Classical and Contemporary French Literature

Abstract

The subject I intend to deal with is very simple and, at the same time, very topical; but, before defining it, I should like to explain briefly how I came to consider it. I have long been attracted by classical French literature—I use the word "classical" in the sense of French literature of the seventeenth century—and it is to this area that I have devoted the better part of my critical writing over the past twenty-five years. At the same time, however, my experience as a teacher has convinced me that seventeenth-century literature is becoming more and more neglected, not only by those whom I would still call les honnêtes gens, who read for their own pleasure, but also, and this is more serious, by students. Among the latter in particular, an almost exclusive infatuation with contemporary literature is flourishing and becoming stronger every day. And the more contemporary the better: yesterday's authors have already been abandoned for this morning's or this evening's, and it is hardly an exaggeration to maintain that, for many people, literature, like adventure, begins tomorrow. But it is not really accurate to say that classical authors are being neglected; they are being forgotten, struck from the list; their works are as if they had never been written, they are of no importance whatsoever. Some names are still useful, but only the names. One turns to them to bestow hyperbolic praise upon such and such a 1966 author. For example, people say of a certain author that he writes like Racine, which only serves to show that they have forgotten Racine, if indeed they have ever really read him!