French Literature? (Pick as Many as You

¶ … French literature? (Pick as many as you think are correct)

Detective stories

Songs sung by traveling minstrels (troubadours) and entertainers and jesters (jongleurs)

Oral histories evoking the exploits of saints and kings

Long verse poems telling the stories of heroes like Charlemagne, knights and ladies and their confrontations with giants, monsters, and the supernatural world

Gothic novels

The Renaissance - pick out which of the following elements characterize the changes and innovations of the Renaissance era in France - the late 15th century to the early 17th century.

An interest and celebration of the arts and thinking of ancient Greece and Rome

An attraction to humanism - a view of the world where individual choices direct one's actions more so than religious conviction

c.

Royal support for music, architecture, and art

d.

The bubonic plague

e.

The Hundred Years War

Question 4

Which of the following were important Renaissance writers?

a.

Francois Rabelais - an author of satirical and licentious works.

b.

Joachim du Bellay, who supported the idea of French as the language of literary expression and debate rather than latin

c.

Jean-Paul Sartre - a central figure in the existentialist movement

d.

Michel de Montaigne - a humanist who discussed issues of the day in his Essays

e.

Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Question 5

In the late Renaissance, Classicism became the preferred art form. Classicism favors order, moral precision, restraint and good manners. It was particularly at home in the court of which French King?

a.

Louis XIV

b.

Charles VII

c.

Francis the first

Question 6

Following the Revolution, Romanticism emerged as a leader in the world of literature - it stresses subjectivity and self-expression, individual feeling over collective imperatives, celebrates nature, and loves the intrigue of colorful characters from history. Which of the following could be considered Romantic authors?

a.

Samuel Beckett, author of "Waiting for Godot"

b.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote that all people are created equal but everywhere we see them prisoners of society's conventions

c.

Alexandre Dumas, author of many historical novels including "The Three Musketeers" and "The Man in the Iron Mask"

Question 7

Realism and Naturalism followed on the heels and in some ways overlapped with the emergence of Romanticism. Writers of realist novels and plays like Balzac or Zola paid attention to which aspects of life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? (Pick out as many as you think are important to them)

a.

The King and his court

b.

Industrialization and its effects on people's daily lives

c.

Social and class issues

d.

How characters' social environment (poverty, difficult jobs, poor housing or the contrary) shape who they are and how they act.

e.

Epic stories of knights and ladies of the long ago past