Libraries: French Literature and Thought in Credo: Pre-17th Century

Authors and Critics

Peter Abelard (1079 - 1142): Topic Page
Theologian. As lecturer in the cathedral school of Notre Dame in Paris, he became tutor to Héloïse, the 17-year-old niece of the canon Fulbert. They fell passionately in love.
Marie de France (c1140 - 1200)
From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
The most famous of her works are the Lais (which are thought to be written before 1180), short narrative poems inspired by the ancient lays of Breton harpists but treated in a very personal way: magical and fantastic elements are interwoven with both heroic and simple human deeds.
Chrétien de Troyes (c 1100s): Topic Page
French romance writer Chrétien de Troyes elaborated upon earlier Arthurian legends in such an intriguing way as to create, change, and record the highly stylized customs of courtly love just beginning to flower in France at the time.
Christine de Pisan (c. 1364 - c. 1431)
From The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women
Italian-born French writer. Christine de Pisan was one of the earliest professional woman writers.
François Villon (1431 - 1463): Topic Page
French poet, b. Paris, whose original name was François de Montcorbier or François Des Loges. One of the earliest great poets of France, Villon was largely rediscovered in the 19th cent.
Guillaume Bude (1467 - 1540): Topic Page
French scholar and humanist. He played a major role in developing classical scholarship in France.
François Rabelais (1494 - 1553): Topic Page
French monk, physician and satirist
Pierre de Ronsard (1524 - 1585)
From The Classical Tradition
Ronsard is the prime exponent in 16th-century France of a classically inspired form of poetry that was meant to rival the works of the Italian Renaissance as well as those of Greece and Rome.
Étienne de La Boétie (1530 - 1563)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
French judge and writer. He served with Montaigne in the Bordeaux parlement and is immortalized in Montaigne's essay on friendship. La Boétie's writings include a few sonnets, translations from the classics, and an essay attacking absolute monarchy,
Michel Montaigne (1533 - 1592): Topic Page
French writer. He is regarded as the creator of the essay form.
The Pléiade (ca 1550s)
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Only in the early 19th c.did the term Pléiade become associated with a mythical school whose agenda was then viewed as exemplary and prefiguring the profound literary aspirations of romanticism.
Giordano Bruno (1548 - 1600): Topic Page
The son of a professional soldier, he entered the Dominican order early in his youth and was ordained a priest in 1572, but he was accused of heresy and fled (c.1576) to take up a career of study and travel.

History

Poetry of France
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
I. Medieval to Early Modern
II. Early Modern to 20th Century
French Literature in the Middle Ages
From Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature
While the poems of the great medieval French author Francois Villon remain the most familiar of all the medieval French works, there was a great literary tradition that preceded him by centuries.
Langue d'oc and langue d'oïl
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Names of the two principal groups of medieval French dialects. Langue d'oc (literally, “language of yes”) was spoken south of a line running, roughly, from Bordeaux to Grenoble, whereas langue d'oïl (literally, “language of yes”) was prevalent in central and N France.

Genres

Pastoral: Topic Page
In France the pastourelle—a short poem in dialogue in which a minstrel courts a shepherdess—appeared as early as the 14th cent. and is exemplified in Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion, a play by Adam de La Halle.
Romance: Topic Page
In literature, tales of love and chivalric adventure, in verse or prose, that became popular in France about 1200 and spread throughout Europe.
Satire: Topic Page
Satire is both a mode and a genre of verse and prose lit. that adopts a critical attitude toward its target with the goal of censuring human folly.
Chansons de Geste
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
A group of epic poems of medieval France written from the 11th through the 13th cent.

Themes

Chivalry: Topic Page
System of ethical ideals that arose from feudalism and had its highest development in the 12th and 13th cent.
Courtly love
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A literary and social construct of the Middle Ages that originated in the poetry of the troubadours in southern France in the late 11th c.
Crusades: Topic Page
Series of wars undertaken by European Christians between the 11th and 14th cent. to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims.
Petrarchism
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics The term Petrarchism refers to the imitation—whether in verse or prose, directly or indirectly—of features in the It. poetry of Francesco Petrarca (in Eng., Francis Petrarch, 1304-74), who derived his style from cl. Lat. verse, Occitan troubadour poetry, the It. *Dolce stil nuovo, and his immediate predecessor Dante.
Reformation: Topic Page
Religious and political movement in 16th-century Europe to reform the Roman Catholic Church, which led to the establishment of the Protestant churches.
Renaissance: Topic Page
Period in European cultural history that began in Italy around 1400 and lasted there until the end of the 1500s.
Scholasticism: Topic Page
Philosophy and theology of Western Christendom in the Middle Ages.