Research Guides

French Language and Literature -- Internet Links

For an introduction to literary research and general literary resources on the Internet, you may find the Literature on the Internet research guide helpful -- or visit the WESS page, which is a French studies page created by librarians.

Leximagne.
This is a nearly exhaustive collection of 650 on-line French dictionaries, glossaries and wordlists. It "gives access to hundreds of thousands of words, terms and expressions."

 

English-French/frangais-anglais

ARTFL.
The "ARTFL Project: French-English Dictionary Form" allows individual words to be looked up in a simple dictionary, which contains about 75,000 terms. Truncation is permitted.

Neil's French-English Dictionary.
Containing 30,000 headwords, this English-French/French-English dictionary is more limited than ARTFL's. It is not searchable; click on a word from the alphabetical list for its translation.

Babelfish.
Altavista, a creation of Digital, operates this translation service. It will translate text (or Web-pages) from English to French (among other languages) or vice versa. Although the translations are sufficient for understanding the gist of the page, they are by no means entirely accurate.

Oxford Reference Online Dictionaries (Bilingual Dictionaries)

French only

Dictionnaire des synonymes.
Seven standard dictionaries were plumbed to create this thesaurus of 52,000 entries (403,000 synonyms). Clicking on a synonym given for an entry will take you to the entry for that word. It is the work of researchers at the Institut National de la Langue Frangaise.

Historical

Middle Ages: Lexique d'ancien francais.
This is the on-line version of the well-known Altfranzvsisches Wvrterbuch, which contains 48,000 old French words. The on-line version supplements the print by including grammatical categories and graphical variants. It is possible to do quite sophisticated searching, if necessary.

XVII^e-XVIII^e: Dictionnaire de l'Academie Francaise Database Project.
The ARTFL project has made two editions of the Dictionnaire available: la 1^hre idition (1694), la 5^e (1798). They are useful for studying the evolution of the language or for reading and critiquing XVII^e and XVIII^e-century texts.

Conjugation/spelling/literary terms

Verb Conjugation.
Also part of the ARTFL project, this program conjugates verbs when the infinitive is entered. Tenses supplied include the present (prisent), simple past (passi simple), future (future), conditional (conditionel), imperfect (imparfait) or subjunctive (subjonctif).

La CLE: Repertoire de procedes litteraires.
This is a very useful source for discovering terms used in poetic analysis or explanations of literary genres. They are accessible through "les exemples, par l'index des termes de leurs definitions, par leurs circonstances d'utilisation, [ou] par leurs categories de classement." It is part of the Cours Autodidactique de Francais Ecrit at the Universite de Montreal.

Language

LLBA. 1973-present.
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (Language and Language Behavior Abstracts from 1967-1985) includes citations and abstracts from approximately 2,000 serials, recent books, occasional papers, monographs, technical reports and dissertations, as well as citations to book reviews.

 

FRANCIS. 1984-present.
Web of Science [Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index (SCI)]. 1988-present. This is a multidisciplinary database indexing journal articles; it indexes over 8,000 journals and is updated by over 20,000 articles every week.

Literature

MLA. 1963-present.
The MLA International Bibliography, produced by the Modern Language Association of America, indexes critical materials on modern languages, literature, linguistics and folklore in more than 3,000 journals and series, monographs, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies and dissertations. The materials are in many languages.

FRANCIS. 1984-present.
It is strong in religion, the history of art, and literature, with emphasis on current trends in European and world literature.

JSTOR. dates vary.
JSTOR ("Journal Storage") provides access to the full text of almost every issue (usually from the first issue up until the last couple of years) of over 100 journals in the humanities, social sciences and mathematics. Literature titles include Modern Language Notes (MLN) and Yale French Studies. You can search each journal individually, a selection of those available, or all of them together. The full-text of the articles is given in PDF format.

Project Muse. 1995-present.
Project Muse enables access to the full text of 100 journals from several university presses. Literature titles include Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of Modern Literature, Modern Language Notes (MLN), Modern Language Quarterly (MLQ), Modernism/Modernity, New Literary History, and Yale Journal of Criticism.

