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ALL ABOUT SWITZERLAND |
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LITERATURE IN FRENCH |
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Epoch | Writer | Lifetime | Major Works |
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Ancien Régime Enlightment |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (philosopher) | Geneva, 1712 - France, 1778 | On arts and science (1750); On the origin of inegality among human beings (1754); Nouvelle Héloise (novel, 1761); Emile (novel, 1762); Du Contrat Social (political program, 1762); confessions (1764-70) |
French Revolution | Anne Germaine de Staël |
Paris 1766-04-22 Paris 1817-07-14 |
Delphine (1802); Corinne, ou l'Italie (novel, 1807, demanded for women's rights and influenced other fiction of the era); De l'Allemagne (idealistic romantic portrait of Germany, 1810); Considérations sur la Révolution française (1818); Madame de Staël was the daughter of Swiss banker (and French minister of finance) Jacques Necker and is known for her literary salon in Paris. She was banned by Napoleon I. and her writings were forbidden. |
Benjamin Constant (B. Henri C. de Rebecque, politician) | Lausanne, 1767-10-25 - Paris, 1830-12-08 | On power (political treaty, 1814); Adolphe (novel, 1816); Cécile (novel, published 1951) | |
19th century | Henri-Frédéric Amiel (philosophy professor) | Geneva 1821-09-27 - Geneva 1881-05-11 |
poems; diaries (1883/84) |
20th century vernacular | Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (the Swiss-French vernacular poet) |
Lausanne, 1878-09-24 - Pully, 1947-05-23 |
Aline (novel); Aimé Pache, peintre vaudois; La Séparation des races; La grande Peur dans la montagne (novel, 1926); Farinet ou la fausse monnaie; Adam et Eve; Derborence; Si le Soleil ne revenait pas; La Guerre aux papiers; |
Maurice Chappaz | Sierre, born 1916 | Lyrics (vernacular and yet classical: he was loved for that); Portrait des Valaisans en légende et en vérité (1965); Match Valais-Judée (1968). The people of canton Valais hated Chappaz for these very critical portraits revealing both their stubborn traditionalism and their unreflected faith in technological progress and tourism. | |
Jacques Chessex | Vaud, contemporary | La Confession du pasteur Burg (1967); Les Saintes Ecritures (1972); L’Ogre (1973); Les Yeux jaunes (1979); L'Imitation (1997); poems; Figures de la métamorphose ; suivi d'un Essai sur Pietro Sarto (1999); Incarnata (1999); Portrait d'une ombre (1999); Sosie d'un saint: nouvelles (2000); De l'encre et du papier (2001); Monsieur (2001); Le désir de la neige (2002); Transcendance et transgression, entretiens avec Geneviève Bridel (2002); Le Fort (2002); L'économie du ciel (2003); Marie et le chat sauvage (2003); Les têtes: portraits (2003); | |
20th century, international outlook | Blaise Cendrars (Friedrich Ludwig [Frédéric] Sauser, bilingual) | La-Chaux-de-Fonds, 1887-09-01 - Paris 1961-01-21 | Lyrics (before 1925): Les Paques à New York;
Prose du Transsibérien;
La main coupée (1918) ; La femme et le soldat;
Poèmes élastiques (poems, 1919); Novels: L'Or [Gold] (novel, 1925, about the Life of General Sutter, a Swiss pioneer in California who lost everything in the goldrush, was regarded as scandalous in the U.S.A.); Moravagine (1926); Petits contes nègres pour les enfants des Blancs (1928); Dan Yack (autobiography, 1929); Histoires vraies [True Stories] (1937, 1938) L'homme foudroyé (autobiography, 1945); Bourlinguer (1948); Emmène-moi au bout du monde (novel, 1956, featuring Madame Thérèse) "He rediscovered poetry for France" (André Malraux, French writer) "He made Brasilians more Brasilian" (Gilberto Freyre) |
Guy de Pourtalès | |||
Charles-Albert Cingria | |||
Albert Cohen | |||
Denis de Rougemont (essayist) | |||
Jean Starobinski (essayist) | |||
Post-War Poetry | Gustave Roud | poems | |
Anne Perrier | poems | ||
Philippe Jaccottet | poems | ||
Alexandre Voisard | poems | ||
Pierre-Alain Tâche | poems | ||
Pierre Chappuis | |||
Sylviane Dupuis | |||
Anne Rothschild | |||
Post-War Prose and Novels | Catherine Colomb | ||
Monique Saint-Hélier | |||
Alice Rivaz | |||
S. [Stéphanie] Corinna Bille | 1912 - 1979 | Théoda (1944); La Fraise noire (1968); | |
Jacques Mercanton | |||
Georges Borgeaud | |||
Yvette Z'Graggen | |||
Georges Haldas | |||
Agota Kristof | |||
Anne Cuneo | |||
Nicolas Bouvier | |||
Contemporary | Etienne Barilier | ||
Yves Velan | |||
Amélie Plume | |||
Anne-Lise Grobéty | |||
Jean-Luc Benoziglio | |||
Daniel de Roulet | |||
François Debluë | |||
Jean-Marc Lovay | |||
Yves Laplace |
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