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Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 50 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 French Literature
Cabourg. Bayeux is not exactly a seaside resort but the little town where the famous Tapestry describing the Battle of Hastings can be seen. Proust was born at Auteuil (1871) and died in Paris (1922).
| Near Macon in Burgundy there is a little village called Milly that became famous because of the poet who lived there.What is the present name of the village? | Placenames In French Literature
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Milly-Lamartine. Verlaine was born in Metz in 1844 and died in Paris 1896. - Rimbaud was born in Charleville 1854 and died in Marseille 1891.- Hugo was born in Besancon 1802 and died in Paris 1885. - Lamartine was born at Macon 1790 and died in Paris in 1869. A large part of his life was spent at Milly.
Brittany. More information on Combourg at www.combourg.com
| Which North French town was home to Jules Verne, the author of 'Around the World in 80 Days' and 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea'? | Placenames In French Literature
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Amiens. Verne was born at Nantes 1828 and died at Amiens 1905.
| Which French woman-author earned herself a reputation with the letters she wrote to her daughter in the Castle of Grignan in Southern France ? | Placenames In French Literature
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Marquise Madame de Sevigne. Colette was born at Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in 1873. She wrote mainly about the 'pleasures and pains of love'. She died in 1954 in Paris. -Madame Marie de Rabutin-Chantal Marquise of Sevigne was born in Paris in 1626 and died at her daughter's chateau of Grignan in 1696. - Francoise Sagan published her first and most successful novel at the age of nineteen years in 1954 'Bonjour Tristesse'.She also wrote some plays one of which is entitled 'A Castle in Sweden'(1960).
he ridiculed the inhabitants in his literary work. The name he gave to Gueret in his works is 'Chaminadour'.- Another reason why he lost the sympathies of a lot of his fellow citizens was his antisemitic stance.
| Who is the French playwright that called his hometown Bellac (in the Haute Vienne, a department of the Limousin ) 'the prettiest town in France' and made it the scene of some of his plays? | Placenames In French Literature
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Jean Giraudoux. Paul Bourget (not to be confused witht the airport) was born in Amiens (1852) and as is almost customary with French auhtors died in Paris 1935.- Alphonse Daudet Nimes 1840- Paris 1897 - Jean Giraudoux Bellac 1882- Paris 1944. Anatole France was BORN in Paris and died in 'the province' at St Cyr sur Loire 1924.He won the Nobel Prize in 1921.
| Who was the famous occupant of the Castle of Nohant who counted among her close friends: Franz Liszt, Eugene Delacroix, Turgenev, Honore de Balzac, Theophile Gautier and especially Frederic Chopin ? | Placenames In French Literature
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George Sand. Another favourite place of hers was the Villa Algira at Gargilesse.
| He had a large house at Croisset near the Seine (in Normandy, at a short distance from Rouen.)Guy de Maupassant was one of his closest friends. Of one of his most popular heroines he said that 'she was him'.Who was HE? | Placenames In French Literature
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Gustave Flaubert. Baudelaire was not a novelist. - Maupassant mainly wrote short stories.- There are two Dumases: father and (illegitimate)son..Junior wrote 'The Lady with the Camelias' (in Verdi's opera version:La Traviata) and the father, 'Dumas pere' wrote such stories as the 'Count of Monte Cristo' and of course 'The Three Musketeers'. - Arsene Lupin is not an author but a character in the works of Maurice Leblanc. Gentleman-thief turning detective.
Emma. Madame Bovary is one of Flaubert's most famous novels.
Emile Zola. Lantier is the hero of "Germinal", a novel telling about the hard conditions of workers at the mines during the 19th.
Honoré de Balzac. "La Comédie Humaine" is a big collection of several novels, painting French society.
Victor Hugo . He probably is the most famous French author ever.
| "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne
Blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone". Who wrote this? | French Literature
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Paul Verlaine. Those words were the signal for the French Resistance the day before June 6th, 1944.
Blaise Cendrars. He wrote "La Main Coupée", a novel telling us the way it happened. He was born in La Chaux-de-Fond in Switzerland.
| "Le Rouge et le Noir" (Red and black) is a novel written by Stendhal. What is the symbolic of those two colours? | French Literature
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Red is the army and black is a monastery. Julien Sorel, the hero of "Le Rouge et le Noir", goes to Paris and makes a career over there. He has to choose between going to the army and going to the monastery.
| What French author of the 19th century had the foresight that the man would walk on the moon one day? | French Literature
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Jules Verne. He wrote "De la Terre à la Lune" (From Earth to Moon) in 1865.
