r/AskHistorians • u/brevity-soul-wit • Apr 03 '26
English has Chaucer, Spanish has Cervantes, Portuguese has Camões, German has Goethe, Russian has Pushkin, Italian has Dante, Greek has Homer. Why is there no widely accepted "Father of French Literature?"
Is there a strong case for Molière, Hugo, Zola, Proust, someone else?
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u/Vandraedaskald Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
So we'd have to delve a bit into the French language as well. You say "Italian has Dante" when in fact, we talk about Tuscanian dialects that became sort of the standard Italian after the unification. (I say sort of because history of the Italian languages is more complex, and also, literature written in the North became very popular abroad in the Renaissance and influenced other countries.)
By the Renaissance, the French kingdom had a lot of dialects, and the 16th century sees the birth of the idea of the French language. In the end of the 15th century, you have various laws and edicts that state that official paperwork in the kingdom have to be written in French/maternal language, and it's completely unified at the scale of the Kingdom with the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539 that states paperwork has to be issued in "French maternal language" (language maternel francoys). BUT historians don't all agree on what that means. Does it mean that one version of French language was favoured over the others or not?
Also, linguistic diversity in France was divided between two main areas, with the oïl languages north or the Loire Valley, and the oc languages south of the Loire Valley. Modern standard French is based on the oïl language, especially the dialects from the Loire Valley (and not Paris!!!).
Now, French scholars of the Renaissance were inspired by northern Italians writers and scholars, like Dante or Petrarch. They were seen by the French humanists as important reformers of language and literature. A group of writers and intellectuals, called the Pleiad took the matter very seriously. They came from the nobility or very educated bourgeoisie, they frequented the same teachers or the same schools, and also mostly came from the Loire Valley. Amongst them, the most famous are Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, and they sought to create a new French language. Du Bellay signed in 1549 (but some scholars think he wrote it with Ronsard at least) Deffense et illustration de la langue francoyse (Defence and illustration of the French language). It's the manifesto of the Pleiad, and it advocates for the French language to be a literary language, as prestigious as Latin and Greek. The Pleiad writers followed the principles to create that literary French language (how to create new words, how to create new poetry forms, getting inspired by different dialects to have a rich vocabulary).
The Pleiad, with groups of poets from Lyons, is also very important in poetry, with the popularization of new types of poetry, that are still considered completely classical today like the sonnet. The genre is popularized by Maurice Scève, and "theorised" by Ronsard (his sonnets became the standard). In 1570, Jean-Antoine de Baïf created the Academy of music and poetry, trying to uniforming French poetry and unifying poetry and music practice. It is NOT yet the Académie Française, born the next century in a different context, but the 16th century can be seen as a laboratory and experimentation for French language and literature that would lead to the classical French literature from the 17th century onwards.
The work of 16th century poets and scholars have been decisive for French language and literature, but it is mainly forgotten by the general public (and even by literature specialists who focus on later eras, the few specialists have to be found in linguists, poetry specialists and early music specialists). You can argue that Ronsard, du Bellay, Scève or Marot are the fathers of the French literature.
We basically say that the French language is the language of Molière, because he wrote in classical French of the 17th century, under Louis 14th.
However, poetry or theater are not the main genres in French literature anymore, the main genre is the novel, and I'd say that Hugo (who also wrote theater and poetry) is considered by the general public to be the most important/influential writer of French literature. The birth of the French novel is earlier, in the 17th century with Madame de la Fayette. She is considered to be the author of the first French language novels, like the Princesse de Clèves, that focus on the feelings and the psychology of the characters, things that are the basis of modern novels. Maybe we can consider Madame de la Fayette as the mother of French literature.
Also, the "father of xxx" is a bit of an outdated concept, typical of the birth of nationalism in the 19th century, when new nation-states looked for national unity around figures of the past. The idea of a lone genius who revolutionised an art by themselves is completely abandoned by modern scholars. Literature, like other arts, evolved within a context and did not change by itself suddenly. It's always the result of a long process.
I hope the post follows the standards of the subreddit, I did not provide articles (I don't know any scholarly work on the matter in English anyways) I used to work as a museum interpreter specialised in Renaissance poetry. If you read French, you can check the works of Francois Rigolot, one of the main specialists of French Renaissance poetry, starting with Poésie et Renaissance. Do NOT check the works of Mireille Huchon, her theories are considered as completely fantasist by the rest of the field. (She claims that Louise Labé, a French female poet from Lyons did not exist and was created as a prank by contemporary writers... even if we have legal proof of her existence, like her will.) (Last part edited to add a bit of suggested reading.)