/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22514377]

I am learning French and I want to know who are the foundational authors that I need to read?
So far I am only certain that Victor Hugo (seemingly for his poetry), Flabuert and Proust are foundational authors
Are there any foundational authors who are easy to read?
Who are some very solid if not foundational/canonical authors who are worth reading as a beginner trying to get input?

[Anonymous No.22514409]

Rabelais
Villon
Molière
Racine
Corneille
Rousseau
Diderot
Sade
Balzac
Baudelaire
Rimbaud
Gide

[Anonymous No.22514418]

>>22514409
Thanks for the list
Two questions
Why no Voltaire? Who are the famous French authors who you feel are mostly mentioned for their historical importance?
Are the 16th to 18th century authors going to have modernised spelling/vocabulary in all modern editions? Or is this not a big deal?

[Anonymous No.22514550]

>>22514409
>Rabelais
This one is not really in Modern French, speaking of the original

[Anonymous No.22514830]

>>22514377
Camus, l'étranger et la peste. La morte est mon métier de Merle est aussi facile et très bien.

[Anonymous No.22514844]

>>22514830
ces livres naturellement ne sont pas des oeuvres fondotionelles comme vous voulez, mais probablement parfaites pour un débutant.

[Anonymous No.22515080]

Dumas

[Anonymous No.22515147]

>>22514409
>Rimbaud
>foundational

[Anonymous No.22515706]

>>22514418
Rabelais will be a chore to read in the original Middle French. Everyone else he listed should be readable (I'm not sure about Villon because I've never read him and he's contemporary to Rabelais). However you'll probably find older writers easier to read because their vocabulary is much closer to English than modern French. As an example, the verb destorber is more commonly used as opposed to déranger.

You'll probably find someone like Stendhal, Dumas, or Balzac extremely easy to read.

[Anonymous No.22515729]

>>22514377
>With all due respect, but...

[Anonymous No.22516452]

>>22514377
Paul Valery, Louis Ferdinand Celine

[Anonymous No.22516466]

>>22514377
Personally, I wish I could have read Zola and Balzac in their native language.

[Anonymous No.22516469]

>inb4 Houellbecq

[Anonymous No.22516503]

>>22516466
Yeah I'm excited to read them
Personally I haven't read any French authors besides Camus but I decided to learn French anyway
>>22516452
Can someone explain Celine for me?
What do I need to know about his right wing fans? Is he just a great author who had his reputation tarnished by his political activities? Or was he always controversial?
>>22515706
I was excited to get an edition of Rabelais but I guess I'll give it a miss
I've heard that Maupassant might be good
>>22514830
>>22514844
Yeah I really need to read Camus
Do native french speakers feel that there is a difference between the passé simple and the passé composé?
I am worried that things like this are something I just won't be able to feel

[Anonymous No.22516522]

>>22515706
Yeah, giving Rabelais to someone just learning French is in the same realm as giving someone learning to read English The Canterbury Tales

[Anonymous No.22516557]

>>22516469
philistine

[Anonymous No.22516594]

>>22516522
Your Rabelais could be a modernized version, it's not hard to tell

[Anonymous No.22516607]

>>22516503
>I was excited to get an edition of Rabelais
You could get the Quarto Gallimard edition. It's written in a modern French. But Rabelais literally made up words. It would be like reading Lewis Carrol, or Dr. Seuss, or A Clockwork Orange as an ESL. As a beginner in French you probably don't have the vocabulary or ability to use context to derive the meaning of a word.

[Anonymous No.22516612]

>>22516503
>What do I need to know about Céline?
His personal life was controversial. His literary life was highly praised, even by Jews.

[Anonymous No.22516652]

>>22516503
Unlike his later works, Celine's Journey doesn't bruise mercantile sensibility, if that matters to you.

[Anonymous No.22516667]

>>22516557
Yes, he certainly is.

[Anonymous No.22516704]

>>22516667
it's unbecoming of you to be this deliberately obtuse

[Anonymous No.22516710]

>>22516704
It's unbecoming of you not to capitalise or punctuate, but I was too polite to mention it until now.