Web of Science [includes Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI)]. 1988-present.
This is a multidisciplinary database indexing journal articles; the Arts & Humanities Citation Index section covers "1,100 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals." To find articles on a given subject, choose "GENERAL SEARCH"; for references cited in articles, choose "CITED REF SEARCH."

General compilations

ARTFL Project.
This is the Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language, based at the University of Chicago. It contains over 1,880 French texts available in full text. Since the original purpose of the database was to serve as a concordance, the only way to read a text is to search it for a word and go forward or back to the desired page. It is very useful, however, for comparing an authors use of a word in various texts, or the use of a word by many authors in a given time period.

Gallica.
The Bibliothhque Nationale de France has prepared this impressive and authoritative site of over 70,000 images and texts from the middle-ages through the nineteenth-century. The site gives a good general overview of selected periods and themes. The database is searchable by author, date, or periodical.

ABU : la Bibliotheque universelle.
At this site, which offers a list of texts, it is also possible to search by author, title, or for words within all of the texts. Thus far, 202 texts by sixty-six authors have been gathered by l'Association des Bibliophiles Universels.

ATHENA: TEXTES FRANCAIS.
This site offers both French and Swiss literature. The texts are arranged alphabetically by author; some of them are translations into English. The creator of the site is affiliated with the Bibliothhques de la faculti des lettres of Geneva.

The French Collection at University of Virginia.
The University of Virginia has a large collection of electronic texts. The compilers are very good about indicating the origin of the text and the print edition from which it was taken. Unfortunately, several of the texts are available only to people at the University of Virginia.

LE RAYON LITTERAIRE.
This group of texts and biographical information is interesting because it draws from some of the lesser-known French/Francophone authors, such as Eughne Chavette and Isabelle Eberhardt. The site is the work of the Lycee Marcel Gambier de Lisieux.

Paris: Capital of the 19th Century.
From Brown University, a site that aims to provide students and researchers with "a window into the cultural, political and social context of 19th century Parisian culture".

Poetry

Poesie francaise.
Over 2,000 French poems from French and Quebecois poets are available here. The site covers poetry from the Renaissance to the XX^e century. It is possible to search the corpus by author, century, title or words in a line. A particularly interesting feature is the possibility to listen to many of the poems.

 

Poesie francophone.
The Club des Poetes has compiled this site. Included are poems from a wide variety of French and Francophone poets, as well as pictures, and a large quantity of biographical information.

 

Poetes du XIX Siecle
This site offers individual pages on most of the Romantic and Symbolist French poets of the Nineteenth Century. Created by Jacques Lemaire

The Lied and Song Texts Page.
If a poem has been set to music by a classical composer (an "art song"), then there is a good chance that it can be found here. Poems can be located by composer, poet, first line, or title.

By time period

Middle Ages-XVI^e: Centre d'Edition de Textes Electroniques.
At the Faculte des Lettres de Nantes, researchers have digitized and transcribed two early texts: Chretien de Troyes' Chevalier de la charrette and Palissy's Discours admirables. Unique to this site is the capability to view the digitized text next to the transcription, or two editions of the same text side-by-side.

La Petite bibliotheque de France.
Produced by the Ministere des Affaires etrangeres, this site offers booklets about various topics in French literature. The booklets, which are available either on the web or to be saved to disk, cover individual authors, texts and/or themes.

Individual authors

Artaud: Antonin Artaud.
There is substantial information about the dramatist and critic on this site. There are also a few audio clips and links to other Artaud sites, although it has few texts.

Balzac: CONCORDANCE de Balzac.
The site provides a concordance to Balzac's Comedie Humaine. It is the work of the research group Bases, Corpus et Langage associated with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.
Also:  first edition of Balzac's Comedie humaine (commonly called the Furne edition) is fully searchable online.  Joint project by the Groupe international de Recherches balzaciennes, the Maison de Balzac, andthe ARTFL Project.

Banville: Theodore de Banville.
This site provides access to the complete poetic works of XVIII^e author Thiodore de Banville. It is possible to search the corpus by word or phrase. There is also a brief bibliography, compiled by the author of the site, Peter Edwards of Mount Allison University, Sackville, N.B. Canada.

