Talk:19th-century French literature

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Stendhal is classified as both a romantic and a realist.Why?

Good question requiring a better answer than I'm qualified to give, but put simply, his characters' psychological complexities are described and analysed using "realist" methods, despite the fact that they embody any number of Romantic tropes and often find themselves in unlikely, emotionally-overcharged situations. The cliché (and not an inaccurate one) is that Stendhal's violently emotional nature made him a natural Romantic, while his obsessive proclivity toward lucid analysis made him a formidable Realist in his own right, in addition to being a tremendous influence on (among athers) no less a figure than the supreme realist (himself showing Romantic tendencies and constantly battling against them), Gustave Flaubert. Hubacelgrand 16:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Naturalism

The section on naturalism is a bit confused. It starts by linking to naturalism (literature) which is about American naturalism. It then cites Flaubert both as naturalism and contrarily as realism. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 18:15, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Problems

This artticle has no references. the writing style is highly self referential. this could be a college essay. i will tag it. i have absolutely no idea how to revamp it, beyond stubifying and rebuilding. i hope someone with knowledge of the subject and skill at broader articles can help it. Im reluctant to make cosmetic changes when the bigger picture is not being addressed.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 17:05, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Many articles on Wikipedia don't have references, they were written before refs were required or even available (pre-2005 or so), the authors have since moved on and we are left with legacy content. It doesn't mean it's bad article though. I'm not an "expert", but do know about 19th C French literature and history; reading through this there is nothing that really stands out as being wrong, in fact I think it's not a bad article. It sort of reads as though it was lifted from another source, though I can't prove that, it has an early to mid 20th C feel to the tone, somewhat patriarchal. But it is encyclopedic, and until something better comes along we don't need cite requests at the end of every single sentence, not unless there is a good reason for the cite request (ie. the information is suspect). It makes the article hard to read. The general need for cites is taken care of with the banner at the top of the article. Green Cardamom (talk) 02:31, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah as I suspected, this article was created in 2005, but a lot of it was content moved from the original French literature article which goes back to the earliest days of Wikipedia.. way before footnotes and citations were available features in Wikipedia software, much less required as policy. It also appears to be a mix of many users who worked on it, though one user in particular in 2005 was the main editor, who is still active, though currently on break till Spring 2011. If your serious about improving the article, contacting this editor directly would be the best way. Green Cardamom (talk) 02:41, 4 February 2011 (UTC)