french literature thread. i'l start the discussion

okay, go ahead and start

I've started reading Satre's novels and boy are they bad.
There's only so much I can blame on the translation, I'm glad it has become not only acceptable but fashionable to shit on post-modernism because not only is his writing somehow both mundane and obscene, it always reads as subtly masochistic.
I know people who study things like politics and religion and they rave about 20th century french intellectuals but I now feel comfortable not spending my mortality on those shits. Derrida, Foucault, all of them can fucking eat a dick, France's contributions are wildly overrated.
I made this same mistake trying to read Baudelaire. I keep thinking everyone can't be wrong - surely France, in it's entirety doesn't lack talent but the deeper you go, the more inescapable that very conclusion becomes.

>>9499914
Both insightful and well-argued. Thank you anon.

>>9499914
I mean come on, anon. I sense a bit of sentiment in your post. Tell us what you REALLY think. How in any way do the French writers contribute to humanity, society, or, simply, anon circle jerks?
P.S. I've heard astounding things about French philosophers and have some Frank blood in me so don't let me down.

>>9499914
The main contribution of France was helping America to come into existence by defeating the British. Most of its other contributions have been negative.

File: 2175.jpg (33KB, 313x475px) Image search: [Google]

33KB, 313x475px

thoughts?

what do you guys think of the concept of a flaneur?

Just started reading Baudelaire and while I don't think it is unique to modern times I do think it has been become more prevalent.

Walter Benjamin also has some interesting thoughts

If I only read one of the great french playwrights, which one should it be?

post favorite french aphorisms

You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Who are some good entry level authors for those learning French? I don't care too much about relative quality of work, just readability

Also where to start with Zola and Balzac?

>>9500142
Moliere is very funny

>>9500148
Maupassant writes easy to read short stories like "La parure"

I don't like Zola but I've only read parts of "Germinal" so I guess I can't judge him on that
Haven't read ball sack but try the musqueteers?

Ultimately literature isn't like philosophy you can really read any of the works you want, just find whichever one's story seems more interesting

>>9500142
Racine

>>9500112
this is a meme, the brits threw the war on purpose

>>9500142
Is this even a question? Corneille.

>>9500134
>The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world

this is literally what it is to browse and post on /pol/

>>9500143
there's a lot, but heres one thats fresh on my mind:
>Souvenez-vous que les murs des villes ne se forment que du débris des maisons des champs

>>9500148
seconding la parure
camus is easy to read as well

— La conscience

Chateaubriand, Les Mémoires d’Outre-tombe
Proust, La Recherche du temps perdu

— Autrui

Anouilh, Le Voyageur sans bagages
Barbusse, Le Feu
Beckett, En attendant Godot
Camus, L’Étranger
Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit
Céline, Mort à crédit
Giraudoux, Amphitryon 38
Kafka, La Métamorphose
Molière, Les Fâcheux
Molière, Le Misanthrope
Molière, Amphitryon

— Le désir

Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Girard, Vérité romanesque et mensonge romantique
Molière, Amphitryon
Molière, L’École des femmes
Quignard, Le sexe et l’effroi
Racine, Phèdre
Ronsard, Les Amours
Sade, Justine
Sade, La Philosophie dans le boudoir
Stendhal, De l’Amour

>>9500566
— L’existence et le temps

Daudet, Les Lettres de mon moulin
Proust, La Recherche du temps perdu

— La culture

Benveniste, Les Institutions indo-européennes (?)
Dumézil, Les Institutions indo-européennes (?)

— Le langage

Benveniste, Les Institutions indo-européennes (?)
Benveniste, Cours de linguistique générale (?)
Mallarmé, Un coup de dé jamais n’abolira le hasard
Martinet, Cours de linguistique générale (?)
Molière, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme
Molière, Les Précieuses ridicules
Rivarol, Discours sur l’universalité de la langue française
Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (?)
Valéry, «Poésie et pensée abstraite», dans Variétés

— L’art

Claudel, L’œil écoute
Debray, Histoire de l’image (?)
Duby, Le Temps des cathédrales
Duby, Art et société
Faure, Histoire de l’art
Malraux, Les voix du silence
Malraux, La métamorphose des dieux
Muray, Exorcismes spirituels III – Modernes contre modernes (?)
Muray, La Gloire de Rubens

— Le travail et la technique

Bernanos, La France contre les robots
Ellul, La question de la technique (?)
Ellul, Le bluff technologique
Lafargue, Le droit à la paresse
Leroi-Gouhran, Le Geste et la parole (?)

