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This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "French Literature" to "Frost, William"Author: VariousRelease date: October 12, 2011 [eBook #37736]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "French Literature" to "Frost, William"
Author: Various
Author: Various
Release date: October 12, 2011 [eBook #37736]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "FRENCH LITERATURE" TO "FROST, WILLIAM" ***
Articles in This Slice
FRENCH LITERATURE.Origins.—The history of French literature in the proper sense of the term can hardly be said to extend farther back than the 11th century. The actual manuscripts which we possess are seldom of older date than the century subsequent to this. But there is no doubt that by the end at least of the 11th century the French language, as a completely organized medium of literary expression, was in full, varied and constant use. For many centuries previous to this, literature had been composed in France, or by natives of that country, using the term France in its full modern acceptation; but until the 9th century, if not later, the written language of France, so far as we know, was Latin; and despite the practice of not a few literary historians, it does not seem reasonable to notice Latin writings in a history of French literature. Such a history properly busies itself only with the monuments of French itself from the time when the so-called Lingua Romana Rusticaassumed a sufficiently independent form to deserve to be called a new language. This time it is indeed impossible exactly to determine, and the period at which literary compositions, as distinguished from mere conversation, began to employ the new tongue is entirely unknown. As early as the 7th century the Lingua Romana, as distinguished from Latin and from Teutonic dialects, is mentioned, and this Lingua Romana would be of necessity used for purposes of clerical admonition, especially in the country districts, though we need not suppose that such addresses had a very literary character. On the other hand, the mention, at early dates, of certaincantilenaeor songs composed in the vulgar language has served for basis to a superstructure of much ingenious argument with regard to the highly interesting problem of the origin of theChansons de Geste, the earliest and one of the greatest literary developments of northern French. It is sufficient in this article, where speculation would be out of place, to mention that only two suchcantilenaeactually exist, and that neither is French. One of the 9th century, the “Lay of Saucourt,” is in a Teutonic dialect; the other, the “Song of St Faron,” is of the 7th century, but exists only in Latin prose, the construction and style of which present traces of translationEarly monuments.from a poetical and vernacular original. As far as facts go, the most ancient monuments of the written French language consist of a few documents of very various character, ranging in date from the 9th to the 11th century. The oldest gives us the oaths interchanged at Strassburg in 842 between Charles the Bald and Louis the German. The next probably in date and the first in literary merit is a short song celebrating the martyrdom of St Eulalia, which may be as old as the end of the 9th century, and is certainly not younger than the beginning of the 10th. Another, theLife of St Leger, in 240 octosyllabic lines, is dated by conjecture about 975. The discussion indeed of these short and fragmentary pieces is of more philological than literary interest, and belongs rather to the head of French language. They are, however, evidence of the progress which, continuing for at least four centuries, built up a literary instrument out of the decomposed and reconstructed Latin of the Roman conquerors, blended with a certain limited amount of contributions from the Celtic and Iberian dialects of the original inhabitants, the Teutonic speech of the Franks, and the Oriental tongue of the Moors who pressed upwards from Spain. But all these foreign elements bear a very small proportion to the element of Latin; and as Latin furnished the greater part of the vocabulary and the grammar, so did it also furnish the principal models and helps to literary composition. The earliest French versification is evidently inherited from that of the Latin hymns of the church, and for a certain time Latin originals were followed in the choice of literary forms. But by the 11th century it is tolerably certain that dramatic attempts were already being made in the vernacular, that lyric poetry was largely cultivated, that laws, charters, and such-like documents were written, and that commentators and translators busied themselves with religious subjects and texts. The most important of the extant documents, outside of the epics presently to be noticed, has ofEpic poetry.late been held to be theLife of Saint Alexis, a poem of 625 decasyllabic lines, arranged in five-line stanzas, each of one assonance or vowel-rhyme, which may be as early as 1050. But the most important development of the 11th century, and the one of which we are most certain, is that of which we have evidence remaining in the famousChanson de Roland, discovered in a manuscript at Oxford and first published in 1837. This poem represents the first and greatest development of French literature, the chansons de geste (this form is now preferred to that with the pluralgestes). The origin of these poems has been hotly debated, and it is only recently that the importance which they really possess has been accorded to them,—a fact the less remarkable in that, until about 1820, the epics of ancient France were unknown, or known only through late and disfigured prose versions. Whether they originated in the north or the south is a question on which there have been more than one or two revolutions of opinion, and will probably be others still, but which need not be dealt with here. We possess in round numbers a hundred of these chansons. Three only of them are in Provençal. Two of these,FerabrasandBetonnet d’Hanstonne, are obviously adaptations of French originals. The third,Girartz de Rossilho(Gerard de Roussillon), is undoubtedly Provençal, and is a work of great merit and originality, but its dialect is strongly tinged with the characteristics of the Langue d’Oïl, and its author seems to have been a native of the debatable land between the two districts. To suppose under these circumstances that the Provençal originals of the hundred others have perished seems gratuitous. It is sufficient to say that the chanson de geste, as it is now extant, is the almost exclusive property of northern France. Nor is there much authority for a supposition that the early French poets merely versified with amplifications the stories of chroniclers. On the contrary, chroniclers draw largely from the chansons, and the question of priority betweenRolandand the pseudo-Turpin, though a hard one to determine, seems to resolve itself in favour of the former. At most we may suppose, with much probability, that personal and family tradition gave a nucleus for at least the earliest.
