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.
Author(s): Geoffrey Brereton
Series: Routledge Revivals
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 333
City: London
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
