French: Home

                To find journal articles about French literature, your best bet is the MLA International Bibliography database, which retrieves articles published from 1926 to the present.  You can restrict your search by language if you want to find articles in French (or English).  Use Boolean operators  (AND, OR, NOT) for the best results (e.g., victor hugo AND notre dame).  If an article isn’t in full text, we can order it for you on interlibrary loan.

JSTOR  also has full text for many scholarly literature journals, including some about French literature.  Again, you can limit your search by language.  You can also restrict your search by subject (e.g., “Language & Literature”).  Use quotation marks for phrases:  “victor hugo” (otherwise you'll retrieve articles that mention some other "Hugo" on one page and have the word "victor" on another).

                JSTOR includes PDF for these journals:

• French Forum
• French Review
• Nineteenth-Century French Studies
• MLN (Modern Language Notes)
• PMLA
• Yale French Studies

MLA International Bibliography will provide links to JSTOR full text for most of these journals, so it’s probably the best database to use.

Your best reference source for information on French authors is the Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online database, which provides PDF for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, including the following volumes:​

• Literature of the French and Occitan Middle Ages: Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries (vol. 208, 1999; also available  in print, REF PQ 156 .L577 1999)
• Sixteenth-Century French Writers (vol. 327, 2006)
• Seventeenth-Century French Writers (vol. 268, 2003; includes Corneille, Descartes, Molière, Pascal, Racine)
• Writers of the French Enlightenment (vols. 313-314, 2005; includes Voltaire)
• Nineteenth Century French Fiction Writers:  Romanticism and Realism, 1800-1860 (vol. 119, 1992; includes Balzac, Hugo, Stendhal, and Flaubert)
• Nineteenth Century French Fiction Writers:  Naturalism and Beyond, 1860-1900 (vol. 123, 1992)
• French Novelists, 1900-1930 (vol. 65, 1988; also available in print, REF PQ 671 .F677 1988; includes Cocteau, Colette, Gide)
• French Novelists, 1930-1960 (vol. 72, 1988; includes de Beauvoir, Camus, Saint-Exupéry)
• French Novelists since 1960 (vo. 83, 1989)
   
• French Dramatists, 1789-1914 (vol. 192, 1998)
• Twentieth-Century French Dramatists (vol. 321, 2006; includes Anouihl, Beckett, Ionesco, Sartre)
   
• Nineteenth Century French Poets (vol. 217, 200; includes Lamartine, Verlaine, Rimbaud)
• Modern French Poets (vol. 258, 2002)
   
• Gustave Flaubert, a Documentary Volume (vol. 301, 2004)
• Marcel Proust, a Documentary Volume (vol. 371, 2013)

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Reference books include:

• The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French (REF PQ 41 .H300 1995; the 2005 version is available in our Oxford Reference Online database)
• Guide to French Poetry Explication (REF PQ 401 .C65 1993)
• Dictionnaire des écrivains français (REF PQ 41 .M300 1995, two volumes)

You’ll find books both by and about French authors in the PQ section (PQ 37 to PQ 2667) on the lower level.  To ascertain call numbers (and access e-books), use the online catalog (which will also provide e-books):

• “Author” search for books by an author
• “Subject” search for books about an author (both biographies and criticism)

You’ll find both English translations of French authors and books in the original French shelved together.

• NOTE:  French titles may differ from the English titles.  A title search for The Hunchback of Note Dame will retrieve English translations of the novel (and films—Lon Chaney, Charles Laughton, and Disney); for the novel in French, search Notre Dame de Paris.

Books available for checkout include:

• A Short History of French Literature (Oxford University Press, PQ 119 .K399 2003)
• The Oxford Companion to French Literature (PQ 41 .H3 1969)
• A Literary History of France (PQ 103 .L5, 5 volumes)
• The Molière Encyclopedia (PQ 1851 .M57 2002)

We have books in the Twayne’s World Author series on several French authors, including:

• Rabelais (PQ 1694 .T4)
• Marie de France (PQ 1495 .M5)
• Pierre Corneille (PQ 1772 .A54 1972)
• Diderot (PQ 1979 .F44)
• Gustave Flaubert (PQ 2247 .B8)
• Lamartine (PQ 2326 .L6)
• Stéphane Mallarmé (PQ 2344 .Z5 S2)
• Arthur Rimbaud (PQ 2387 .R5 Z87)
• Jean Anouihl (PQ 2601 .N67 Z558 1969)
• Paul Valéry (PQ 2643 .A26 Z637)

Lewis Library subscribes to MANGO, an excellent resource for learning languages.  You can access it here.

You’ll find French dictionaries in the reference collection on the main level, including:

• Larousse French-English, English-French Dictionary (REF PC 2640 .G688 2003)
• Cassell’s French Dictionary (French-English, English-French) (call number REF PC 2640 .C3 1977)
• Harrap’s Standard French and English Dictionary (REF PC 2640 .H317 1970, 2 volumes)
• Grand Larousse de la langue française (REF PC 2625 .G7, 7 vols.)

If you want a French-English dictionary you can check out, you’ll find some on the lower level in the PC 2640 area, including 1962 and 1977 editions of Cassell’s dictionary.

We have dozens of French films (usually French with English subtitles), most of them in the DVD PN 1997.95 area on the Upper Level. The spines are labeled “FRENCH.” 

Among the DVDs are:

• 8 Femmes (8 Women) (DVD PN 1997.95 .E597 2002)
• À Bout de Souffle (Godard)  (DVD PN 1997.95 .B811 2007)
• Amélie (DVD PN 1997.95 .A622 2002)
• Au Revoir Les Enfants (DVD PN 1997.95 .A82 2006)
• Babette’s Feast (DVD PN 1997.95 .B133 2001)
• The Red Balloon (DVD PN 1997.95 .B354 2008)
• Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau) (DVD PN 1997.95 .B372 2003)
• La Belle et la Bête (Gans) (DVD PN 1997.95 .B372 2015)
• Breathless (Godard) (DVD PN 1997.95 .B811 2007)
• Caché(Hidden) (DVD PN 1997.95 .C148 2006)
• Café au lait (Metisse) (DVD PN 1997.95 ,C231 2005)
• Chickens with Plumes (DVD PN 1997.95 .C45 2013)
• Comme Une Image (Look at Me)  (DVD PN 1997.95 .L663 2005)
• The Count of Monte Cristo (DVD PN 1997.95 .C695 2009)
• Day for Night (Truffaut) (DVD PN 1997.95 .D399 2006)
• Le Dernier Métro (Truffaut)  (DVD PN 1997.95 .D536 2005)
• Diabolique (DVD PN 1997.95 .D588 2011)
• Games of Love & Chance (L’Esquive)  (DVD PN 1997.95 .G273 2006)
• Jean de Florette & Manon des sources (DVD PN 1997.95 .M231 2007)
• Notre Musique  (DVD PN 1997.95 .N651 2005)
• Of Gods and Men  (DVD PN 1997.95 .O3 2011, DVD + Blu Ray)
• Le Papillon (The Butterly)  (DVD PN 1997.95 .B844 2004)
• The Return of Martin Guerre (DVD PN 1997.95 .R492 2005)
• Les Rois Maudits (DVD PN 1997.95 .R483 2005, 3 vols.)
• La Vie en Rose (DVD PN 1997.95 .V548 2007)
• The Well-Digger’s Daughter (DVD PN 1997.95 .W43 2012, Blu Ray)
• The Women on the 6^th Floor (Les Femmes du 6ème étage) (DVD PN 1997.95 .W661 2012)