Chansons de Geste.—Early French narrative poetry was divided by one of its own writers, Jean Bodel, under three heads—poems relating to French history, poems relating to ancient history, and poems of the Arthurian cycleChansons de Geste.(Matières de France, de Bretagne, et de Rome). To the first only is the term chansons de geste in strictness applicable. The definition of it goes partly by form and partly by matter. A chanson de geste must be written in verses either of ten or twelve syllables, the former being the earlier. These verses have a regular caesura, which, like the end of a line, carries with it the licence of a mutee. The lines are arranged, not in couplets or in stanzas of equal length, but inlaissesortirades, consisting of any number of lines from half a dozen to some hundreds. These are, in the earlier examples assonanced,—that is to say, the vowel sound of the last syllables is identical, but the consonants need not agree. Thus, for instance, the final words of a tirade ofAmis et Amiles(Il. 199-206) areerbe,nouvelle,selles,nouvelles,traversent,arrestent,guerre,cortége. Sometimes the tirade is completed by a shorter line, and the later chansons are regularly rhymed. As to the subject, a chanson de geste must be concerned with some event which is, or is supposed to be, historical and French. The tendency of the trouvères was constantly to affiliate their heroes on a particulargesteor family. The three chiefgestesare those of Charlemagne himself, of Doon de Mayence, and of Garin de Monglane; but there are not a few chansons, notably those concerning the Lorrainers, and the remarkable series sometimes called theChevalier au Cygne, and dealing with the crusades, which lie outside these groups. By this joint definition of form and subject the chansons de geste are separated from the romances of antiquity, from the romances of the Round Table, which are written in octosyllabic couplets, and from theromans d’aventuresor later fictitious tales, some of which, such asBrun de la Montaigne, are written in pure chanson form.
Not the least remarkable point about the chansons de geste is their vast extent. Their number, according to the strictest definition, exceeds 100, and the length of each chanson varies from 1000 lines, or thereabouts, to 20,000 orVolume and changes of early epics.even 30,000. The entire mass, including, it may be supposed, the various versions and extensions of each chanson, is said to amount to between two and three million lines; and when, under the second empire, the publication of the whole Carolingian cycle was projected, it was estimated, taking the earliest versions alone, at over 300,000. The successive developments of the chansons de geste may be illustrated by the fortunes ofHuon de Bordeaux, one of the most lively, varied and romantic of the older epics, and one which is interesting from the use made of it by Shakespeare, Wieland and Weber. In the oldest form now extant, though even this is probably not the original,Huonconsists of over 10,000 lines. A subsequent version contains 4000 more; and lastly, in the 14th century, a later poet has amplified the legend to the extent of 30,000 lines.When this point had been reached,Huonbegan to be turned into prose, was with many of his fellows published and republished during the 15th and subsequent centuries, and retains, in the form of a roughly printed chap-book, the favour of the country districts of France to the present day. It is not, however, in the later versions that the special characteristics of the chansons de geste are to be looked for. Of those which we possess, one and one only, theChanson de Roland, belongs in its present form to the 11th century. Their date of production extends, speaking roughly, from the 11th to the 14th century, their palmy days were the 11th and the 12th. After this latter period the Arthurian romances, with more complex attractions, became their rivals, and induced their authors to make great changes in their style and subject. But for a time they reigned supreme, and no better instance of their popularity can be given than the fact that manuscripts of them exist, not merely in every French dialect, but in many cases in a strange macaronic jargon of mingled French and Italian. Two classes of persons were concerned in them. There was thetrouvèrewho composed them, and thejongleurwho carried them about in manuscript or in his memory from castle to castle and sang them, intermixing frequent appeals to his auditory for silence, declarations of the novelty and the strict copyright character of the chanson, revilings of rival minstrels, and frequently requests for money in plain words. Not a few of the manuscripts which we now possess appear to have been actually used by the jongleur. But the names of the authors, the trouvères who actually composed them, are in very few cases known, those of copyists, continuators, and mere possessors of manuscripts having been often mistaken for them.
The moral and poetical peculiarities of the older and more authentic of these chansons are strongly marked, though perhaps not quite so strongly as some of their encomiasts have contended, and as may appear to a reader of the most famous of them, theChanson de Roland, alone. In that poem, indeed, war and religion are the sole motives employed, and its motto might be two lines from another of the finest chansons (Aliscans, 161-162):—
“Dist à Bertran: ‘N’avons mais nul losir,Tant ke vivons alons paiens ferir.’”
“Dist à Bertran: ‘N’avons mais nul losir,
Tant ke vivons alons paiens ferir.’”
In Roland there is no love-making whatever, and the hero’s betrothed “la belle Aude” appears only in a casual gibe of her brother Oliver, and in the incident of her sudden death at the news of Roland’s fall. M. Léon Gautier and others have drawn the conclusion that this stern and masculine character was a feature of all the older chansons, and that imitation of the Arthurian romance is the cause of its disappearance. This seems rather a hasty inference. InAmis et Amiles, admittedly a poem of old date, the parts of Bellicent and Lubias are prominent, and the former is demonstrative enough. InAliscansthe part of the Countess Guibourc is both prominent and heroic, and is seconded by that of Queen Blancheflor and her daughter Aelis. We might also mention Oriabel inJourdans de Blaiviesand others. But it may be admitted that the sex which fights and counsels plays the principal part, that love adventures are not introduced at any great length, and that the lady usually spares her knight the trouble and possible indignities of a long wooing. The characters of a chanson of the older style are somewhat uniform. There is the hero who is unjustly suspected of guilt or sore beset by Saracens, the heroine who falls in love with him, the traitor who accuses him or delays help, who is almost always of the lineage of Ganelon, and whose ways form a very curious study. There are friendly paladins and subordinate traitors; there is Charlemagne (who bears throughout the marks of the epic king common to Arthur and Agamemnon, but is not in the earlier chanson the incapable and venal dotard which he becomes in the later), and with Charlemagne generally the duke Naimes of Bavaria, the one figure who is invariably wise, brave, loyal and generous. In a few chansons there is to be added to these a very interesting class of personages who, though of low birth or condition, yet rescue the high-born knights from their enemies. Such are Rainoart inAliscans, Gautier inGaydon, Robastre inGaufrey, Varocher inMacaire. These subjects, uniform rather than monotonous, are handled with great uniformity if not monotony of style. There are constant repetitions, and it sometimes seems, and may sometimes be the case, that the text is a mere cento of different and repeated versions. But the verse is generally harmonious and often stately. The recurrent assonances of the endless tirade soon impress the ear with a grateful music, and occasionally, and far more frequently than might be thought, passages of high poetry, such as the magnificentGranz doel por la mort de Rollant, appear to diversify the course of the story. The most remarkable of the chansons areRoland,Aliscans,Gerard de Roussillon,Amis et Amiles,Raoul de Cambrai,Garin le Loherainand its sequelLes quatre Fils Aymon,Les Saisnes(recounting the war of Charlemagne with Witekind), and lastly,Le Chevalier au Cygne, which is not a single poem but a series, dealing with the earlier crusades. The most remarkablegroupis that centring round William of Orange, the historical or half-historical defender of the south of France against Mahommedan invasion. Almost all the chansons of this group, from the long-knownAliscansto the recently printedChançon de Willame, are distinguished by an unwontedpersonalityof interest, as well as by an intensified dose of the rugged and martial poetry which pervades the whole class. It is noteworthy that one chanson and one only,Floovant, deals with Merovingian times. But the chronology, geography, and historic facts of nearly all are, it is hardly necessary to say, mainly arbitrary.
