French Renaissance in the context of "French Renaissance literature"

France, officially the French Republic, is a country primarily located in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zone in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north; Germany to the northeast; Switzerland to the east; Italy and Monaco to the southeast; Andorra and Spain to the south; and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its 18 integral regions—five of which are overseas—span a combined area of 632,702 km (244,288 sq mi) and have an estimated total population of over 68.6 million as of January 2025. France is a semi-presidential republic. Its capital, largest city and main cultural and economic centre is Paris.

Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture. In the Early Middle Ages, the Franks formed the kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia evolving into the Kingdom of France. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralised feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War. In the 16th century French culture flourished during the French Renaissance, and a French colonial empire emerged. Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.

Francis I (French: François I; Middle French: Françoys; 12 September 1494 – 31 March 1547) was King of France from 1515 until his death in 1547. He was the son of Charles, Count of Angoulême, and Louise of Savoy. He succeeded his first cousin once removed and father-in-law Louis XII, who died without a legitimate son.

A prodigious patron of the arts, Francis promoted the emergent French Renaissance by attracting many Italian artists to work for him, including Leonardo da Vinci, who brought the Mona Lisa, which Francis had acquired. Francis's reign saw important cultural changes with the growth of central power in France, the spread of humanism and Protestantism, and the beginning of French exploration of the New World. Jacques Cartier and others claimed lands in the Americas for France and paved the way for the expansion of the first French colonial empire.

The first written records for the history of France appeared in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Greek writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, Aquitani and Belgae. Over the first millennium BC the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul in the late 2nd century BC, and legions under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC. A Gallo-Roman culture emerged, and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman Empire. In the later stages of the empire, Gaul was subject to barbarian raids and migration. The Frankish king Clovis I united most of Gaul in the late 5th century. Frankish power reached its fullest extent under Charlemagne. The medieval Kingdom of France emerged from the western part of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, known as West Francia, and achieved increasing prominence under the rule of the House of Capet, founded in 987.

A succession crisis in 1328 led to the Hundred Years' War between the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet. The war began in 1337 following Philip VI's attempt to seize the Duchy of Aquitaine from its hereditary holder Edward III of England, the Plantagenet claimant to the French throne. A notable figure of the war was Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who led forces against the English, establishing herself as a national heroine. The war ended with a Valois victory in 1453, strengthening French nationalism and increasing the power and reach of the French monarchy. During the Ancien Régime over the next centuries, France transformed into a centralized absolute monarchy through the Renaissance and Reformation. At the height of the French Wars of Religion, France became embroiled in another succession crisis, as the last Valois king, Henry III, fought against factions of the House of Bourbon and House of Guise. Henry, the Bourbon King of Navarre, won and established the Bourbon dynasty. A burgeoning worldwide colonial empire was established in the 16th century.

Old French (franceis, françois, romanz; French: ancien français [ɑ̃sjɛ̃ fʁɑ̃sɛ]) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th and mid-14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a group of Romance dialects, mutually intelligible yet diverse. These dialects came to be collectively known as the langues d'oïl, contrasting with the langues d'oc, the emerging Occitano-Romance languages of Occitania, now Southern France.

The mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of Middle French, the language of the French Renaissance in the Île-de-France region; this dialect was a predecessor to Modern French. Other dialects of Old French evolved themselves into modern forms (Poitevin-Saintongeais, Gallo, Norman, Picard, Walloon, etc.), each with its linguistic features and history.

Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne (/mɒnˈteɪn/ mon-TAYN; French: [miʃɛl ekɛm də mɔ̃tɛɲ]; Middle French: [miˈʃɛl ejˈkɛm də mõnˈtaɲə]; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), commonly known as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularising the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight. Montaigne had a direct influence on numerous writers of Western literature; his Essais contain some of the most influential essays ever written.

During his lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style, rather than as an innovation; moreover, his declaration that "I am myself the matter of my book" was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne came to be recognised as embodying the spirit of critical thought and open inquiry that began to emerge around that time. He is best known for his sceptical remark, "Que sçay-je ?" ("What do I know?", in Middle French; "Que sais-je ?" in modern French).

Limoges enamel has been produced at Limoges, in south-western France, over several centuries up to the present. There are two periods when it was of European importance. From the 12th century to 1370 there was a large industry producing metal objects decorated in enamel using the champlevé technique, of which most of the survivals (estimated at around 7,500 pieces), and probably most of the original production, are religious objects such as reliquaries.

After a gap of a century, the industry revived in the late 15th century, now specializing in the technique of painted enamel, and within a few decades making rather more secular than religious pieces. In the French Renaissance it was the leading centre, with several dynastic workshops, who often signed or punchmarked their work. Luxury pieces such as plates, plaques and ewers were painted with sophisticated Mannerist decoration of pictorial figure scenes, which on vessels were surrounded by elaborate borders.

In the early modern period, from the Renaissance (c. 1500–1550) to the Revolution (1789–1804), the Kingdom of France was a monarchy ruled by the House of Bourbon (a Capetian cadet branch). This corresponds to the so-called Ancien Régime ("old rule"). The territory of France during this period increased until it included essentially the extent of the modern country, and it also included the territories of the first French colonial empire overseas.

The period is dominated by the figure of the "Sun King", Louis XIV (his reign of 1643–1715 being one of the longest in history), who managed to eliminate the remnants of medieval feudalism and established a centralized state under an absolute monarch, a system that would endure until the French Revolution and beyond.

The Northern Renaissance was the Renaissance that occurred in Europe north of the Alps, developing later than the Italian Renaissance, and in most respects only beginning in the last years of the 15th century. It took different forms in the various countries involved, and the German, French, English, Low Countries and Polish Renaissances often had different characteristics.

Early Netherlandish painting, especially its later phases, is often classified as part of the Northern Renaissance. Rapidly expanding trade and commerce and a new class of rich merchant patrons in then Burgundian cities like Bruges in the 15th century and Antwerp in the 16th increased cultural exchange between Italy and the Low Countries; however in art, and especially architecture, late Gothic influences remained present until the arrival of Baroque even as painters increasingly drew on Italian models.