[Anonymous No.22517195]

Richard Petit

[Anonymous No.22517509]

>>22516503
>Do native french speakers feel that there is a difference between the passé simple and the passé composé?
Yes, very much so. But I don't understand why you ask, since it also exists in English?
Also, don't forget about the passé antérieur

[Anonymous No.22517525]

>>22514377
René Barjavel is kino, have fun.
Picrel describes what's coming for us in great details.

[Anonymous No.22517538]

Who is the Pushkin of French literature?

[Anonymous No.22517550]

>>22517538
In what sense? Highly esteemed poet? There are others but I'll go with Hugo (more famous elsewhere for his fiction). Foundational writer? Rabelais. Iconic writer that gives the language one of its nicknames? Moliere (la langue de Moliere as one would say the language of Shakespeare).

[Anonymous No.22517741]

>>22517550
Sorry I mostly mean authors who have a very unbalanced reputation, adored in their home country and enjoyed or respected outside of it

[Anonymous No.22518100]

Marguerite Yourcenar, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Georges Perec and Raymond Queneau are all good and worth reading

Life: A Users Manual and Memoirs of Hadrien are great

[Anonymous No.22518119]

>>22514409
Good list but it lacks Maupassant and Proust imho

[Anonymous No.22518435]

>>22514377
Hugo, Zola, Balzac, Stendhal, Maupassant
Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Apollinaire
Racine, Molière, Anouilh (Antigone is kino)

Marcel Pagnol is very underrated outside of France, but i love his works, especially the Manon des Sources books.

[Anonymous No.22518604]

>>22514377


Ronsard,Du Bellay,Clément Marot,Rabelais,Montaigne,Boileau,La Fontaine.
La fontaine would be cool if you're in the process of learning actually.

[Anonymous No.22519105]

>>22514409
>No French-Algerian authors
Dropped.

[Anonymous No.22519120]

>>22514409
>Villon
>but not Rutebeuf
Incomplète I claim, Incomplète.

[Anonymous No.22519129]

>>22516503
Céline used a lot of stylistic liberties.
He was the last great European author though, before writing became a safe, ideological and nepotistic work.

[Anonymous No.22519231]

>>22519105
They're not French.

[Anonymous No.22519289]

I've been studying French as well and recently shifted to a focus on reading literature. I found that Candide was very easy to read and helped me develop some vocabulary and whatnot, but I hated the book itself. I went on to Maupassant and I've found him to be the most enjoyable and digestible author so far, because he wrote many short stories and I think that format is superior to the long form novel when you're still learning and building vocabulary. So I would recommend Maupassant. I can't imagine he wouldn't be considered foundational.

[Anonymous No.22519310]

>>22514844

[Anonymous No.22519328]

>>22519289
I bought a cute Pleiade edition of Maupassant’s short stories because once in a thread an anon recommended him as accessible. I should get back to finishing the Grammaire Progressive series (I have only read the first volume out of the three) and start reading Maupassant’s stories.

[Anonymous No.22519439]

>>22519105
>No Senegalese authors
You're a pleb too lmao

[Anonymous No.22519503]

>>22519328
>>22519289
just wanted to say that this has to be the greatest facial hair I have ever seen. I wish I could wear it without any qualms.

[Anonymous No.22519519]

>>22519503
It's the only facial hair I could pull off but I feel I'd go to jail if I did it

[Anonymous No.22519818]

>>22519503
I have a mustache like that. It's not hard in my opinion. Just don't shave lmao.

[Anonymous No.22519893]

I recommend reading plays if you're still learning the language. There's lots of good stuff from the 20th century, Ionesco, Genet, Maeterlinck, Jarry, etc tend to be easier to read than similarly well-liked novelists. Not exactly "the foundational authors" but there's some big names.

[Anonymous No.22519900]

>>22519893
I wonder if plays would be a good idea because I could read the play and then watch a performance and it might help my listening comprehension
Do the playwrights you listed have good performances available online?

[Anonymous No.22520009]

>>22519893
>Jarry easy to read
lmao
Dude literally makes up weird and is playful with language and full of puns. Jarry is extremely difficult. Not even native French speakers can explain that word gidouille or whatever the fuck it is.

