Medieval French literature

French Language and Literature
Authors • Lit categories

French literary history Medieval 16th century • 17th century 18th century • 19th century 20th century • Contemporary

Literature by country France • Quebec Postcolonial • Haiti Franco-American

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Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, Medieval literature written in Oïl languages (particularly Old French and early Middle French) during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century.

The material and cultural conditions in France and associated territories around the year 1100 unleashed what the scholar Charles Homer Haskins termed the "Renaissance of the 12th century" and, for over the next hundred years, writers, "jongleurs", "clercs" and poets produced a profusion of remarkable creative works in all genres. Although the dynastic struggles of the Hundred Years' War and the Black Death pandemic of the fourteenth century in many ways curtailed this creative production, the fifteenth century laid the groundwork for the French Renaissance.