Literature databases

Corpus of French-speaking black African literature

This corpus brings together more than 11,000 texts from different literary genres: novels, fables, songs and riddles, myths and legends, poems… from all countries and ethnic groups. The texts go from the end of the 18th century until independence (1960) and are in French and vernacular.

Corpus of Francophone Literature from the Indian Ocean

This corpus makes available, as completely as possible, all of the written and oral French-speaking literature of the Indian Ocean, from its origins (18th century) to Independence (1960): this database thus includes several thousand works produced in the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius or Reunion Island, among others.

Corpus of medieval literature

This database of medieval literature is the largest collection of medieval texts online with more than 900 complete works in langue d’oïl (narrative works of fiction, songs of gesture, poetry, religious and secular theatre).

Frantext – base textuelle

Frantext brings together more than 5,116 references ranging from the 10th to the 21st centuries. This site allows you to carry out more or less complex searches: find an exact quotation and its author, search for the occurrences of a term in a work or find the first use of a word in French literature!

Grand Corpus of French grammars (14th – 17th centuries)

This site brings together in a single database almost all the French grammars published from the 14th to the 17th century.
Each grammar is presented both in typed version, identical to the original, and in facsimile.

Cahiers de lexicologie

Les Cahiers de lexicologie, an international review of lexicology and lexicography, is interested in the lexicon in its relationship with the other components of the language (syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, discourse, etc.): find all the articles in full text from 2009!

Grand orpus of dictionaries from the 9th to the 20th century

Did you know that before designating moral or physical embarrassment, “embarrassment” was an instrument of torture? The history of the French language will soon have no more secrets for you with this database which allows you, by searching in several dictionaries written between the 16th century and the 20th century, to learn more about its evolution!

Le Grand Robert

The largest current dictionary of the French language is online: enough to understand everything in French thanks to the detailed articles! In each article, the dictionary reviews the history of words and their use in the French language. Le Grand Robert is also many synonyms to enrich its discourse.

Le Petit Robert

What does “abstract” mean? How to conjugate the verb to believe in the imperfect subjunctive? Le Petit Robert has 300,000 definitions, 40,000 proper names, but also 150,000 synonyms, 75,000 etymologies and 35,000 citations. In short, everything to be unbeatable on the French language and its history!

Klapp-Online 

Everyone will find in the “Klapp” everything (or almost everything) that has been published on French literature -and French-speaking Canada, Africa, Madagascar, Louisiana-, from the Life of Saint Alexis to Laurent Gaudé .. This bibliography of literary history initiated in 1956 by Otto Klapp is a must.

Mascarille

Mascarille is a knowledge base devoted to the theatre: you will find there in particular the bibliography of many authors of past and contemporary theatres, as well as a review of works published on the theatre.

Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive (1902-2014)

This database brings together the archives of this journal from its beginnings in 1902 until 2014: the archives are presented in the form of digitized pages but full-text search is also possible in order to easily find the reviews written on a given author.

Ulrich’s Web

With Ulrich’s Web, you can have a state of the art of all the reviews published in literature in France and abroad since their date of publication. Many journals freely available on the Internet are also listed.

OpenEdition

OpenEdition is a platform in the humanities and social sciences which offers several thousand articles from journals and ebooks on literary history and its criticism, in France and around the world.

Cairn

Cairn is a platform in the humanities and social sciences with an important corpus in Literature and linguistics. Many ebooks, journal articles and Que Sais-je are available to help you with your revisions or review key concepts.

Etudes de littérature des XXe et XXIe siècles

The collection of Literature Studies of the 20th and 21st centuries publishes theses and essays devoted to an author, a literary movement, a literary question.

Cahiers Mérimée

This magazine, open to various orientations and disciplines, was designed with the aim of making known the work of Mérimée in its extraordinary cultural plurality.

Encyclopaedia Universalis

Thousands of notices to become unbeatable on many authors and their productions, in France and around the world!