[Anonymous No.22520094]

Is it worth learning French?
I like realism, modernism and have an interest in medieval europe

[Anonymous No.22520108]

>>22518119
I thought proust was german wow im retarded

[Anonymous No.22520139]

>>22520009
Yeah, why not? Out of all continental European languages it is easily the most relevant. The amount of media materials is massive, compared to most languages. If you decide to give it a go, I recommend learning how to use the French torrent tracker.

[Anonymous No.22520144]

>>22520094
Yeah, why not? Out of all continental European languages it is easily the most relevant. The amount of media materials is massive, compared to most languages. If you decide to give it a go, I recommend learning how to use the French torrent tracker.

[Anonymous No.22520160]

>>22520094
Yeah, why not? Out of all continental European languages it is easily the second most relevant. The amount of media materials is massive, compared to most languages. If you decide to give it a go, I recommend learning how to use the French torrent tracker

[Anonymous No.22520525]

>>22520009
I read him while I was still learning french, not a complete beginner but certainly not fluent, and it was fine. He does some goofy stuff here and there but since they're plays you can mostly still tell what things mean from conversational context, it's not like Joyce or whatever. I know what you mean though, could be hard, depends where you're at. And maybe I missed all the good stuff.

>>22519900
Yeah that's true as well. In my experience it can be hard to find good quality recordings of plays online, but often there are random amateur versions on youtube that work fine for practising comprehension.

[Anonymous No.22520603]

>>22520525
>In my experience it can be hard to find good quality recordings of plays online
Just look up on YggTorrent. It's got all kinds of stuff.

[Anonymous No.22520648]

>>22520094
>>22520144
>>22520160
Does anyone have experience learning 2 romance languages? I'm learning Spanish because it's the 2nd most relevant language in America and was thinking of learning French after so I can read French literature. Obviously learning one romance language will make learning another easier because of cognates, but how much of a difference does it make and how long would it take to learn another?

[Anonymous No.22520649]

>>22520160
"Second most relevant"? What would be the first, then?

[Anonymous No.22520683]

Honestly I'm really disappointed with French
Before I started learning French I wanted to read Eiji Yoshikawa's books but they were mostly all abridged in their English translations and insufficiently annotated

Last night I decided to check whether his books had been translated into French and apparently only Musashi was translated
Feels bad man

I tried seeing whether there was a modern military history of the Sengoku Jidai in French and it seems that there isn't either
I thought French was supposed to be a cure-all, there's no way I'm learning Japanese

[Anonymous No.22520862]

>>22520683
They have Dogra Magra tho

[Anonymous No.22520913]

will reading the human comedy tell me everything i need to know about the mysterious French soul?
from what i’ve read they seem like they might not be the greatest stories ever written but as a budding francophile and francophone are they worth the read?

[Anonymous No.22520921]

>>22514377
Zola

[Anonymous No.22521553]

>>22519439
>No Colonial French- Vietnamese kino writers.
You're the realm lord of Plebeian kingdom.

[Anonymous No.22521594]

>>22520649
That is an impersonator, in my original post it was "the most relevant". A janny apparently removed it as a duplicate.

[Anonymous No.22521598]

>>22520683
>Last night I decided to check whether his books had been translated into French and apparently only Musashi was translated
I looked up on YggTorrent, there's also this one:
>Eiji Yoshikawa - La pierre et le sabre - PDF - Français
>Nombre de pages : 876

[Anonymous No.22521610]

>>22521598
upd: apparently it's the same thing as the aforementioned title

[Anonymous No.22521657]

>>22514377
op, what was the last math problem you solved?

[Anonymous No.22521927]

>>22515706
Villon est sans doute mort avant la naissance de Rabelais, il est plutôt fin XVème siècle quand Rabelais est début XVIème.
>>22518604
La Fontaine est l'auteur avec lequel on apprend classiquement le français dans les petites classes, c'est peut-être le plus grand prosodiste français.
>>22520525
Les pièces d'Ubu sont à peu près lisibles mais dans ses autres oeuvres c'est une autre histoire, tiens par exemple : https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Gestes_et_opinions_du_docteur_Faustroll/Livre_4