Culture
and Tradition
The concept of culture
is of paramount importance in France - a country whose people have all
but cornered the world market on urbane savoir faire - and the country's
devotion to Frenchness is all-consuming.
The first distinctively
Gallic architecture was Gothic, which originated in the mid-12th century
in northern France and is preserved in the seminal Chartres cathedral
and its successors at Reims and Amiens. In the realms of architecture
and the visual arts, the Renaissance - which first showed its face at
the end of the 15th century - was largely an imported phenomenon with
few homegrown modifications. Local writers showed more verve, with Rabelais
and Montaigne producing literary landmarks.
During the Baroque
era, which lasted from the end of the 16th century to the late 18th
century, painting, sculpture and architecture were integrated to create
structures of great subtlety, refinement and elegance. French Baroque
music was influential throughout the continent, informing much of the
wider European output, while Nicolas Poussin was the first French painter
who really ba-rocked. French theatre guffawed with Molière, the
era's most popular comic playwright.
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.
The literature of this period is dominated by philosophers, among them
Voltaire and Rousseau, while the music scene was dominated by Impressionists
Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and Berlioz, who founded modern orchestration
and produced operas and symphonies that sparked a musical renaissance.
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 and powerful work
of �mile 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). Sculptor
Auguste Rodin, regarded by some critics as the finest portraitist in
the history of the art, rendered sumptuous bronze and marble figures.
Painting as portraiture was simultaneously revamped by Jean Auguste
Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix, while landscape painting
was transformed first by Jean-François Millet and the Barbizon
School, then by �douard 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.
Marcel Proust dominated
early 20th century literature with his exquisitely excruciating seven-volume
novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Poets Andr� Breton and
Paul �luard were militant surrealists fascinated with dreams,
divination and all manifestations of 'the marvelous'. 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 organizing 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.
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,
and Luc Besson, who wrote and directed The Fifth Element and The Big
Blue.
Philosophers such
as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva, best known for
theoretical writings on literature and psychoanalysis, are other 'serious'
authors associated with this period, although the most admired national
literature is the comic strip Ast�rix. When they pry their eyes
from the finer arts, the French obsessions with soccer, rugby, basketball
and cycling, especially the Tour de France, are given full rein. Traditional
games such as p�tanque (similar to lawn bowling but played on
a hard surface) are also popular.
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 Frankish culinary zeal. 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 color
to many dishes.
A typical day's
eating begins with a bowl of caf� au lait, a croissant and a
thin loaf of bread smeared with butter and jam. Lunch and dinner are
virtually indistinguishable and can include a first course of fromage
de tête pât� (pig's head set in jelly) or bouillabaisse
(fish soup), followed by a main course of blanquette de veau (veal stew
with white sauce) and rounded off with a plateau de fromage (cheese
platter) or tarte aux pommes (apple tart). An appetite-stirring ap�ritif
such as kir (white wine sweetened with syrup) 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-flavored
cousin of absinthe) and some of the best wine in the world.
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