What goes here

What goes here

Racine.

No need for the language, I'm just asking

the criminally underrated Hugo

Voltaire

>the criminally underrated Hugo
>underrated
>Hugo

If we go by the proverb, Molière.

Molière

lol

dis or flaubert (if we're talkig general writers)

Where's the best place to start with this mama-jama?

Those born after 1789 need not apply

Anywhere is fine really. Don Juan is my favorite.

Racine, as it's already been said.

Come on, Voltaire was a moron.

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

this, it's self-evident

So it is settled

Montaigne

Tartuffe, Don Juan, Misanthrope

>Goethe
>Not Schiller

>being a shill for shiller

Victor Hugo

My dick

Racine. Indiscutablement.

French literature does not have an equivalent. The language never underwent any fundamental changes and had too many great writers of equal merit. Part of the reason why Shakespeare towers over others is because other Tudor and Jacobean playwrights aren't that good. Whereas Racine, Moliere, etc. all have about equal merits. no writer in particular has shaped the direction of French literature to such a great degree as Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, and Pushkin have in their own languages.

Yeah but that doesn't fit within the simple binary framework I need to think in memes

Camus

>Whereas Racine, Moliere, etc. all have about equal merits.
Do anglos actually believe that ? Marlowe is closer to Shakespeare than Molière to Racine. In term of merits.

Marlowe is severely overrated

So is Molière, my dear friend. A child, next to Racine. Idem pour Corneille.

literally unread and virtually unknown outside of Lit deparments. You need to look up what the word overrated means.

Oh woah, imagine that, on Veeky Forums of all places

>English academic
>on french Veeky Forums
What arr you even talking about. Go back to Camus and Baudelaire.

Autocorrect fucked me, I meant French literature

Tu es pardonné.

we're literally an autism support group, how can anybody complain about this lol

Ah yes. The man who was so prodigious at fucking that all the prostitutes in paris went to his funeral. Truly a god among men.

>No writer in particular has shaped the direction of French literature to such a great degree as Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, and Pushkin have in their own languages.

I would argue Hugo had an influence similar to the authors you mentioned. He was the leading figure of romanticism, being the most important influence for all french author for more than a century. He and his friends ended théâtre classique and its system of rules, and he changed the way we write alexandrins. His novels are the precursors of social novels like those of Zola, and had a huge influence on foreign author like Tolstoï too. Some of them even made it into XXth century pop culture. His poetry had a huge influence, and romantic poetry is synonymous with his name. Even today he is still remembered as one of our greatest poet. He was a hero for all the republicans, and the people loved him for his political activism. Lastly, he is the face of literature in most frenchmen minds, and is one of or most famous.

Pic related is how many roads famous frenchmen have to their name.

...

wow didnt realise hugo was such a chad

yeah. apparently historians have literally given up trying to figure out how many people he boned.

Is he not more comparable to Dickens in this way though

Two millions people went to his funerals, which makes them the biggest public gathering ever recorded in France. Truly a god among men.

Dickens didn't write any poetry or drama from what I can gather.

You're a philistine

Dr. Faustus rivals most of Shakespeare's work.

Interesting, I'm reading now that Hugo is more praised as a poet in France. He's only known as a novelist in English

How fucking new are you?

my vote goes to Hugo.

Yeah, his fame overseas mostly comes from adaptations of his novel, which is really a shame because he is such a diverse character. He was influential in all fields of literature and in politics as well. He even was quite good at drawing. He had quite the romantic life too. He was exiled for more than twenty years because he could not stop telling everyone how he hated the new emperor Napoléon III. Halfway through the exile, he was forgiven by the Emperor, but Hugo refused to come back until Napoléon III was overthrown. He was almost exiled from his place of exile too, because he sent letters to Lord Palmerston, England secretary of state at the time, almost ordering him to abolish the death penalty.

He once wrote a poem about how he met a girl while walking in the countryside, and being quite impressed of her beauty had sex with her in the woods.

this desu. Goethe is a meme, it's a Byron-situation; he had an interesting life, was a turbo-chad, a polymath, and generall cool dude; but his fame is more due to his personality than his actual literary output (with the exception of Faust, which is obv. a masterpiece) but if I had the choice between reading Goethe or Schiller for the rest of my life, I'd defently go with Schiller without much hesitation. His plays still hold up as some of the most beautifully written documents of the german language

Goethe is more like Da Vinci, he produced some worthwhile stuff, but normies are so impressed that someone can both read and count, you know...omg 300 million iq

>Goethe is a meme, it's a Byron-situation; he had an interesting life, was a turbo-chad, a polymath, and generall cool dude; but his fame is more due to his personality than his actual literary output (with the exception of Faust, which is obv. a masterpiece)

I leave Veeky Forums for 6 months, decide to check-in out of boredom, and the first fucking post I read is still the standard concentrated retardation.
Dunning-Kruger.
Dunning-Kruger everywhere.
See you again in 6 months.