Barthes: Roland Barthes
From Les Editions du Seuil, the site publishes text, images, and sound files from Barthes' lectures taught at Le College de France.

Baudelaire: Charles Baudelaire.
Prepared by Jacques Lemaire, professeur de Lettres au Collhge Jean-de-Bribeuf, from the previously mentioned Poets du XIX Siecle.

Chretien de Troyes: The Charrette Project.
"The Charrette project is a complex, scholarly, multi-media electronic archive containing a medieval manuscript tradition--that of Chritien de Troyes's Le Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot, ca. 1180). It is developed and maintained by the Department of Romance Languages, Princeton University." The archive contains the text in both Old French and in modern French (the Foulet-Uitti editions).

Cixous: Helene Cixous.
As part of the Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts, Mary Jane Parrine, Curator for Romance Languages Collections at Stanford created this site. It contains biographical and bibliographical information about Cixous, in addition to excerpts from her writings and interviews

Doubrovsky: Serge Doubrovsky.
The University of Birmingham's Department of French Studies has prepared this site as a starting point for the study of Doubrovsky and autofiction. The long bibliography is of particular interest.

 

Ducasse: Maldoror.
Isidore Ducasse (Lautriamont) is well represented. This site contains the texts of his works, as well as documentation on the author and on publications devoted to him.

 

Gautier: Theophile Gautier.
Andrew G. Gann of Mount Allison University has prepared this bilingual (French/English) site.

 

Gide: L'Atelier Andre Gide.
While there is no access to his texts, this page does provide a great deal of useful information on Gide's life.

La Fontaine: A la decouverte de Jean de Fontaine.
This page provides the complete texts of La Fontaine as well as some of the illustrations to his works.

Marie de France: International Marie de France Society.
In addition to promoting society activities, the page offers some links to her lais and to English translations.

Maupassant: Maupassant par les textes.
166 (out of 303) tales, 5 (of 8) novels, and 2 (of 3) travel diaries are found here.

 

Moliere - "Le tout Moliere"  - Developed by Gabriel Conesa, professor at the University de Reims-Champagne Ardenne and the late Robert Garapon, of the Sorbonne.

 

Proust: The Kolb-Proust Archive for Research.
The Archive at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offers notes on Proustian texts and works about Proust, collected by Dr. Philip Kolb.

 

Queneau: Raymond Queneau.
Suzanne Bagoly provides much biographical and bibliographical information on this author.

 

Queneau: Raymond Queneau: An Annotated Bibliography and Research Aid.
An extensive, up-to-date, annotated bibliography by Charles T. Kestermeier, SJ is offered through his page.

 

Rimbaud: RimbaudWeb.
In addition to information on Rimbaud and an on-line journal (the RimbaudZine), one can find "tous les textes de Rimbaud, et les lettres qu'il a icrit au cours de sa vie!" There is an index to this site, which is supported in part by the Bibliothhque Rimbaud and the Musie Rimbaud.

 

Robbe-Grillet: Alain Robbe-Grillet Bibliography.
John Leo has created an extensive annotated bibliography for this author. A few excerpts and links to other pages are provided

 

Saint-John Perse: SAINT-JOHN PERSE (1887-1975).
The Fondation Saint-John Perse has established this site. It contains information about the poet and his work, as well as information about events relating to the poet.

 

Stendhal: STENDHAL (Henri Beyle).
This site is put up in collaboration with the Association des Amis de Stendhal. It contains a bibliography, some digital texts and information about Stendhalien studies and conferences.

 

Verne: De la terre ala lune.
Two Verne texts and their original illustrations from the 1865 edition, De la terre a la lune and Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, have been mounted here.

 

Verne: Zvi Har'El's Jules Verne Collection.
This page is quite extensive and includes "a comprehensive library of Jules Verne works in electronic form, French and English."

 

Villon: Societe Frangois Villon.
This site contains links to his works, to criticism and reception of his texts, to information about the time and his contemporaries, and to the Bulletin of the Sociiti. Robert D. Peckham of the University of Tennessee-Martin is the creator of the page.

