Jean Genet was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels The Thief's Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers and the plays The Balcony, The Maids and The Screens.
French literature generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in the French language by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature.
Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher and literary theorist. His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside poetic theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy.
Négritude is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating "Black consciousness" across Africa and its diaspora. Négritude gathers writers such as sisters Paulette and Jeanne Nardal, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Abdoulaye Sadji, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon Damas of French Guiana. Négritude intellectuals disavowed colonialism, racism and Eurocentrism. They promoted African culture within a framework of persistent Franco-African ties. The intellectuals employed Marxist political philosophy, in the Black radical tradition. The writers drew heavily on a surrealist literary style, and some say they were also influenced somewhat by the Surrealist stylistics, and in their work often explored the experience of diasporic being, asserting one's self and identity, and ideas of home, home-going and belonging.
Frankétienne is a Haitian writer, poet, playwright, painter, musician, activist and intellectual. He is recognized as one of Haiti's leading writers and playwrights of both French and Haitian Creole, and is "known as the father of Haitian letters". As a painter, he is known for his colorful abstract works, often emphasizing the colors blue and red. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres, and was named UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2010.
Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, known by her pen name Assia Djebar, was an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with obstacles faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance. She is "frequently associated with women's writing movements, her novels are clearly focused on the creation of a genealogy of Algerian women, and her political stance is virulently anti-patriarchal as much as it is anti-colonial." Djebar is considered to be one of North Africa's pre-eminent and most influential writers. She was elected to the Académie française on 16 June 2005, the first writer from the Maghreb to achieve such recognition. For the entire body of her work she was awarded the 1996 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She was often named as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Maryse Condé is a French novelist, critic, and playwright from the French Overseas department and region of Guadeloupe. Condé is best known for her novel Ségou (1984–85).
Raphaël Confiant is a Martinican writer known for his literary commitment towards Creole literature.
Yambo Ouologuem was a Malian writer. His first novel, Le devoir de violence, won the Prix Renaudot. He later published Lettre à la France nègre (1969), and Les mille et une bibles du sexe (1969) under the pseudonym Utto Rodolph. Le devoir de violence was initially well-received, but critics later charged that Ouologuem had plagiarized passages from Graham Greene and other established authors such as André Schwartz-Bart. Ouologuem turned away from the Western press as a result of the matter, and remained reclusive for the rest of his life.
Valentin-Yves Mudimbe is a Congolese philosopher, professor, and author of poems, novels, as well as books and articles on African culture and intellectual history. Mudimbe is Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of Romance Studies and professor of comparative literature at Duke University and maître de conferences at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.
Créolité is a literary movement first developed in the 1980s by the Martinican writers Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. They published Eloge de la créolité in 1989 as a response to the perceived inadequacies of the négritude movement. Créolité, or "creoleness", is a neologism which attempts to describe the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of places like the Antilles and, more specifically, of the French Caribbean.
Aminata Sow Fall is a Senegalese-born author. While her native language is Wolof, her books are written in French. She is considered "the first published woman novelist from francophone Black Africa".
Annette Mbaye d’Erneville is a Senegalese writer. She is the mother of filmmaker Ousmane William Mbaye, and was the subject of his 2008 documentary film, Mère-Bi.
Jean C. Baudet is a Belgian philosopher and writer, born in Brussels and died in Laeken.
Jeanne "Jane" Nardal was a French writer, philosopher, teacher, and political commentator from Martinique. She and her sister, Paulette Nardal, are considered to have laid the theoretical and philosophical groundwork of the Négritude movement, a cultural, political, and literary movement, which first emerged in 1930s, Paris and sought to unite Black intellectuals in the current and former French colonies. The term "Négritude" itself was coined by Martiniquan writer-activist Aimé Césaire, one of the three individuals formally recognized as the "fathers" of the cultural movement, along with Senegalese poet Léopold Senghor and French Guianese writer Léon Damas. It was not until relatively recently, however, that the women involved in the Négritude movement, including Jane and Paulette Nardal, began to receive the recognition they were due.
Cameroonian literature is literature from Cameroon, which includes literature in French, English and indigenous languages.
Danièle Bourcier is a French lawyer and essayist, who has contributed to the emergence of a new discipline in France: Law, Computing and linguistics.
Jean-Pierre Makouta-Mboukou was a Congolese politician, academic, novelist and playwright. For his abundant and eclectic work his biographers have called him the “Congolese Victor Hugo” and the “baobab of Congolese literature”.
Martinican literature is primarily written in French or Creole and draws upon influences from African, French and Indigenous traditions, as well as from various other cultures represented in Martinique. The development of literature in Martinique is linked to that of other parts of the French Caribbean but has its own distinct historical context and characteristics.
