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This dissertation examines the symphony in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France by way of individual chapters on the period's seven most influential and frequently performed works: Camille Saint-Saens's Third Symphony (1885-86), Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor (1887-88), Edouard Lalo's Symphony in G minor (1886), Vincent d'Indy's Symphonie sur un chant montagnard franrcais (1886) and Second Symphony (1902-03), Ernest Chausson's Symphony in B-flat (1890), and Paul Dukas's Symphony in C (1896). Beethoven established the primary paradigm for these works in his Third, Fifth; and Ninth Symphonies, and the principal historical issue I address is how French composers reconciled this paradigm with their own aesthetic priorities within the musical and cultural climate of fin-de-siecle France. / Previous critics have viewed this repertoire primarily with limited structuralist methodologies. The results have often been unhappy: all of these symphonies are in some ways formally idiosyncratic and individual, and their non-conforming aspects have tended to puzzle or disappoint. My study draws on recent methods developed by Warren Darcy, Scott Burnham, and others that emphasize the dynamic and teleological qualities of musical form. This more supple approach allows a fuller appreciation of the subtle and sophisticated ways in which individual works unfold formally, and the spectrum of procedures French composers employed. / My study demonstrates that the factors shaping the French symphony in this period included imperatives of progress as well as the popularity of the symphonic poem. Some of the earlier symphonists covered in this study also felt the need to confront Wagner's influential theoretical writings: mid -century he had famously proclaimed the death of the symphony. As many writers have argued, the archetypal heroic "plot" that Beethoven's symphonies express embodies the subject-laden values---notions of individual freedom and faith in the self---that prevailed in his time. Different inflections of this plot by French symphonists, I argue, reflect the variegated ways fin-de-siec1e French culture had received these values.

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