Landmarks in French Literature

age of Louis artistic Balzac beauty Bérénice Bossuet brilliant Bruyère Chansons Chansons de Geste character characteristics charm classical complete contemporaries Corneille critical detail Diderot doctrine dominating doubt drama eighteenth century elaborate Elizabethan English expression exquisite extraordinary fact feeling Flaubert Fontaine French literature French poetry genius human ideals imagination immense important infinitely influence intensity Jean de Meung language Les Misérables letters Lettres Provinciales literary literature of France Louis XIV masterpieces melancholy Middle Ages mind Molière Molière's Montaigne Montesquieu movement mystery 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 Romantic Rousseau Saint-Simon seems sense sentences Shakespeare 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