20th-century French Literature - From 1895 To 1914

From 1895 To 1914

The early years of the century (often called the "Belle époque") saw radical experiments in all genres and Symbolism and Naturalism underwent profound changes.

Alfred Jarry united symbolism with elements from marionette theater and a kind of proto-surrealism. The stage was further radicalised both in the direction of expressionism (the "théâtre de l'oeuvre" of Aurélien Lugné-Poe) and hyper-realism (the theater of André Antoine). The theater director Jacques Copeau emphasized training an actor to be a complete person and rejected the Italian stage for something closer to the Elizabethan model, and his vision would have a profound impact on the "Cartel" of the 1920s and 1930s (see below).

Guillaume Apollinaire radicalized the Baudelairian poetic exploration of modern life in evoking planes, the Eiffel Tower and urban wastelands, and he brought poetry into contact with cubism through his Calligrammes, a form of visual poetry. Inspired by Rimbaud, Paul Claudel used a form of free verse to explore his mystical conversion to Catholicism. Other poets from this period include: Paul Valéry, Max Jacob (a key member of the group around Apollinaire), Pierre Jean Jouve (a follower of Romain Rolland's "Unanism"), Valery Larbaud (a translator of Whitman and friend to Joyce), Victor Segalen (friend to Huysmans and Claudel), Léon-Paul Fargue (who studied with Stéphane Mallarmé and was close to Valéry and Larbaud).

In the novel, André Gide's early works, especially L'Immoraliste (1902), pursue the problems of freedom and sensuality that symbolism had posed; Alain-Fournier's novel Le Grand Meaulnes is a deeply felt portrait of a nostalgic past.

But radical experimentation was not appreciated by all literary and artistic circles in the early 20th century. Popular and bourgeois tastes were relatively conservative. The poetic dramas of Edmond Rostand, especially Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897, were immensely popular at the start of the 20th century, as too the "well-made" plays and bourgeois farces of Georges Feydeau. Anatole France, Maurice Barrès, Paul Bourget were leading authors of the period who employed fiction as a convenient vehicle for ideas about men and things. The tradition of the Balzac and Zola inspired roman-fleuve continued to exert a profound attraction, as in Romain Rolland's Jean-Christophe (1906–1912).

Popular fiction and genre fiction at the start of the 20th century also included detective fiction, like the mysteries of the author and journalist Gaston Leroux who is credited with the first "locked-room puzzle" -- The Mystery of the Yellow Room, featuring the amateur detective Joseph Rouletabille (1908) -- and the immensely popular The Phantom of the Opera (1910).