Landmarks in French Literature

age of Louis artistic Balzac beauty Boileau Bossuet brilliant Bruyère Chansons Chansons de Geste character characteristic charm classical complete contemporaries Corneille critical detail Diderot dominating doubt drama eighteenth century elaborate Elizabethan English expression exquisite extraordinary fact feeling Flaubert Fontaine French literature French poetry genius human ideals imagination immense infinitely influence intensity Jean de Meung La Comédie Humaine language Les Misérables less letters Lettres Provinciales light literary literature of France Louis XIV masterpieces melancholy Middle Ages mind Molière Molière's Montaigne Montesquieu nature never noble novels Paris Parnassiens Pascal passion perfect Philosophes play poems poet poetical poetry precisely produced profound prose qualities Rabelais Racine Racine's reader realism Renaissance rhetoric Rousseau Saint-Simon seems sense sentences Shakespeare simply soul spirit splendid splendour strange style subtle supreme things thought tion tradition tragedy triumph true truth vast verse Victor Hugo vision Voltaire Voltaire's whole words writers