— La religion

Chateaubriand, Le Génie du christianisme
Corneille, Polyeucte
Debray, Le Feu sacré
Molière, Tartuffe

>>9500567
— L’histoire

Aubigné, Les Tragiques
Braudel, Grammaire des civilisations
Froissart, Mémoires
Joinville, Mémoires
Péguy, Clio
Richelieu, Mémoires
Saint-Simon, Mémoires
Suétone, La Vie des douze Césars

— La raison et le réel

Bossuet, Sermon sur la prédication
Massillon, Panégyrique de saint Louis
Péguy, De la raison

— Théorie et expérience

Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet
Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre jaune

— L’interprétation

Barthes, Critique et vérité
Molière, Dom Juan
Racine, Athalie

— La politique

Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro
Beaumarchais, La Mère coupable
Camus, Les Justes
Fénelon, Les Aventures de Télémaque
Flaubert, L’Éducation sentimentale
Hugo, Les Quatre vents de l’esprit
Hugo, Les Châtiments
Hugo, Hernani
Hugo, Ruy Blas
Muray, L’Empire du Bien
Péguy, Marcel, ou Dialogue sur la cité harmonieuse
Péguy, Notre Jeunesse
Rutebeuf, Poésie complète
Saint-Just, Institutions républicaines
Sartre, La Putain respectueuse
Sartre, Les Mains sales

— La société

Balzac, La Comédie humaine
Boileau, Satires
Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit
Céline, Mort à crédit
Céline, Guignol’s band
Céline, le reste des romans
Clastres, La Société contre l’État
Érasme, L’Éloge de la folie
Flaubert, L’Éducation sentimentale
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris
Hugo, Les Misérables
Ionesco, La Cantatrice chauve
La Bruyère, Les Caractères
La Fontaine, Fables
Lévi-Strauss, Le Regard éloigné
Lévi-Strauss, Race et histoire
Lévi-Strauss, Race et culture
Maupassant, Boule de Suif
Mauss, Essai sur le don
Molière, Les Précieuses ridicules
Molière, L’École des femmes
Molière, L’Avare
Molière, Le Malade imaginaire
Molière, Le Médecin malgré lui
Proust, La Recherche du temps perdu
Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart

>>9500568
— La justice et le droit

Anouilh, Antigone
Camus, Les Justes
Hugo, Discours sur Sarajevo (?)
Hugo, Le dernier jour d’un condamné
Kafka, Le Procès
Sartre, Les Mains sales
Voltaire, L’Affaire Callas
Voltaire, Candide

— L’État

Aubigné, Les Tragiques
Anouilh, Antigone
Brecht, Antigone
Camus, Caligula
Corneille, Tite et Bérénice
De Gaulle, Mémoires d’Espoir
Péguy, Notre Jeunesse
Racine, Bérénice
Racine, Iphigénie
Racine, Britannicus
Richelieu, Mémoires
Zola, J’accuse

— La morale

Baudelaire, Petites poëmes en prose
Camus, L’Étranger
Camus, La Peste
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Ionesco, La Leçon
Jean Chrysostome, Commentaires sur Job
La Rochefoucauld, Maximes
Macrobe, Les Saturnales (X-XI-XII)
Malraux, La Condition humaine
Molière, Œuvres complètes
Prévost, Paul et Virginie
Racine, Britannicus
Racine, Phèdre
Sade, Justine
Sade, La Philosophie dans le boudoir
Sartre, Huis Clos
Servius, Commentaires sur l’Énéide
Silivius Italicus, Guerres puniques
Zola, La Curée

— La liberté

Bossuet, Sermon sur la purification de la Vierge
Diderot, Jacques le fataliste et son maître
Melville, Bartleby le scribe

— Le devoir

Corneille, Le Cid

— Le bonheur

Voltaire, Candide

>>9500569
>>9500568
>>9500567
>>9500566
pas mal ton corpus de BAC de français

>>9500578
Merci, un simple copiage de pâtes.

J'ai juste retiré les auteurs étrangers, mais il doit en rester quelques uns. Je cherche la même chose mais par époque maintenant.

>>9500134
Marivaux for fun, molière is more crass. In the end, popular comedies are kind of all the same.
Anhouil's antigone is nice too.
>>9499914
Broris Vian likes to shit on Sartre a lot and not in a subtle way.

>>9500383
t. Brit

>>9500134
ive also been reading baudelaire and benjamin lately.

in one way street, benjamin has a passage about how he walked around the city (marseille i believe) for a couple hours alone, and how every entrance to an alleyway seemed as if aflame, every street beckoned etc etc.

the surrealists (nadja by breton) mentioned this as well, the art of walking around the city looking for random encounters and chance experience.

to me the concept seems most developed by the situationists and their practice of the derive. the city, and the patterns of our lives in the city, carve out these preestablished paths and such that when we say we live in a city, often our experience of it isnt unitary. theres a passage in vanegeim's revolution in everyday life where he talks about how he met a student in paris who only went to the same cafes, her uni, and her tutors place. her experience of the city was extremely limited, and her ability to really "See" the landscape of the city was diminished.

Rabelais
Proust
Queneau
Perec
Roubaud
Énard

>>9499262
bump

>>9499914
Sartre isn't any better in the original. I don't get the feeling he was putting any heart or mind in his writing. Don't know why he wrote them. This is an impression I only ever get so clearly from reading something by a student, or a very uninspired, textbook, scholastic paper. So yes, you've been going for the most boring and conventional French writers. Those worth a damn are likely untranslatable or far beyond your league. Don't bother.

>>9502494
*doffs canotier*