An Introduction to the French Poets: Villon to the Present Day

Description

The French poetry of some five centuries is here surveyed in a series of studies of the work and personality of individual poets from Villon to the present day. Each chapter is primarily concerned with establishing the ‘literary identity’ of the poet or poets with whom it deals: the work of each is outlined and related to the historical and biographical circumstances in which it was written; and its characteristics are then examined critically in terms relevant to the modern reader. Comparisons are made between different poets, and more general topics – such as the concepts of ‘classic’ and ‘baroque’ – are discussed. This book, first published in 1956, had become a standard introductory work for students of French poetry and general readers alike. For this revised edition, originally published in 1973, new chapters have been added on ‘irregular’ seventeenth-century poets and on various modern poets whose work now enables the Surrealist movement to be seen in clearer perspective. The bibliography has been revised extensively. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Original Title Page Original Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Preface to the Revised Edition 1 François Villon 2 Pierre de Ronsard 3 Joachim Du Bellay 4 Other Sixteenth-Century Poets 5 François Malherbe: The Baroque and the Classic 6 Irregular Seventeenth-Century Poets 7 Jean Racine 8 Jean de La Fontaine 9 André Chénier 10 Alphonse de Lamartine 11 Alfred de Vigny 12 Victor Hugo 13 Alfred de Musset 14 Charles Baudelaire 15 Leconte de Lisle and Heredia 16 Paul Verlaine 17 Arthur Rimbaud 18 Stéphane Mallarmé 19 Other Nineteenth-Century Poets 20 Claudel and Apollinaire 21 Paul Valéry 22 The Impact of Surrealism 23 Some Other Modern Poets Bibliography Index