Arthurian Romances.—The second class of early French epics consists of the Arthurian cycle, theMatière de Bretagne, the earliest known compositions of which are at least a century junior to the earliest chanson de geste, but which soon succeeded the chansons in popular favour, and obtained a vogue both wider and far more enduring. It is not easy to conceive a greater contrast in form, style, subject and sentiment than is presented by the two classes. In both the religious sentiment is prominent, but the religion of the chansons is of the simplest, not to say of the most savage character. To pray to God and to kill his enemies constitutes the whole duty of man. In the romances the mystical element becomes on the contrary prominent, and furnishes, in the Holy Grail, one of the most important features. In the Carlovingian knight the courtesy and clemency which we have learnt to associate with chivalry are almost entirely absent. Thegentix bercontradicts, jeers at, and execrates his sovereign and his fellows with the utmost freedom. He thinks nothing of striking hiscortoise moullierso that the blood runs down hercler vis. If a servant or even an equal offends him, he will throw the offender into the fire, knock his brains out, or set his whiskers ablaze. The Arthurian knight is far more of the modern model in these respects. But his chief difference from his predecessor is undoubtedly in his amorous devotion to his beloved, who, if not morally superior to Bellicent, Floripas, Esclairmonde, and the other Carlovingian heroines, is somewhat less forward. Even in minute details the difference is strongly marked. The romances are in octosyllabic couplets or in prose, and their language is different from that of the chansons, and contains much fewer of the usual epic repetitions and stock phrases. A voluminous controversy has been held respecting the origin of these differences, and of the story or stories which were destined to receive such remarkable attention. Reference must be made to the articleArthurian Legendfor the history of this controversy and for an account of its present state. This state, however, and all subsequent states, are likely to be rather dependent upon opinion than upon actual knowledge. From the point of view of the general historian of literature it may not be improper here to give a caution against the frequent use of the word “proven” in such matters. Very little in regard to early literature, except the literary value of the texts, is ever susceptible ofproof; although things may be made more or lessprobable. What we are at present concerned with, however, is a body of verse and prose composed in the latter part of the 12th century and later. The earliest romances, theSaint Graal, theQuête du Saint Graal,Joseph d’ArimathieandMerlinbear the names of Walter Map and Robert de Borron.Artusand part at least ofLancelot du Lac(the whole of which has been by turns attributed and denied toWalter Map) appear to be due to unknown authors.Tristancame later, and has a stronger mixture of Celtic tradition. At the same time as Walter Map, or a little later, Chrétien (or Chrestien) de Troyes threw the legends of the Round Table into octosyllabic verse of a singularly spirited and picturesque character. The chief poems attributed to him are theChevalier au Lyon(Sir Ewain of Wales), theChevalier à la Charette(one of the episodes ofLancelot),Eric et Enide,TristanandPercivale. These poems, independently of their merit, which is great, had an extensive literary influence. They were translated by the German minnesingers, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strassburg, and others. With the romances already referred to, which are mostly in prose, and which by recent authorities have been put later than the verse tales which used to be postponed to them, Chrétien’s poems complete the early forms of the Arthurian story, and supply the matter of it as it is best known to English readers in Malory’s book. Nor does that book, though far later than the original forms, convey a very false impression of the characteristics of the older romances. Indeed, the Arthurian knight, his character and adventures, are so much better known than the heroes of the Carlovingian chanson that there is less need to dwell upon them. They had, however, as has been already pointed out, great influence upon their rivals, and their comparative fertility of invention, the much larger number of theirdramatis personae, and the greater variety of interests to which they appealed, sufficiently explain their increased popularity. The ordinary attractions of poetry are also more largely present in them than in the chansons; there is more description, more life, and less of the mere chronicle. They have been accused of relaxing morality, and there is perhaps some truth in the charge. But the change is after all one rather of manners than of morals, and what is lost in simplicity is gained in refinement.Doon de Mayenceis a late chanson, andLancelot du Lacis an early romance. But the two beautiful scenes, in the former between Doon and Nicolette, in the latter between Lancelot, Galahault, Guinevere, and the Lady of Malehaut, may be compared as instances of the attitude of the two classes of poets towards the same subject.
Romances of Antiquity.—There is yet a third class of early narrative poems, differing from the two former in subject, but agreeing, sometimes with one sometimes with the other in form. These are the classical romances—theMatière de Rome—which are not much later than those of Charlemagne and Arthur. The chief subjects with which their authors busied themselves were the conquests of Alexander and the siege of Troy, though other classical stories come in. The most remarkable of all is the romance ofAlixandreby Lambert the Short and Alexander of Bernay. It has been said that the excellence of the twelve-syllabled verse used in this romance was the origin of the term alexandrine. The Trojan romances, on the other hand, are chiefly in octosyllabic verse, and the principal poem which treats of them is theRoman de Troieof Benoit de Sainte More. Both this poem andAlixandreare attributed to the last quarter of the 12th century. The authorities consulted for these poems were, as may be supposed, none of the best. Dares Phrygius, Dictys Cretensis, the pseudo-Callisthenes supplied most of them. But the inexhaustible invention of the trouvères themselves was the chief authority consulted. The adventures of Medea, the wanderings of Alexander, the Trojan horse, the story of Thebes, were quite sufficient to spur on to exertion the minds which had been accustomed to spin a chanson of some 10,000 lines out of a casual allusion in some preceding poem. It is needless to say that anachronisms did not disturb them. From first to last the writers of the chansons had not in the least troubled themselves with attention to any such matters. Charlemagne himself had his life and exploits accommodated to the need of every poet who treats of him, and the same is the case with the heroes of antiquity. Indeed, Alexander is made in many respects a prototype of Charlemagne. He is regularly knighted, he has twelve peers, he holds tournaments, he has relations with Arthur, and comes in contact with fairies, he takes flights in the air, dives in the sea and so forth. There is perhaps more avowed imagination in these classical stories than in either of the other divisions of French epic poetry. Some of their authors even confess to the practice of fiction, while the trouvères of the chansons invariably assert the historical character of their facts and personages, and the authors of the Arthurian romances at least start from facts vouched for, partly by national tradition, partly by the authority of religion and the church. The classical romances, however, are important in two different ways. In the first place, they connect the early literature of France, however loosely, and with links of however dubious authenticity, with the great history and literature of the past. They show a certain amount of scholarship in their authors, and in their hearers they show a capacity of taking an interest in subjects which are not merely those directly connected with the village or the tribe. The chansons de geste had shown the creative power and independent character of French literature. There is, at least about the earlier ones, nothing borrowed, traditional or scholarly. They smack of the soil, and they rank France among the very few countries which, in this matter of indigenous growth, have yielded more than folk-songs and fireside tales. The Arthurian romances, less independent in origin, exhibit a wider range of view, a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more extensive command of the sources of poetical and romantic interest. The classical epics superadd the only ingredient necessary to an accomplished literature—that is to say, the knowledge of what has been done by other peoples and other literatures already, and the readiness to take advantage of the materials thus supplied.
Romans d’Aventures.—These are the three earliest developments of French literature on the great scale. They led, however, to a fourth, which, though later in date than all except their latest forms and far more loosely associated as a group, is so closely connected with them by literary and social considerations that it had best be mentioned here. This is theroman d’aventures, a title given to those almost avowedly fictitious poems which connect themselves, mainly and centrally, neither with French history, with the Round Table, nor with the heroes of antiquity. These began to be written in the 13th century, and continued until the prose form of fiction became generally preferred. The later forms of the chansons de geste and the Arthurian poems might indeed be well called romans d’aventures themselves.Hugues Capet, for instance, a chanson in form and class of subject, is certainly one of this latter kind in treatment; and there is a larger class of semi-Arthurian romance, which so to speak branches off from the main trunk. But for convenience sake the definition we have given is preferable. The style and subject of these romans d’aventures are naturally extremely various.Guillaume de Palermedeals with the adventures of a Sicilian prince who is befriended by a were-wolf;Le Roman de l’escoufle, with a heroine whose ring is carried off by a sparrow-hawk (escoufle), like Prince Camaralzaman’s talisman;Guy of Warwick, with one of the most famous of imaginary heroes;Meraugis de Portléguezis a sort of branch or offshoot of the romances of the Round Table;Cléomadès, the work of the trouvère Adenès le Roi, who also rehandled the old chanson subjects ofOgierandBerte aux grans piés, connects itself once more with theArabian Nightsas well as with Chaucer forwards in the introduction of a flying mechanical horse. There is, in short, no possibility of classifying their subjects. The habit of writing in gestes, or of necessarily connecting the new work with an older one, had ceased to be binding, and the instinct of fiction writing was free; yet those romans d’aventures do not rank quite as high in literary importance as the classes which preceded them. This under-valuation arises rather from a lack of originality and distinctness of savour than from any shortcomings in treatment. Their versification, usually octosyllabic, is pleasant enough; but there is not much distinctness of character about them, and their incidents often strike the reader with something of the sameness, but seldom with much of the naïveté, of those of the older poems. Nevertheless some of them attained to a very high popularity, such, for instance, as thePartenopex de Bloisof Denis Pyramus, which has a motive drawn from the story ofCupid and Psycheand the charmingFloire et Blanchefleur, giving the woes of aChristian prince and a Saracen slave-girl. With them may be connected a certain number of early romances and fictions of various dates in prose, none of which can vie in charm withAucassin et Nicolette(13th century), an exquisite literary presentment of medieval sentiment in its most delightful form.
In these classes maybe said to be summed up the literature of feudal chivalry in France. They were all, except perhaps the last, composed by one class of persons, the trouvères, and performed by another, the jongleurs. The latter,General characteristics of early narrative.indeed, sometimes presumed to compose for himself, and was denounced as atroveor batardby the indignant members of the superior caste. They were all originally intended to be performed in thepalais marberinof the baron to an audience of knights and ladies, and, when reading became more common, to be read by such persons. They dealt therefore chiefly, if not exclusively, with the class to whom they were addressed. The bourgeois and the villain, personages of political nonentity at the time of their early composition, come in for far slighter notice, although occasionally in the few curious instances we have mentioned, and others, persons of a class inferior to the seigneur play an important part. The habit of private wars and of insurrection against the sovereign supply the motives of the chanson de geste, the love of gallantry, adventure and foreign travel those of the romances Arthurian and miscellaneous. None of these motives much affected the lower classes, who were, with the early developed temper of the middle- and lower-class Frenchman, already apt to think and speak cynically enough of tournaments, courts, crusades and the other occupations of the nobility. The communal system was springing up, the towns were receiving royal encouragement as a counterpoise to the authority of the nobles. The corruptions and maladministration of the church attracted the satire rather of the citizens and peasantry who suffered by them, than of theSpread of literary taste.nobles who had less to fear and even something to gain. On the other hand, the gradual spread of learning, inaccurate and ill-digested perhaps, but still learning, not only opened up new classes of subjects, but opened them to new classes of persons. The thousands of students who flocked to the schools of Paris were not all princes or nobles. Hence there arose two new classes of literature, the first consisting of the embodiment of learning of one kind or other in the vulgar tongue. The other, one of the most remarkable developments of sportive literature which the world has seen, produced the second indigenous literary growth of which France can boast, namely, the fabliaux, and the almost more remarkable work which is an immense conglomerate of fabliaux, the great beast-epic of the Roman de Renart.
Fabliaux.—There are few literary products which have more originality and at the same time more diversity than the fabliau. The epic and the drama, even when they are independently produced, are similar in their main characteristics all the world over. But there is nothing in previous literature which exactly corresponds to the fabliau. It comes nearest to the Aesopic fable and its eastern origins or parallels. But differs from these in being less allegorical, less obviously moral (though a moral of some sort is usually if not always enforced), and in having a much more direct personal interest. It is in many degrees further removed from the parable, and many degrees nearer to the novel. The story is the first thing, the moral the second, and the latter is never suffered to interfere with the former. These observations apply only to the fabliaux, properly so called, but the term has been used with considerable looseness. The collectors of those interesting pieces, Barbazan, Méon, Le Grand d’Aussy, have included in their collections large numbers of miscellaneous pieces such asdits(rhymed descriptions of various objects, the most famous known author of which was Baudouin de Condé, 13th century), anddébats(discussions between two persons or contrasts of the attributes of two things), sometimes even short romances, farces and mystery plays. Not that the fable proper—the prose classical beast-story of “Aesop”—was neglected. Marie de France—the poetess to be mentioned again for her more strictly poetical work—is the most literary of not a few writers who composed what were often, after the mysterious original poet, namedYsopets. Aesop, Phaedrus, Babrius were translated and imitated in Latin and in the vernacular by this class of writer, and some of the best known of “fablers” date from this time. The fabliau, on the other hand, according to the best definition of it yet achieved, is “the recital, generally comic, of a real or possible incident occurring in ordinary human life.” The comedy, it may be added, is usually of a satiric kind, and occupies itself with every class and rank of men, from the king to the villain. There is no limit to the variety of these lively verse-tales, which are invariably written in eight-syllabled couplets. Now the subject is the misadventure of two Englishmen, whose ignorance of the French language makes them confuse donkey and lamb; now it is the fortunes of an exceedingly foolish knight, who has an amiable and ingenious mother-in-law; now the deserved sufferings of an avaricious or ill-behaved priest; now the bringing of an ungrateful son to a better mind by the wisdom of babes and sucklings. Not a few of theCanterbury Talesare taken directly from fabliaux; indeed, Chaucer, with the possible exception of Prior, is our nearest approach to a fabliau-writer. At the other end of Europe the prose novels of Boccaccio and other Italian tale-tellers are largely based upon fabliaux. But their influence in their own country was the greatest. They were the first expression of the spirit which has since animated the most national and popular developments of French literature. Simple and unpretending as they are in form, the fabliaux announce not merely theCent Nouvelles Nouvellesand theHeptameron,L’Avocat Patelin, andPantagruel, but alsoL’Avareand theRoman comique,Gil BlasandCandide. They indeed do more than merely prophesy the spirit of these great performances—they directly lead to them. The prose-tale and the farce are the direct outcomes of the fabliau, and the prose-tale and the farce once given, the novel and the comedy inevitably follow.
The special period of fabliau composition appears to have been the 12th and 13th centuries. It signifies on the one side the growth of a lighter and more sportive spirit than had yet prevailed, on another the rise in importance ofSocial importance of fabliaux.other and lower orders of men than the priest and the noble, on yet another the consciousness on the part of these lower orders of the defects of the two privileged classes, and of the shortcomings of the system of polity under which these privileged classes enjoyed their privileges. There is, however, in the fabliau proper not so very much of direct satire, this being indeed excluded by the definition given above, and by the thoroughly artistic spirit in which that definition is observed. The fabliaux are so numerous and so various that it is difficult to select any as specially representative. We may, however, mention, both as good examples and as interesting from their subsequent history,Le Vair Palfroi, treated in English by Leigh Hunt and by Peacock;Le Vilain Mire, the original consciously or unconsciously followed inLe Médecin malgré lui;Le Roi d’Angleterre et le jongleur d’Éli;La houce partie;Le Sot Chevalier, an indecorous but extremely amusing story;Les deux bordeors ribaus, a dialogue between two jongleurs of great literary interest, containing allusions to the chansons de geste and romances most in vogue; andLe vilain qui conquist paradis par plait, one of the numerous instances of what has unnecessarily puzzled moderns, the association in medieval times of sincere and unfeigned faith with extremely free handling of its objects. This lightheartedness in other subjects sometimes bubbled over into thefatrasie, an almost pure nonsense-piece, parent of the lateramphigouri.
Roman de Renart.—If the fabliaux are not remarkable for direct satire, that element is supplied in more than compensating quantity by an extraordinary composition which is closely related to them.Le Roman de Renart, orHistory of Reynard the Fox, is a poem, or rather series of poems, which, from the end of the 12th to the middle of the 14th century, served the citizen poets of northern France, not merely as an outlet for literary expression, but also as a vehicle of satirical comment,—now on the general vices and weaknesses of humanity, now on the usual corruptions in church and state, now on the various historicalevents which occupied public attention from time to time. The enormous popularity of the subject is shown by the long vogue which it had, and by the empire which it exercised over generations of writers who differed from each other widely in style and temper. Nothing can be farther from the allegorical erudition, the political diatribes and the sermonizing moralities of the authors ofRenart le Contre-faitthan the sly naïveté of the writers of the earlier branches. Yet these and a long and unknown series of intermediate bards the fox-king pressed into his service, and it is scarcely too much to say that, during the two centuries of his reign, there was hardly a thought in the popular mind which, as it rose to the surface, did not find expression in an addition to the huge cycle ofRenart.
We shall not deal with the controversies which have been raised as to the origin of the poem and its central idea. The latter may have been a travestie of real persons and actual events, or it may (and much more probably) have been an expression of thoughts and experiences which recur in every generation. France, the Netherlands and Germany have contended for the honour of producing Renart; French, Flemish, German and Latin for the honour of first describing him. It is sufficient to say that the spirit of the work seems to be more that of the borderland between France and Flanders than of any other district, and that, wherever the idea may have originally arisen, it was incomparably more fruitful in France than in any other country. The French poems which we possess on the subject amount in all to nearly 100,000 lines, independently of mere variations, but including the different versions ofRenart le Contre-fait. This vast total is divided into four different poems. The most ancient and remarkable is that edited by Méon under the title ofRoman du Renart, and containing, with some additions made by M. Chabaille, 37 branches and about 32,000 lines. It must not, however, be supposed that this total forms a continuous poem like theAeneidorParadise Lost. Part was pretty certainly written by Pierre de Saint-Cloud, but he was not the author of the whole. On the contrary, the separate branches are the work of different authors, hardly any of whom are known, and, but for their community of subject and to some extent of treatment, might be regarded as separate poems. The history of Renart, his victories over Isengrim, the wolf, Bruin, the bear, and his other unfortunate rivals, his family affection, his outwittings of King Noble the Lion and all the rest, are too well known to need fresh description here. It is perhaps in the subsequent poems, though they are far less known and much less amusing, that the hold which the idea of Renart had obtained on the mind of northern France, and the ingenious uses to which it was put, are best shown. The first of these isLe Couronnement Renart, a poem of between 3000 and 4000 lines, attributed, on no grounds whatever, to the poetess Marie de France, and describing how the hero by his ingenuity got himself crowned king. This poem already shows signs of direct moral application and generalizing. These are still more apparent inRenart le Nouvel, a composition of some 8000 lines, finished in the year 1288 by the Fleming Jacquemart Giélée. Here the personification, of which, in noticing theRoman de la rose, we shall soon have to give extended mention, becomes evident. Instead of or at least beside the lively personal Renart who used to steal sausages, set Isengrim fishing with his tail, or make use of Chanticleer’s comb for a purpose for which it was certainly never intended, we haveRenardie, an abstraction of guile and hypocrisy, triumphantly prevailing over other and better qualities. Lastly, as theRoman de la roseof William of Lorris is paralleled byRenart le Nouvel, so its continuation by Jean de Meung is paralleled by the great miscellany ofRenart le Contre-fait, which, even in its existing versions, extends to fully 50,000 lines. Here we have, besides floods of miscellaneous erudition and discourse, political argument of the most direct and important kind. The wrongs of the lower orders are bitterly urged. They are almost openly incited to revolt; and it is scarcely too much to say, as M. Lenient has said, that the closely following Jacquerie is but a practical carrying out of the doctrines of the anonymous satirists ofRenart le Contre-fait, one of whom (if indeed there was more than one) appears to have been a clerk of Troyes.
Early Lyric Poetry.—Side by side with these two forms of literature, the epics and romances of the higher classes, and the fabliau, which, at least in its original, represented rather the feelings of the lower, there grew up a third kind, consisting of purely lyrical poetry. The song literature of medieval France is extremely abundant and beautiful. From the 12th to the 15th century it received constant accessions, some signed, some anonymous, some purely popular in their character, some the work of more learned writers, others again produced by members of the aristocracy. Of the latter class it may fairly be said that the catalogue of royal and noble authors boasts few if any names superior to those of Thibaut de Champagne, king of Navarre at the beginning of the 13th century, and Charles d’Orléans, the father of Louis XII., at the beginning of the 15th. Although much of this lyric poetry is anonymous, the more popular part of it almost entirely so, yet M. Paulin Paris was able to enumerate some hundreds of French chansonniers between the 11th and the 13th century. The earliest song literature, chiefly known in the delightful collection of Bartsch (Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen), is mainly sentimental in character. The collector divides it under the two heads of romances and pastourelles, the former being usually the celebration of the loves of a noble knight and maiden, and recounting how Belle Doette or Eglantine or Oriour sat at her windows or in the tourney gallery, or embroidering silk and samite in her chamber, with her thoughts on Gerard or Guy or Henry,—the latter somewhat monotonous but naïve and often picturesque recitals, very often in the first person, of the meeting of an errant knight or minstrel with a shepherdess, and his cavalier but not always successful wooing. With these, some of which date from the 12th century, may be contrasted, at the other end of the medieval period, the more varied and popular collection dating in their present form from the 15th century, and published in 1875 by M. Gaston Paris. In both alike, making allowance for the difference of their age and the state of the language, may be noticed a charming lyrical faculty and great skill in the elaboration of light and suitable metres. Especially remarkable is the abundance of refrains of an admirably melodious kind. It is said that more than 500 of these exist. Among the lyric writers of these four centuries whose names are known may be mentioned Audefroi le BastardAudefroit le Bastard.Thibaut de Champagne.(12th century), the author of the charming song ofBelle Idoine, and others no way inferior, Quesnes de Bethune, the ancestor of Sully, whose song-writing inclines to a satirical cast in many instances, the Vidame de Chartres, Charles d’Anjou, King John of Brienne, the châtelain de Coucy, Gace Bruslé, Colin Muset, while not a few writers mentioned elsewhere—Guyot de Provins, Adam de la Halle, Jean Bodel and others—were also lyrists. But none of them, except perhaps Audefroi, can compare with Thibaut IV. (1201-1253), who united by his possessions and ancestry a connexion with the north and the south, and who employed the methods of both districts but used the language of the north only. Thibaut was supposed to be the lover of Blanche of Castile, the mother of St Louis, and a great deal of his verse is concerned with his love for her. But while knights and nobles were thus employing lyric poetry in courtly and sentimental verse, lyric forms were being freely employed by others, both of high and low birth, for more general purposes. Blanche and Thibaut themselves came in for contemporary lampoons, and both at this time and in the times immediately following, a cloud of writers composed light verse, sometimes of a lyric sometimes of a narrative kind, and sometimes in a mixture of both. By far theRutebœf.most remarkable of these is Rutebœuf (a name which is perhaps a nickname), the first of a long series of French poets to whom in recent days the title Bohemian has been applied, who passed their lives between gaiety and misery, and celebrated their lot in both conditions with copious verse. Rutebœuf is among the earliest French writers who tell us their personal history and make personal appeals. But he does not confine himself to these. He discusses the history of his times,upbraids the nobles for their desertion of the Latin empire of Constantinople, considers the expediency of crusading, inveighs against the religious orders, and takes part in the disputes between the pope and the king. He composes pious poetry too, and in at least one poem takes care to distinguish between the church which he venerates and the corrupt churchmen whom he lampoons. Besides Rutebœuf the most characteristic figure of his class and time (about the middle of the 13th century) isAdam de la Halle.Lais.Adam de la Halle, commonly called the Hunchback of Arras. The earlier poems of Adam are of a sentimental character, the later ones satirical and somewhat ill-tempered. Such, for instance, is his invective against his native city. But his chief importance consists in hisjeux, theJeu de la feuillie, theJeu de Robin et Marion, dramatic compositions which led the way to the regular dramatic form. Indeed the general tendency of the 13th century is to satire, fable and farce, even more than to serious or sentimental poetry. We should perhaps except thelais, the chief of which are known under the name of Marie de France. These lays are exclusively Breton in origin, though not in application, and the term seems originally to have had reference rather to the music to which they were sung than to the manner or matter of the pieces. Some resemblance to these lays may perhaps be traced in the genuine Breton songs published by M. Luzel. The subjects of the lais are indifferently taken from the Arthurian cycle, from ancient story, and from popular tradition, and, at any rate in Marie’s hands, they give occasion for some passionate, and in the modern sense really romantic, poetry. The most famous of all is theLay of the Honeysuckle, traditionally assigned to Sir Tristram.
SatiricandDidactic Works.—Among the direct satirists of the middle ages, one of the earliest and foremost is Guyot de Provins, a monk of Clairvaux and Cluny, whoseBible, as he calls it, contains an elaborate satire on the time (the beginning of the 13th century), and who was imitated by others, especially Hugues de Brégy. The same spirit soon betrayed itself in curious travesties of the romances of chivalry, and sometimes invades the later specimens of these romances themselves. One of the earliest examples of this travesty is the remarkable composition entitledAudigier. This poem, half fabliau and half romance, is not so much an instance of the heroi-comic poems which afterwards found so much favour in Italy and elsewhere, as a direct and ferocious parody of the Carlovingian epic. The hero Audigier is a model of cowardice and disloyalty; his father and mother, Turgibus and Rainberge, are deformed and repulsive. The exploits of the hero himself are coarse and hideous failures, and the whole poem can only be taken as a counterblast to the spirit of chivalry. Elsewhere a trouvère, prophetic of Rabelais, describes a vast battle between all the nations of the world, the quarrel being suddenly atoned by the arrival of a holy man bearing a huge flagon of wine. Again, we have the history of a solemn crusade undertaken by the citizens of a country town against the neighbouring castle. As erudition and the fancy for allegory gained ground, satire naturally availed itself of the opportunity thus afforded it; the disputes of Philippe le Bel with the pope and the Templars had an immense literary influence, partly in the concluding portions of theRenart, partly in theRoman de la rose, still to be mentioned, and partly in other satiric allegories of which the chief is the romance ofFauvel, attributed to François de Rues. The hero of this is an allegorical personage, half man and half horse, signifying the union of bestial degradation with human ingenuity and cunning. Fauvel (the name, it may be worth while to recall, occurs in Langland) is a divinity in his way. All the personages of state, from kings and popes to mendicant friars, pay their court to him.
But this serious and discontented spirit betrays itself also in compositions which are not parodies or travesties in form. One of the latest, if not absolutely the latest (for Cuvelier’s still laterChronique de Du Guesclinis only aBaudouin de Sebourc.most interestingimitationof thechansonform adapted to recent events), of the chansons de geste isBaudouin de Sebourc, one of the members of the great romance or cycle of romances dealing with the crusades, and entitled Le Chevalier au Cygne.Baudouin de Sebourcdates from the early years of the 14th century. It is strictly a chanson de geste in form, and also in the general run of its incidents. The hero is dispossessed of his inheritance by the agency of traitors, fights his battle with the world and its injustice, and at last prevails over his enemy Gaufrois, who has succeeded in obtaining the kingdom of Friesland and almost that of France. Gaufrois has as his assistants two personages who were very popular in the poetry of the time,—viz., the Devil, and Money. These two sinister figures pervade the fabliaux, tales and fantastic literature generally of the time. M. Lenient, the historian of French satire, has well remarked that a romance as long as theRenartmight be spun out of the separate short poems of this period which have the Devil for hero, and many of which form a very interesting transition between the fabliau and the mystery. But the Devil is in one respect a far inferior hero to Renart. He has an adversary in the Virgin, who constantly upsets his best-laid schemes, and who does not always treat him quite fairly. The abuse of usury at the time, and the exactions of the Jews and Lombards, were severely felt, and Money itself, as personified, figures largely in the popular literature of the time.
