This volume offers a unique and valuable insight into the novel in French over the past two centuries. In a series of essays, acknowledged experts discuss a variety of topics including nineteenth-century realism, women and fiction, popular fiction, experiment and innovation, war and the Holocaust, the Francophone novel, and postmodern fiction. They offer a challenging reassessment of major figures, while deliberately reading traditional views of literary history against the grain. Theoretical discussion is combined with close reading of texts and exploration of context, comparison with other genres and other literatures, and reference to novels from earlier periods. This companionable introduction includes a chronology and guide to further reading. From it emerges a strong sense of the vitality and energy of the modern French novel, and of the debates surrounding it.

A fresh and comprehensive account of the literature of France, from medieval romances to twenty-first-century experimental poetry and novels.

A unique and valuable insight into the novel in French over the past two centuries.

This accessible Companion provides a wide-ranging and comprehensive introduction to French music from the early middle ages to the present.

This Companion focuses on the novel as a global genre and examines its role, impact and development.

An accessible and wide-ranging study of the history of the book within local, national and global contexts.

The Cambridge Companion to Proust, first published in 2001, aims to provide a broad account of the major features of Marcel Proust's great work A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27). The specially commissioned essays, by acknowledged experts on Proust, address a wide range of issues relating to his work. Progressing from background and biographical material, the chapters investigate such essential areas as the composition of the novel, its social dimension, the language in which it is couched, its intellectual parameters, its humour, its analytical profundity and its wide appeal and influence. Particular emphasis is placed on illustrating the discussion of issues by frequent recourse to textual quotation (in both French and English) and close analysis. This is the only contributory volume of its kind on Proust currently available. Together with its supportive material, a detailed chronology and bibliography, it will be of interest to scholars and students alike.