French and Francophone literature
French literature By category French language Medieval 16th century - 17th century 18th century - 19th century 20th century - Contemporary
Francophone literature Literature of Quebec Postcolonial literature Literature of Haiti Chronological list
Writers - Novelists Playwrights - Poets Essayists Short Story Writers
Novel - Poetry - Plays Science Fiction - Comics Fantastique - Detective Fiction Naturalism - Symbolism Surrealism - Existentialism Nouveau Roman Theater of the Absurd
Literary theory - Critics Literary Prizes
Molière - Racine - Balzac Stendhal - Flaubert Emile Zola - Marcel Proust Samuel Beckett - Albert Camus This article is a general introduction to French literature. For detailed information on French literature in specific historic periods, see the separate historical articles in the template to the right.
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak other traditional non-French languages. Literature written in French by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature.

French literature
Besides literature written in the French language, the literary culture of France may include literature written in other languages of France. In the medieval period many of the competing standard languages in various territories that later came to make up the territory of modern France each produced literary traditions, such as Anglo-Norman literature and Provençal literature.
Literature in the regional languages continued through to the 18th century, although increasing eclipsed by the rise of the French language and influenced by the prevailing French literary model. Conscious language revival movements in the 19th century, such as Félibrige in Provence, coupled with wider literacy and regional presses, enabled a new flowering of literary production in the Norman language and others.
Frédéric Mistral, a poet in Occitan (1830-1914), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904.
Breton literature since the 1920s has been lively, despite the falling number of speakers. In 1925, Roparz Hemon founded the periodical Gwalarn which for 19 years tried to raise the language to the level of other great "international" languages by creating original works covering all genres and by proposing Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, Al Liamm took up the role of Gwalam. Other reviews came into existence and gave Breton a fairly large body of literature for a minority language. Among writers in Breton are Yann-Ber Kalloc'h, Anjela Duval and Per-Jakez Hélias.
Picard literature maintains a level of literary output, especially in theatrical writing. Walloon literature is bolstered by the more significant literary production in the language in Belgium.
Catalan literature and literature in the Basque language also benefit from the existence of a readership outside the borders of France.

Literatures of other languages of France
The following French or French language authors have won a Nobel Prize in Literature:

1901 - Sully Prudhomme (The first Nobel Prize in literature)
1904 - Frédéric Mistral (wrote in Occitan)
1911 - Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgian)
1915 - Romain Rolland
1921 - Anatole France
1927 - Henri Bergson
1937 - Roger Martin du Gard
1947 - André Gide
1952 - François Mauriac
1957 - Albert Camus
1960 - Saint-John Perse
1964 - Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize)
1969 - Samuel Beckett (Irish, wrote in English and French)
1985 - Claude Simon
2000 - Gao Xingjian (writes in Chinese) French Nobel Prize in Literature winners

Selected list of French literary classics

Middle Ages

• anonymous - La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland)
  Chrétien de Troyes - Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain, the Knight of the Lion), Lancelot, ou le Chevalier à la charrette (Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart)
  various - Tristan et Iseult (Tristan and Iseult)
  anonymous - Lancelot-Graal (Lancelot-Grail), also known as the prose Lancelot or the Vulgate Cycle
  Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung - Roman de la Rose ("Romance of the Rose")
  16th century
  
  
  
  • François Rabelais - Pantagruel, Gargantua
    17th century
    
    
    
    • Madame de Lafayette - La Princesse de Clèves
      18th century
      
      
      
      • Voltaire - Candide
        Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse
        Denis Diderot - Jacques le fataliste (Jacques the Fatalist)
        19th century
        
        
        
        • Stendhal - Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black), La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma)
          Honoré de Balzac - La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy", a novel cycle which includes Père Goriot and Eugénie Grandet)
          Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary, Salammbô, L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education)
          Edmond and Jules de Goncourt - Germinie Lacerteux
          Guy de Maupassant - Bel Ami, La Parure (The Necklace), other short stories
          Émile Zola - Les Rougon-Macquart (a novel cycle which includes L'Assommoir, Nana and Germinal)
          20th century
          
          
          
          • André Gide - Les Faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters), The Immoralist
            Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time)
            André Breton - Nadja
            Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night)
            Colette - Gigi
            Jean Genet - Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs
            Albert Camus - L'Étranger (The Stranger)
            Michel Butor - La Modification
            Marguerite Yourcenar - Mémoires d'Hadrien
            Alain Robbe-Grillet - Dans le labyrinthe
            Georges Perec - La vie mode d'emploi
            Robert Pinget - Passacaille Fiction
            
            François Villon - Les Testaments
            Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and other poets of "La Pléiade" - poems
            La Fontaine - The Fables
            Victor Hugo - Les Contemplations
            Alphonse de Lamartine - Méditations poétiques
            Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du mal
            Paul Verlaine - Jadis et naguère
            Arthur Rimbaud - Une Saison en Enfer
            Stéphane Mallarmé - Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard ("A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance")
            Guillaume Apollinaire - Alcools
            Francis Ponge
            Raymond Queneau Poetry
            
            Pierre Corneille - Le Cid
            Molière - Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, Dom Juan
            Jean Racine - Phèdre, Andromaque
            Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
            Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
            Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac
            Jean Giraudoux - The Trojan War Will Not Take Place
            Jean Anouilh - Becket, Antigone
            Jean-Paul Sartre - No Exit
            Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot, Endgame
            Eugène Ionesco - The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros
            Jean Genet - The Maids, The Blacks Theater
            
            Michel de Montaigne - The Essays
            Blaise Pascal - Les Pensées
            François de La Rochefoucauld - The Maxims
            Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The Social Contract
            François-René de Chateaubriand - Genius of Christianity
            Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America
            Adolphe Thiers - History of the French Revolution, History of the Consulate and Empire
            Jules Michelet - Histoire de France, La Sorcière
            Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
            Jean-Paul Sartre - Existentialism is a Humanism, Being and Nothingness Non-fiction
            
            Roland Barthes
            Paul Bénichou
            Jacques Derrida
            Julia Kristeva
            Jacques Lacan
            Jean-François Lyotard