Members of the French Academy. The members of the French Academy are called the Immortals. That's why they are compared to gods.
| It may not be a literary work in the strict sense of the word, but what is generally regarded as the first piece of writing in French? | French Literature 842 - 1980
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The Strasbourg Oaths. These oaths of mutual support were sworn in 842 by Louis the German and Charles the Bald, who were at war with their brother Lothair for the throne. Beginning "Pro deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament",("for the love of God and for the common salvation of the Christian people and ourselves"), they are of obvious linguistic interest.
Le Roman de Tristan. Béroul's is not the first treatment of the legend of Tristan and Iseult, but it is undoubtedly one of the greatest.
| Born in Paris in 1431, he became a Master of Arts of the university. He was pardoned for the manslaughter of a cleric in 1455, and left Paris in 1456 after being involved in a robbery. Returning to the city about 1462, after various scrapes in the provinces, he was soon in trouble again, and was sentenced to death in 1463 for involvement in the killing of a notary. He was reprieved and exiled, after which we hear no more of him. His most notable poems are the "Lais" and the "Testament". What was his name? | French Literature 842 - 1980
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François Villon. The "Lais" (written when he was leaving Paris in 1456) and the "Testament" (written in 1461, when he probably knew he hadn't long to live) are mock wills. Various bequests – some touching, some satirical – are made to friends and enemies. Some of the bequests are poems, many in ballade form, which can stand independently of the main text. These include the famous "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" with its refrain "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?".
| In the works of François Rabelais, what is the name of the giant who is the son of Grandgousier and the father of Pantagruel? | French Literature 842 - 1980
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Gargantua. "Gargantua" was published after "Pantagruel", though it precedes it in the chronological order of the story. Gargamelle is Gargantua's mother, Picrochole is a neighbour with whom he goes to war, and Alcofribas Nasier is the pseudonym (an anagram of Rabelais' own name) under which the book was published.
| Generally regarded as the leading poet of the school known as the Pléiade, this man is perhaps best remembered for the poem "À Cassandre", beginning "Mignonne, allons voir si la rose". Who was he? | French Literature 842 - 1980
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Pierre Ronsard. The other poets mentioned were also members of the Pléiade. The name was taken from the name given to a group of seven Greek tragic poets in Alexandria in the third century BC: this is turn was of course inspired by the group of seven stars in the constellation Taurus.
| Jean Racine is celebrated for his tragedies, but he also produced a comedy satirizing the law. What was it called? | French Literature 842 - 1980
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Les Plaideurs. The central idea of a judge with a mania for judging comes from the "Wasps" of Aristophanes. The now proverbial expression "point d'argent, point de Suisse" comes from this play.
Tartuffe. Tartuffe is a "faux dévôt" who introduces himself into the house of a credulous bourgeois named Orgon. Tartuffe lives at Orgon's expense, persuades Orgon to make over all his property to him, tries to seduce his wife and even has him arrested. He gets his deserts in the end only through the intervention of the king. The play raised a storm of protest from various religious interests, and was twice banned between 1664 and 1669.
| "We are all strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others". "The only thing that should surprise us is that we can still be surprised". "We are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as we think we are". These are among the 600-odd "Maxims" of which 17th-century writer? | French Literature 842 - 1980
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La Rochefoucauld. La Rochefoucauld is sometimes thought of as a mere cynic, but his maxims (especially those about "amour-propre") show a great deal of psychological insight. The originals of the maxims quoted are "Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui", "On ne devrait s'étonner que de pouvoir encore s'étonner" and "On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine".
| What is the title of Voltaire's satire on the philosophy of optimism, i.e. the doctrine that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"? | French Literature 842 - 1980
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Candide. The ingenuous Candide is accompanied on his journey through the world by his tutor Pangloss, an irredeemable optimist who assures his pupil, in spite of the direst catastrophes, that "tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles"
Cromwell. The preface, with its plea for "freedom for art in the face of the tyranny of systems, codes and rules", certainly had the influence that Hugo hoped for. But the play, a very long work with a great number of characters, was never produced in his lifetime and has rarely been staged since.
Les Trois Mousquetaires. A further sequel was "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne".
| Prosper Mérimée wrote a novella set in Spain which was the inspiration for an opera by Bizet. The novella and the opera have the same title, which is ...? | French Literature 842 - 1980
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Carmen. The opera is one of the most popular in the standard repertoire, but the book on which it is based is virtually forgotten.
The army and the church. This is the usual explanation: another is that black symbolizes clerical reaction and red symbolizes republicanism or liberalism.
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