Rembrandt

Phaedra is his best, but start with an easier work, like Esther.

You're a dumb cougar

>ctrl+f Rabelais
>no results

How can you expect to appreciate art when you can't even appreciate a good fart joke?

Rabelais

Imagine unironically believing this. Someones butthurt about not unlocking the imparfait on duolingo

t. Joyce

Moliere, of course

You convinced me man. I never read his poetry but I'll give it a try.

...

Balzac (also the german one looks like my uncle)

Moliere or Montaigne.

it's as fake as Marie Antoinette and the brioche

stay jelly

when you blow out a massive fart and leave the room hoping it doesn't linger

>republicans
you need to go back

France (or the French language) doesn't have a literary masrer in the same way the other western traditions do.

in case you're not trolling, "republican" as used by that user refers to a person that respect and appreciate the French Republic. It has nothing to do with republican american meaning.

Macron is /our guy/. He will revive the monarchy and purify this corrupt republic with the searing flames of chaos! Vive le roi!

End yourself.

>promiscuous carnage and absence of law is okay when we do it

Killing wh*Toid liberals should be self defence desu

This, alas..
Corneille is a good choice though and so is Racine.

No way

Macron is the fourth Napoleon not a monarchist you idiot

They get smaller every time.

Sa grandeur éblouit l'histoire.
Quinze ans, il fut
Le dieu que traînait la victoire
Sur un affût ;
L'Europe sous sa loi guerrière
Se débattit. -
Toi, son singe, marche derrière,
Petit, petit.

Napoléon dans la bataille,
Grave et serein,
Guidait à travers la mitraille
L'aigle d'airain.
Il entra sur le pont d'Arcole,
Il en sortit. -
Voici de l'or, viens, pille et vole,
Petit, petit.

Berlin, Vienne, étaient ses maîtresses ;
Il les forçait,
Leste, et prenant les forteresses
Par le corset ;
Il triompha de cent bastilles
Qu'il investit. -
Voici pour toi, voici des filles,
Petit, petit.

Il passait les monts et les plaines,
Tenant en main
La palme, la foudre et les rênes
Du genre humain ;
Il était ivre de sa gloire
Qui retentit. -
Voici du sang, accours, viens boire,
Petit, petit.

Quand il tomba, lâchant le monde,
L'immense mer
Ouvrit à sa chute profonde
Le gouffre amer ;
Il y plongea, sinistre archange,
Et s'engloutit. -
Toi, tu te noieras dans la fange,
Petit, petit.

Victor Hugo, Les Châtiments

Only correct answer.

Hugo, alas...

every other ânon who says otherwise is either not french or not deserving of being french, ie: une petite salope.

superbe

...

This is the only correct answer

t. Anglaises

You should know Baudelaire is the poet of the 19th century. There's poetry before and after him

J'aimerais tant avoir encore 16 ans (pas vraiment).

shit

Don't worry you do have the arrogance of a teenager

Bien envoyé ! trop fort ! dans le mille ! Waouh !

I don't doubt that Hugo is a great, celebrated writer, but he appears too late in the scene to have really shaped the language and broader literary culture. I know Dickens is more often compared to Balzac because both were strictly novelists, but I do think Dickens and Hugo's relationship to their language and the nation are much more similar than say Hugo and Shakespeare.

Hugo appears too late to have influenced the language. In terms of culture, France already had a rich literary tradition before he arrived. And if you go to the 16-18th centuries, you don't really have a writer that towers too high above the others. There are certainly talented, genius poets, playwrights, and proto-novelists, but you can't really say there is one solid genius who was unanimously recognized above others.

If anything, I am paying the French a great compliment by implying that they had such a rich literary tradition that they never needed a man of genius such as Shakespeare, Pushkin, Goethe, Dante, or Cervantes to lift their literary culture out of the backwaters. After all, the French basically created and saved Christendom and Western Civilization after the Romans.

Anyway, if I were to nominate someone, it would be Descartes for his philosophical influence. I prefer reading Rabelais, Villon, Moliere, etc. but no one has had a greater impact than Descartes on culture from the Early Modern period, at least in my opinion.

Is this a troll thread? It's pic related

>le gay Jew