Food
Food is a subject of endless rumination. Consider just some of the country's epicurean delights - foie gras, truffles, Roquefort cheese, well-built crustaceans, succulent snails plucked off grape vines, sharp-tasting fruit tarts - and you begin to appreciate the culinary zeal of the French. But one cannot live on escargot and vin de table alone. France's North African and Asian populations have contributed to the pot, bringing spice and colour to many dishes.
A typical day's eating begins with a bowl of café au lait, a croissant and a baguette - smeared with butter and jam. The French often still see lunch as the main meal of the day, and many restaurants offer an excellent value formule midi, usually consisting of an entrée and a plat du jour. What you'll end up eating varies widely depending on where you are in France - a typical first course might be soupe aux poissons (fish soup), followed by a main course of blanquette de veau (veal stew with white sauce) rounded off with a plateau de fromage (cheese platter) or tarte aux pommes (apple tart). An appetite-stirring apéritif such as kir (white wine sweetened with cassis) is often served before a meal, while a digestif (cognac or Armagnac brandy) may be served at the end. Other beverages designed to aid digestion and stimulate conversation include espresso, beer, liqueurs such as pastis (a 90-proof, anise-flavoured cousin of absinthe) and some of the best wine in the world.
Literature
Victor Hugo is the key figure of 19th-century French Romanticism. By the mid-19th century, Romanticism was evolving into new movements, both in fiction and poetry, and three stalwarts of French literature emerged: Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire and the controversial, innovative Emile Zola. The poet Arthur Rimbaud, as well as crowding rugged and exotic adventuring into his 37 years, produced two enduring pieces of work: Illuminations and Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell).
Marcel Proust dominated early 20th century literature with his exquisitely excruciating seven-volume novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Poet André Breton was a militant surrealist fascinated with dreams, divination and all manifestations of 'the marvellous'. After WWII, Existentialism developed around Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus, who stressed the importance of the writer's political engagement. De Beauvoir, author of the ground-breaking The Second Sex, had a profound influence on feminist thinking. By the late 1950s, younger writers began to look for new ways of organising narrative; novelist Nathalie Sarraute, for example, did away with the pesky conventions of identifiable character and plot. Marguerite Duras employed similar abstractions, backgrounding character for mood. She came to the notice of an international public with her racy novel L'Amant (The Lover) in 1984.
Philosophers such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva, best known for theoretical writings on literature and psychoanalysis, are other 'serious' authors known worldwide, although the most admired national literature is the comic strip Astérix.Emergent (and readable) voices in French literature include Annie Ernaux and Daniel Pennac (urban crime fiction).
Cinema
The 1950s and 1960s was a period of French celluloid innovation, when New Wave directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Louis Malle burst onto the scene. The dominance of the auteur directors continued until the 1970s, by which time the New Wave had lost its experimental edge and boosted the reputation of French cinema as an intellectual, elitist and, frankly, boring enterprise. The most successful directors of the 80s and 90s have produced original and visually striking films featuring unusual locations, bizarre stories and unique characters. Well-regarded directors include Jean-Jacques Beineix, who made Diva and Betty Blue. The 2001 hit Amélie was France's biggest-grossing film of all time.
Architecture
The first distinctively Gallic architecture was Gothic, which originated in the mid-12th century in northern France and is preserved in the Chartres cathedral and its successors at Reims and Amiens.
Fine arts
In the 18th century, Jean-Baptiste Chardin brought the humbler domesticity of the Dutch masters to French art. Later, Napoleon named Jacques Louis David, a leader of the 1789 Revolution, official state painter. David produced vast pictures, including one of Revolutionary dictator Marat lying dead in his bath.
Painting as portraiture was simultaneously revamped by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix in the 19th century, while landscape painting was transformed first by Jean-François Millet and the Barbizon School, then by Edouard Manet and the realists. Manet's later work is influenced by the Claude Monet-prefected Impressionist school, which numbered Camille Pisarro and Edgar Degas among its students.Post-impressionism gave way to a bewildering diversity of styles in the 20th century, two of which are particularly significant: Fauvism, à la Henri Matisse, and Cubism, personified by Pablo Picasso. These were followed by the Dadaists, who reacted to the negativity of WWI by acting weird.
Classical music
French Baroque music was influential throughout the Continent in the 17th and 18th centuries, informing much of the wider European output. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and Berlioz, who founded modern orchestration and produced operas and symphonies that sparked a musical renaissance, are other important names in classical music. |
