A History of Modern French Literature: From the Sixteenth Century to the Twentieth Century

With any work such as this, we understandably set out to interpret what the title actually means. In this case, it is “a” history (in the sense, one of many, trying to avoid condescending to the educated lay-person and any rigidities associated with asserting an academic canon). The editor (emeritus professor of French literature at the University of Cambridge, general editor of the Penguin Proust and author of numerous works about French literature and culture) lays out rules of engagement in his helpful introductory chapter: “the readers we principally envision are those with an active but no specialist interest in...