READ Famous Poets from France

Adam de la Halle, also known as Adam le Bossu was a French-born trouvère, poet and musician, whose literary and musical works include chansons and jeux-partis in the style of the trouveres, polyphonic rondel and motets in the style of early liturgical polyphony, and a musical play, "Jeu de Robin et Marion", which is considered the earliest surviving secular French play with music. He was a member of the Confrérie des jongleurs et bourgeois d'Arras. ...more

Birthplace: Arras, France

Adélaïde-Gillette Dufrénoy was a French poet and painter from Brittany. The daughter of Jacques Billet, a jeweller for the Crown of Poland, she had a lavish education and learnt Latin to a proficient enough level that she was able to translate the works of Horace and Virgil. A M. Laya would later introduce her to French poetry, which would capture her imagination for years to come. At the age of fifteen, she married a rich prosecutor, Simon Petit-Dufrenoy, at the Châtelet de Paris. Her marital home became the meeting-place of the beaux-esprits of the city, which influenced her towards a true poetic vocation. In 1787, her career as a writer started in earnest with a small work titled Boutade, ...more

Age: Died at 60 (1765-1825)

Birthplace: Nantes, France

Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a Francophone and French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature". He wrote such works as A Tempest, a response to Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, and Discourse on Colonialism, an essay describing the strife between the colonizers and the colonized. His works have been translated into many languages. ...more

Age: Died at 95 (1913-2008)

Birthplace: Basse-Pointe, Martinique

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#19 on The Best French Language Poets of All Time

Alexandre Soumet was a French poet. ...more

Age: Died at 57 (1788-1845)

Birthplace: France