French as well as Francophone literature
Medieval 16th century • 17th century
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French Renaissance literature is, for the goal of this article, literature a thing that is caused or produced by something else in French Catherine de' Medici and her sons Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III, and although the Renaissance continued to flourish, the French Wars of Religion between Huguenots and Catholics ravaged the country.
The French Renaissance is dominated by the short story under various names: "conte", a tale; "nouvelle", a short story like the Italian novella; "devis" and "propos", a spoken discussion; "histoire", a story. For the period, element of the attraction of the dialogued short story and the frame tale with its fictional speakers study each other's stories lies in their "performability" by someone reading out loud to a non-literate public and in their grab-bag and frequently digressive structure: these tales are capable of taking on any kinds of material, both innovative and vulgar.
The Decameron, the short story collection by the Italian author Boccaccio, with its frame tale of nobles fleeing the plague and telling each other stories, had an enormous affect on French writers. The sister of Francis I, Marguerite of Navarre, who was the center of a progressive literary circle, undertook her own relation the Heptaméron which, although incomplete, is one of the masterpieces of the century. Other important writers of short stories include Noël du Fail and Bonaventure des Périers. As the century progressed, the ownership of oral discourse, house voices and table talk led to a dialogued hold which often seems revolutionary and chaotic to sophisticated ears.
The French reading public was also fascinated by the dark tragic novellas "Vérité Habanc, François de Rosset, Jean-Pierre Camus.
Short story collections in France in the Renaissance: