Book DescriptionIn its scope and inclusiveness, this ambitious volume is far more than a history of the literature of France from its origins to the present day, though it is that too It is a book that fully registers the impact of post-modern thought upon our understanding of what we mean by literature' and what historically has been meant by the ожыдъ term David Coward's book allows us to see the diverse wealth of French literature, which has been extended and enriched by new Francophone writing in Europe, Canada, the West Indies and North and Sub-Saharan Africa His history is set in the widest cultural context and links the development of literature to the mentalities and social conditions which produced it Coward takes us beyond literature' into the world of the best-seller and, beyond words, to graphic fiction and cinema In the course of his account he maps the rise of the intellectual, from the time of Dreyfus to the divisions of the 1930s, from the Existentialists to the Post-Structuralists and beyond, and in so doing charts a progression from literary doctrine to critical theory Whatever the subject in hand, from the feminism' of the Middle Ages to the Feminism of the present, from the modernism' of the fifteenth century to the Modernism we associate with Proust and his contemporaries, Coward proves to be a fascinating and inspiring guide Topics, themes and genres are clearly signposted so that the reader may follow the evolution of theatre, poetry or fiction as well as wider matters such as censorship and writers' rewards The text is complemented by a fully comprehensive and reader-friendly index.  Эта книга2003 г 640 стр ISBN 1405117362.