 

Voltaire: Voltaire Foundation.
The Voltaire Foundation provides links to and information about Voltaire and the Enlightenment.

 

Literary movements

Old French Language Page.
This page, edited and maintained by Joseph E. Price, Graduate Student in French Linguistics, Indiana University, is "designed to provide you with information about the Old French language and its literature." In addition, he offers links to relevant texts and linguistic information.

Textes en liberte.
This collection is mounted by the Laboratoire de frangais ancien at the Universite d'Ottawa. It offers very high-quality transcriptions from manuscripts of medieval and first editions of Renaissance texts.

Chronologie litteraire francaise 1848-1914.
This fascinating site provides lists of events which occured in a given year during this time period. These lists range from scientific discoveries to literary publications to historical events. Some pictures are included; links to on-line sources of texts and information about the events mentioned are given.

Francophone

Ecrivains fraccais d'outre-mer..

The French Ministere des affaires etrangeres presents a beautiful and informative site. In addition to essays about a variety of topics relating to francophone literature, there is an extensive bibliography of works by and about francophone authors.

Femmes ecrivains et les litteratures africaines..
This page covers in depth Francophone African women writers (as well as other languages). For each writer, information about her and her work, including brief excerpts and a bibliography, is given. The page is maintained by the Department of French Studies, School of European Languages, The University of Western Australia and is available in a "modified" English version.

 

L'ILE, le Centre de documentation virtuel sur la litterature quebecoise..
Although the frames sometimes make this site frustrating, it has a powerful search engine. The Ile contains detailed biographical and bibliographical information about more than 500 authors. Several Quibiois government agencies sponsor this effort.

LIMAG.
The "interactive" site of Litteratures du Maghreb (LIMAG) covers the literatures of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. The emphasis is on modern/contemporary authors. Notable features are its list of events relating to Maghrebian literature, list of related sites on the Internet, bibliographies, dissertations, and the full-text of two periodicals: Etudes litteraires maghrebines and Litteratures Maghrebines et Comparees.

JSTOR. dates vary.
Please see annotation under "Indices."

 

Project Muse. 1995-present.
Please see annotation under "Indices."

 

Arob@se: Journal des lettres & sciences humaines-A Journal of Literatures & Human Sciences.
This free on-line periodical is published twice a year. It seeks to be "an interdisciplinary bilingual forum (English-French) for researchers in literature and human sciences."

Fabula.
Daily, this journal offers articles on "literary fiction" and reviews of books. A team of French and Quebecois university professors have created this site to promote literary theory and criticism. It features a search engine that will search only on pre-selected "quality" "literary" sites.

Magazine litteraire.
The site for the journal contains articles and reviews on literature and a list of events. Each month, it features a long section on a particular topic. The site also has an index, which goes back to 1986, to the printed publication.

Mots pluriels et grands themes de notre temps.
This electronic journal has a broad international scope. Each issue has a theme, often dealing with francophone culture. It includes articles, interviews, bibliographies, book reviews and Internet resources.

Republique internationale des lettres.
The ninety-year old publication provides free access to its articles and editorials from 1994 to date. The journal of literature and literary criticism is published monthly.

 

Bibliotheque nationale de France.
The French national library has three on-line catalogues available through the internet. The main catalogue, Web-based and containing the entire print holdins, is OPALE-PLUS. OPALE is a catalogue of post-1970 acquisitions and OPALINE is the catalogue for engravings and special collections. Books acquired before 1970 can also be found in the printed Catalogue general des livres imprimes de la Bibliotheque nationale.

 

Geddes Language Center - Boston University. See their catalogue for films.

 

National Library of Canada-Bibliotheque nationale de Canada.
Canada provides a Web-based catalogue, RESANET, searchable in either French or English.

Royal Library Albert I.
The Belgian library catalogue can be searched in French or Flemish.

Schweizerische Landesbibliothek-Bibliotheque nationale suisse.

HELVITICAT
the on-line Swiss national library catalogue, contains over a million records. It can be searched via Telnet in either French or German. The Web-based interface is in English.