(More or Less) Basic French Poetry Quiz

Answer: Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (Napoléon III)

Victor Hugo was a deputy of the 2nd Republic in 1848. He supported the president Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. When the latter nominated himself "emperor" (he became Napoleon III), Hugo didn't appreciate this change of regime (which wasn't very democratic...). He went to live in exile and began his campaign against the emperor.
His collection of poems "Les Châtiments" (the punishments), which targeted the 2nd Empire, was written during his exile.

Answer: blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone.

"Les sanglots longs / des violons / de l'automne / blessent mon coeur / d'une langueur / monotone." This is the first stanza of the poem "Chanson d'automne" from "Poèmes saturniens", written by Paul Verlaine (19th century).
I suppose you have immediately recognized the code sentence used during WWII, to inform the Resistance of the imminence of the Normandy landings ("Débarquement") and the beginning of the operations.

Answer: Victor Hugo

"Demain dès l'aube", from "Les contemplations", was written by Victor Hugo on the third of September 1847, the day before the fourth anniversary of the death of his daughter Léopoldine. She drowned in the Seine, in Normandy, along with her husband and two other relatives, during a journey on their little boat. This death, which occurred just a few months after Léopoldine's marriage (and she was only 19), had a great impact on the personality and works of Victor Hugo.

Apollinaire is a 20th century poet. He is most famous for his calligrams.
Laforgue and Rimbaud lived during the 19th century. Both died young and were disappointed by life; some of their poetic theories were close.

Answer: fable

Jean de La Fontaine is indeed most famous for his "Fables" (and we can say that the most famous fables are La Fontaine's). I hope you weren't tricked by "apologue" : La Fontaine's fables are apologues, but they are also poems whereas an apologue can be a novel.
A fable is a (short) poem, not always with rhymes. It is a simple story with a moral, often given at the end. The characters are simple and impersonate a rank in society, a job, a personality...
La Fontaine often used this mean to criticize King Louis XIV's politics or the French society.

Answer: True

Charles Baudelaire translated works by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, like his "Extraordinary Stories" and "New Extraordinary Stories". His translations are still the ones read today.

Answer: sonnet

A sonnet is a poem with 2 quatrains (stanza with 4 verse) and 2 tercets (stanza with 3 verse) and a specific arrangement of rhymes.
Ronsard wrote "Sonnets pour Hélène", "Amours de Marie" (loves of Marie) and "Amours de Cassandre".
Ronsard was a chief of the literary movement "La Pléïade". Their poetry, like most of the Renaissance's, was lyric (poetry of the feelings, mainly love). The following literary movement, classicism, was totally opposed to this, and the lyric poetry disappeared for a while before being later rediscovered by the Romantics.

Answer: Poésie de la Résistance (Resistance poetry)

All these poems were written during or after World War II, as a reaction to the Nazi regime and its wrongdoing (like summary executions)...

"La rose et le réséda", by Louis Aragon (1944)
"Strophes pour se souvenir", by Louis Aragon (1954)
"Les fusillés de Châteaubriant", by René-Guy Cadou (1946)
"Liberté", by Paul Eluard (1942)

The "everyday poetry" (poésie du quotidien) is a movement of the 20th century. Thanks to poetry, everyday and normal objects (like bread) are transformed into extraordinary things.
"Preciousness" (préciosité) is a 17th century movement (not only poetic; it also included the way of life...) with mostly rich and high-ranked women. They not only wrote poems, but also talked in a very special way (which would sound incredibly snobbish nowadays !) to be distinct from the "People". They were very learned and cultured, and often met in "salons" to discuss.
The symbolist poets (19th century) thought that they had to decode the world, find correspondences between things, sounds, colors, etc. in order to reach another, better world, thanks to poetry. Their poetry is very hermetic and the authors thought they were like gods, creating a new world.

Answer: He was the first to write about evil and "dirty" things

Indeed, the poetic conventions forbade to write poems about death, corpses, lust, homosexuality between women... but Charles Baudelaire wrote about all these and even more! His most famous collection of poems is called "Les fleurs du mal" (The flowers of evil). Imagine the stir it caused in society when it came out! But, since there wasn't a taboo anymore, many poets followed suit.

He didn't invent a new form of poem, and his poetry wasn't only aesthetic, although some of it was. On the contrary, he was a precursor to the symbolists and believed (maybe even invented) the Correspondence theory (poets can reach a new world thanks to poetry). However, the "poetry is only aesthetic" theory is that of Parnasse (19th century, with Th. Gautier, etc): they thought poems only had to be beautiful, with nice and beautiful references and words.

Answer: spleen

The spleen is a boredom of existence, a weariness...
Baudelaire, Laforgue, Rimbaud, etc. were among the most affected poets. Some of their poems describe their state of mind: a cage, rain, dirt, rats, a black world, illness...

Answer: XVIIIe (18th century)

The eighteenth century is most renown for its works and progress in politics, philosophy, science... That's why it's called "Enlightenment" ("siècle des Lumières" in French). Since poetry is not very useful to prove, demonstrate, or explain things, authors preferred other literary means (essays and apologues mostly) to explain and expose their ideas. Hence poetry was scarcely used and didn't change.

However, apart from the 18th century, poetry was always present. The 19Xth and 20th are the richest in styles : romantism, Parnasse, symbolism, surrealism, everyday poetry, Resistance poetry, and all the other poems, calligrams, works for children, and much more.