Language and print culture Flashcards
Three languages in France
First Celtic
Then Latin
Finally French
First formal text in French
Les Serments de Strasbourg, 842
Author of Arthurian cycle
Chrétien de Troyes
THE FRENCH QUARTET
RABELAIS, MONTAIGNE, DESCARTES, PASCAL
The bon vivant, the sceptic, the rationalist and the Christian
What does The sceptic counters
dogmatism
What does The rationalist counters
the sceptic
What does Christian counters
the rationalist
People from The bon vivant
: Rabelais, Gargantua (16th)
Characteristics of the bon vivant
Love of life
the 3 Ws – words, wine and (wo)men
Both rabelaisian and gargantuan are adjectives!
Characteristics from the sceptic
Montaigne, Essays (16th)
Faced with dogmatism and violence, argues for scepticism (moderation)
Arguably the greatest essayist in Western history, inspired Ralph Waldo Emerson who is the greatest American essayist
Characteristics from The rationalist
Descartes, Discourse on Method and Principles on Philosophy
Invented modern philosophy: the search for certainty based on reason
Led to the adjective cartesian:
Characteristics from The Christian
Pascal , Pensées
Started out as a great scientist (geometry, calculating machine,….)
Ended as an extraordinary defender of Christianity against rationalist philosophy
«God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.»
Year in which The French Academy was created
1634
Who created the french academy
Richelieu
Entrusted with maintaining a dictionary of the French language
The french academy
Century of Invention of the psychological novel
17th
Author of The Princess of Cleves
Madame de Lafayette
France’s greatest comic playwright
Molière
Century of The French Enlightenment, leading into the French Revolution
18th
Edited by Diderot, the father of Wikipedia, to make knowledge as public, as available as possible
Encyclopedia
so subversive that Louis XVI forbade it for many years
Theater: Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro
18th century novella writer
Voltaire’s satirical tales, Candide – satire as a vehicle for social criticism
Novel18th century’s bestseller -
Rousseau, The New Heloise – a hybrid (traditionalist and anti-traditionalist) ménage à trois
Big 4 novel authors from the 19th century
Balzac (an encyclopedia of human mores; La Comédie Humaine)
Stendhal
Flaubert (Madame Bovary)
Zola (social realism)
Romanticism poetry author
Hugo
Modernism poetry authors
Modernism
Baudelaire
Rimbaud (Jim Morrison, The Doors)
Mallarmé
Writer of Modernist prose in the 20th century
Marcel Proust, In Remembrance of Things Past
Existentialist prose and theater in the 20th century
Sartre, Nausea
Camus, The Stranger
Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Essayist (The Second Sex) and novelist (The Mandarins)
Simone de Beauvoir
Poet (Ethiopiques) and essayist (Négritude et humanisme) from Africa
Senghor (president of Sénégal)
essayist (Discours sur le colonialisme) and poet (Cahier d’un retour au pays natal) from Antilles
Aimé Césaire (Martinique, mayor of Fort-de-France
essayist (Traité du Tout-monde) and poet (Le Sel noir) from Antilles
Edouard Glissant (Martinique)
novelist (Texaco) and essayist (Discours sur la créolité) from Antilles
Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique)
Number in dominance of book production
4
Left newspaper
National
Libération, center newspaper
Le monde
Right newspaper
Le Figaro
Two magnificent odditiesMagazines
Charlie-Hebdo (radical left-wing weekly with great cartoonists)
Le Canard Enchaîné (investigative weekly, uncovers scandals)
