I’m just a language enthusiast and I liked Canterbury Tales, that is, I liked seeing the linguistic changes of English and all languages. I was wondering if there’s any famous old French books?
Rabelais. But 16th century French is really another language, I don’t know if you want to read in French or in translation. But Rabelais is a sort of French Cervantes, very comedic and the possible inventor of many forms of French humour and comedy.
I love the poetry of 15th century François Villon. Again the spelling is really different but some editions keep the original text with modern spelling (and tons of footnotes). Medieval French is much clearer than Renaissance, because in the 16th century writers had to win over the Italians, so not only they invented a lot of phrase turns, coined weird expressions no longer in use, but also adopted a lot of Greek words. It’s the reason why Richelieu founded L’académie française in the 17th century, to clean the mess and basically give birth to modern French.
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Rabelais. But 16th century French is really another language, I don’t know if you want to read in French or in translation. But Rabelais is a sort of French Cervantes, very comedic and the possible inventor of many forms of French humour and comedy.
I love the poetry of 15th century François Villon. Again the spelling is really different but some editions keep the original text with modern spelling (and tons of footnotes). Medieval French is much clearer than Renaissance, because in the 16th century writers had to win over the Italians, so not only they invented a lot of phrase turns, coined weird expressions no longer in use, but also adopted a lot of Greek words. It’s the reason why Richelieu founded L’académie française in the 17th century, to clean the mess and basically give birth to modern French.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_de_la_Rose
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_de_Pizan
Perceval ou le Conte du Graal by Chrétien de Troyes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceval,_the_Story_of_the_Grail