Dantecin his works halfway betweenspy storiesand science fiction; on another side,Annie Ernaux'sécriture plate( "flat writing" ) tries to demolish the distance between reality and its narration.

Subjects are shown in a persistent state of crisis. However, a return to everyday life and trivial habits also takes place: the attention is focused to the "outcasts of literature", like, for instance, old people. This use of triviality and everyday life expresses itself in a new sort of "minimalism":fromPierre Michon'sSmall livesfictional biographies of unknown people, toPhilippe Delerm's "small pleasures". The facets of thisminimalismmanifest themselves in many ways, through the triviality of the subject, through short forms, or through concise and bare phrases. On one hand, heroicized characters try to build up their own individual way against a senseless reality, so that emarginated or marginal people emerge through the building up of their own story; on the other hand, a "negativeminimalism"takes place: characters stagnate in social and relational difficulties.

French authors of theextrême contemporain(selection)

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^Thurman, Judith (2 June 2002)."Doing It In the Road".The New Yorker.Retrieved26 November2021."The Sexual Life of Catherine M." provoked a predictably heated dialectical response in the European media while selling some three hundred and fifty thousand copies in France alone,
  2. ^Prix des Prix Littéraires,prix-litteraires.net
  3. ^Laurent Martinet,L'Express,15, 12, 2011, "A quoi bon un prix des prix littéraires"
  4. ^Chaillou, Michel (1987)."L'extrême-contemporain, journal d'une idée".PO&SIE(in French).41.Retrieved16 November2021.

References[edit]

  • Littérature francophone,by Jean-Louis Joubert. Paris: Nathan, 1992
  • Littérature moderne du monde francophone,by Peter Thompson. Chicago: National Textbook Company (McGraw-Hill), 1997
  • Négritude et nouveaux monde—poésie noire: africaine, antillaise, malgache,by Peter Thompson. Concord, MA: Wayside Publishing, 1994
  • Dominique Viart,Le roman français au XXe siècle,Paris, würzburg, 1999.
  • Matteo Majorano (ed.),Le goût du roman,Bari,B. A. Graphis, 2002.
  • Matteo Majorano (ed.),Le jeu des arts,Bari, B. A. Graphis, 2005.
  • Dominique Viart, Bruno Vercier,La littérature française au présent: Héritage, modernité, mutations,Paris, Bordas, 2005
  • Bibliographie. Études sur la prose française de l'extrême contemporain en Italie et en France (1984–2006),Bari, B. A. Graphis, 2007

External links[edit]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Contemporary_French_literature&oldid=1180323030"