Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Conventions
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: From the Late Medieval to Madame de Lafayette
- Part II The Eighteenth Century: Learning, Letters, Libertinage
- Part III After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Part IV From Naturalism to the Nouveau Roman
- 22 The Republic of Novels: Politics and Late Nineteenth-Century French Fiction
- 23 Medicine, Sex and the Novel: Maupassant and Rachilde
- 24 The Roman-Fleuve
- 25 Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu
- 26 The Novel in France Between the Wars
- 27 Existentialism and the Novel
- 28 Suspicion and Novelty: The Nouveau Roman
- 29 The Holocaust and the Novel in French
- Part V Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age
- Index
- References
26 - The Novel in France Between the Wars
from Part IV - From Naturalism to the Nouveau Roman
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2021
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Conventions
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: From the Late Medieval to Madame de Lafayette
- Part II The Eighteenth Century: Learning, Letters, Libertinage
- Part III After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Part IV From Naturalism to the Nouveau Roman
- 22 The Republic of Novels: Politics and Late Nineteenth-Century French Fiction
- 23 Medicine, Sex and the Novel: Maupassant and Rachilde
- 24 The Roman-Fleuve
- 25 Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu
- 26 The Novel in France Between the Wars
- 27 Existentialism and the Novel
- 28 Suspicion and Novelty: The Nouveau Roman
- 29 The Holocaust and the Novel in French
- Part V Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age
- Index
- References
Summary
The two decades between the First and Second World Wars were a period of political turbulence and social and cultural change in France. Céline and André Malraux gave voice to right- and left-wing ideologies in their work, while François Mauriac and others offered a religious perspective on contemporary mores. Formal innovations came from Surrealism and modernism, and the voices of female, black and gay writers made themselves heard more boldly than ever before: André Breton, Marcel Proust, André Gide, Colette, Irène Némirovsky and René Maran were significant literary figures of the period. At the same time, cinema and radio challenged the cultural dominance of the novel, and within literature the landscape was changed by the beginnings of the bande dessinée and the burgeoning of mass-market popular fiction, including Delly’s romance novels and Georges Simenon’s crime fiction.
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- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French , pp. 473 - 489Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021