Protestant literature in the 20th century

Pierre Loti (1850–1923) pursued simultaneously a career as both novelist and naval officer, his attachment to the sea and to travel inspiring a great number of his novels.

André Gide (1869–1951) was one of the major literary figures of the first half of the twentieth century and became for the youth of the interwar years a veritable maître à penser.

Jean Schlumberger (1877–1968), great-grandson of François Guizot, founded the Nouvelle Revue Française together with Gide.

He left behind several works deeply marked by Calvinist austerity.

Jacques Chardonne (1884–1968), André Chamson (1900–1983), and Jean-Pierre Chabrol (1925–2001), each in a different register, were passionate storytellers inspired above all, in the case of the latter two, by the turbulent history of the Protestant Cévennes.

Roland Barthes (1915–1980), critic and semiologist, exercised a considerable influence in the fields of intellectual reflection and literary criticism.

Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) was one of the great French philosophers of the twentieth century. He sought to respond to reality as a Christian thinker and proposed an ethic engaged with history.”