French Subject Guide

Watch out! In MLA Style, titles in English are written out in "title case" - every word is capitalized (except for small words like "a", "an", "the", etc.). However, titles in French are written in "sentence case" - only the first word and any proper nouns are capitalized. 

English-language titles:

Book: French Cultural Studies: Criticism at the Crossroads

Article: "Politics at Play: Locating Human Rights, Refugees and Grassroots Humanitarianism in the Calais Jungle."

French-language titles:

Book: Dans la peau d'un migrant: de Peshawar à Calais, enquete sur le "cinquième monde"

Article: "De l’utilisation de Facebook à des fins de mobilisation par le groupe Sauvons Calais."

Book

For a book, write the author's last name, a comma, and then the author's first name (and middle initial if it is available), followed by a period. Then write the full title of the book in italics, followed by a period. Next write the name of the publisher/press, followed by a comma and the year of publication. All of this info can usually be found at the front of the book.

O' Riley, Michael F. Postcolonial Haunting and Victimization: Assia Djebar's New Novels. Peter Lang, 2007.

Chapter in a Book

For a book chapter or other segment of a larger book, you need to provide the information for the specific chapter you cited. First, write the chapter author's last name, a comma, and then their first name (and middle initial if it is available), followed by a period. Then write the full title of the chapter and put quotation marks around it. Next, the full title of the book in which the chapter appears. Then say "Edited by" and include the names of the editor(s). If there are more than two, just include the first editor and then "et al." After the year of publication, write a comma and then the pages of the chapter.

Lionnet, Françoise. "Ces voix au fil de soi(e): le détour du poétique." Assia Djebar: littérature et transmission. Edited by Wolfgang Asholt et al., Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010, pp. 23-36.

Journal Article

A journal article citation must include both the article title and the journal title. First, write the author's last name, a comma, and then the author's first name (and initial if it is available), followed by a period. Then write the full title of the article and put quotation marks around it. If the title includes a book or similar, be sure to italicize just that part. Next, the full title of the journal in which the article appears, a comma, and then the volume (vol.) and issue (no.) information, if you have it, followed by the page numbers.

​Zimra, Clarisse. "Disorienting the Subject in Djebar's L'amour, la fantasia." Yale French Studies, vol. 87, 1995, pp. 149-70.

Granatstein, Jack L. "Le Québec et le plébiscite de 1942 sur la conscription." Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, vol. 27, no. 1, 1973, pp. 43-62.

Newspaper Article

A newspaper article citation is similar to a journal article (above) but if it is available you should include the specific day and month of publication. If you accessed the article online, include the full URL. It is helpful to include the date you accessed the article.

Rochebouet, Béatrice de. "Un film inédit sur Saint-Exupéry aux enchères". Le Figaro, 30 Mar. 2010. http://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/2010/03/30/03004-20100330ARTFIG00454-un-film-inedit-sur-saint-exupery-aux-encheres-.php. Accessed 4 Jan 2019.

Poem in an Anthology

The examples here show you how to format (1) a poem from an anthology that includes many authors and/or is edited by someone other than the author, and (2) a poem from an anthology of poems by a single author.

Saïd, Amina. "La terre." The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry, edited by Mary Ann Caws, Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 602-04.

Césaire, Aimé. "Petite chanson pour traverser une grande rivière." Ferrements: poèmes, Éditions du Seuil, 1960, p. 88.

Author name mentioned in sentence:

Said tient compte également des perspectives en contrepoint fournies non seulement par les historiens mais aussi par des "post independence Algerian novelists [...] sociologists, political scientists" (178).

Corresponding Works Cited Entry:

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. Knopf, 1993.

Author name mentioned in parentheses:

Durant les dernières décennies, plusieurs écrivains algériens se sont retournés vers le passé colonial et y ont répondu par le sentiment du martyre et la revendication constante "de l'image du sujet-victime" (O'Riley 120).

Corresponding Works Cited Entry:

O' Riley, Michael E. Postcolonial Haunting and Victimization: Assia Djebar's New Novels. Peter Lang, 2007.

Direct quote in middle of sentence:

Selon Debra Kelly, Djebar a vu en Camus "a mediating figure" (220), bien que cette médiation ait échoué.

Corresponding Works Cited Entry:

Kelly, Debra. "An Unfinished Death: The Legacy of Albert Camus and the Work of Textual Memory in Contemporary European and Algerian Literatures." International Journal of Francophone Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, 2007, pp. 217-35.

Two authors cited in same sentence:

Le 27 avril 1942, la veille de l'arrivée de Saint-Exupéry à Montréal, les résultats du plébiscite tombent: 63,7% pour le oui au Canada mais un écrasant 72,9% pour le non au Québec (Granatstein 60; Gingras 121).

Corresponding Works Cited Entries:

Gingras, Pierre-Philippe. Le devoir. Libre Expression, 1985.

Granatstein, Jack L. "Le Québec et le plébiscite de 1942 sur la conscription." Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, vol. 27, no. 1, 1973, pp. 43-62.

When an author has more than one source in your bibliography:

Include some part of the title of the specific work you are citing:

Selon Schiff de la Bruyère, cette explication ne tient pas, l'influence de de Gaulle étant négligeable dans la capitale des États-Unis en 1942 (Saint-Exupéry 406).

Corresponding Works Cited Entries: 

Schiff de La Bruyère, Stacy. Saint-Exupéry à contre-courant. Translated by Françoise Bouillot and Dominique Lablanche, Albin Michel, 1994.

------"A Grounded Soul: Saint-Exupéry in New York." New York Times Book Review, 30 May 1993, pp. 1-6.