Roman de la Rose.—A work of very different importance from all of these, though with seeming touches of the same spirit, a work which deserves to take rank among the most important of the middle ages, is theRoman de la rose,—oneWilliam of Lorris.of the few really remarkable books which is the work of two authors, and that not in collaboration but in continuation one of the other. The author of the earlier part was Guillaume de Lorris, who lived in the first half of the 13th century; the author of the later part was Jean de Meung, who was born about the middle of that century, and whose part in theRomandates at least from its extreme end. This great poem exhibits in its two parts very different characteristics, which yet go to make up a not inharmonious whole. It is a love poem, and yet it is satire. But both gallantry and raillery are treated in an entirely allegorical spirit; and this allegory, while it makes the poem tedious to hasty appetites of to-day, was exactly what gave it its charm in the eyes of the middle ages. It might be described as anArs amoriscrossed with aQuodlibeta. This mixture exactly hit the taste of the time, and continued to hit it for two centuries and a half. When its obvious and gallant meaning was attacked by moralists and theologians, it was easy to quote the example of the Canticles, and to furnish esoteric explanations of the allegory. The writers of the 16th century were never tired of quoting and explaining it. Antoine de Baïf, indeed, gave the simple and obvious meaning, and declared that “La rose c’est d’amours le guerdon gracieux”; but Marot, on the other hand, gives us the choice of four mystical interpretations,—the rose being either the state of wisdom, the state of grace, the state of eternal happiness or the Virgin herself. We cannot here analyse this celebrated poem. It is sufficient to say that the lover meets all sorts of obstacles in his pursuit of the rose, though he has for a guide the metaphorical personage Bel-Accueil. The early part, which belongs to William of Lorris, is remarkable for its graciousJean de Meung.and fanciful descriptions. Forty years after Lorris’s death, Jean de Meung completed it in an entirely different spirit. He keeps the allegorical form, and indeed introduces two new personages of importance, Nature and Faux-semblant. In the mouths of these personages and of another, Raison, he puts the most extraordinary mixture of erudition and satire. At one time we have the history of classical heroes, at another theories against the hoarding of money, about astronomy, about the duty of mankind to increase and multiply. Accounts of the origin of loyalty, which would have cost the poet his head at some periods of history, and even communistic ideas, are also to be found here. In Faux-semblant we have a real creation of the theatrical hypocrite. All this miscellaneous and apparently incongruous material in fact explains the success of the poem. It has the one characteristic which has at all times secured the popularity of great works of literature. It holds the mirror up firmly and fully to its age. As we find in Rabelaisthe characteristics of the Renaissance, in Montaigne those of the sceptical reaction from Renaissance and reform alike, in Molière those of the society of France after Richelieu had tamed and levelled it, in Voltaire and Rousseau respectively the two aspects of the great revolt,—so there are to be found in theRoman de la rosethe characteristics of the later middle age, its gallantry, its mysticism, its economical and social troubles and problems, its scholastic methods of thought, its naïve acceptance as science of everything that is written, and at the same time its shrewd and indiscriminate criticism of much that the age of criticism has accepted without doubt or question. TheRoman de la rose, as might be supposed, set the example of an immense literature of allegorical poetry, which flourished more and more until the Renaissance. Some of these poems we have already mentioned, some will have to be considered under the head of the 15th century. But, as usually happens in such cases and was certain to happen in this case, the allegory which has seemed tedious to many, even in the original, became almost intolerable in the majority of the imitations.
We have observed that, at least in the later section of theRoman de la rose, there is observable a tendency to import into the poem indiscriminate erudition. This tendency is now remote from our poetical habits; but in its ownEarly didactic verse.day it was only the natural result of the use of poetry for all literary purposes. It was many centuries before prose became recognized as the proper vehicle for instruction, and at a very early date verse was used as well for educational and moral as for recreative and artistic purposes. French verse was the first born of all literary mediums in modern European speech, and the resources of ancient learning were certainly not less accessible in France than in any other country. Dante, in hisDe vulgari eloquio, acknowledges the excellence of the didactic writers of the Langue d’Oïl. We have already alluded to theBestiaryof Philippe de Thaun, a Norman trouvère who lived and wrote in England during the reign of Henry Beauclerc. Besides theBestiary, which from its dedication to Queen Adela has been conjectured to belong to the third decade of the 12th century, Philippe wrote also in French aLiber de creaturis, both works being translated from the Latin. These works of mystical and apocryphal physics and zoology became extremely popular in the succeeding centuries, and were frequently imitated. A moralizing turn was also given to them, which was much helped by the importation of several miscellanies of Oriental origin, partly tales, partly didactic in character, the most celebrated of which is theRoman des sept sages, which, under that title and the variant ofDolopathos, received repeated treatment from French writers both in prose and verse. The odd notion of anOvide moraliséused to be ascribed to Philippe de Vitry, bishop of Meaux (1291?-1391?), a person complimented by Petrarch, but is now assigned to a certain Chrétien Legonais. Art, too, soon demanded exposition in verse, as well as science. The favourite pastime of the chase was repeatedly dealt with, notably in theRoi Modus(1325), mixed prose and verse; theDeduits de la chasse(1387), of Gaston de Foix, prose; and theTresor de Venerieof Hardouin (1394), verse. Very soon didactic verse extended itself to all the arts and sciences. Vegetius and his military precepts had found a home in French octosyllables as early as the 12th century; the end of the same age saw the ceremonies of knighthood solemnly versified, andnapes(maps)du mondealso soon appeared. At last, in 1245, Gautier of Metz translated from various Latin works into French verse a sort of encyclopaedia, while another, incongruous but known asL’Image du monde, exists from the same century. Profane knowledge was not the only subject which exercised didactic poets at this time. Religious handbooks and commentaries on the scriptures were common in the 13th and following centuries, and, under the title ofCastoiements, EnseignementsandDoctrinaux, moral treatises became common. The most famous of these, theCastoiement d’un père à son fils, falls under the class, already mentioned, of works due to oriental influence, being derived from the IndianPanchatantra. In the 14th century the influence of theRoman de la rosehelped to render moral verse frequent and popular. The same century, moreover, which witnessed these developments of well-intentioned if not alwaysArtificial forms of verse.judicious erudition witnessed also a considerable change in lyrical poetry. Hitherto such poetry had chiefly been composed in the melodious but unconstrained forms of the romance and the pastourelle. In the 14th century the writers of northern France subjected themselves to severer rules. In this age arose the forms which for so long a time were to occupy French singers,—the ballade, the rondeau, the rondel, the triolet, the chant royal and others. These received considerable alterations as time went on. We possess not a fewArtes poëticae, such as that of Eustache Deschamps at the end of the 14th century, that formerly ascribed to Henri de Croy and now to Molinet at the end of the 15th, and that of Thomas Sibilet in the 16th, giving particulars of them, and these particulars show considerable changes. Thus the term rondeau, which since Villon has been chiefly limited to a poem of 15 lines, where the 9th and 15th repeat the first words of the first, was originally applied both to the rondel, a poem of 13 or 14 lines, where the first two are twice repeated integrally, and to the triolet, one of 8 only, where the first line occurs three times and the second twice. The last is an especially popular metre, and is found where we should least expect it, in the dialogue of the early farces, the speakers making up triolets between them. As these three forms are closely connected, so are the ballade and the chant royal, the latter being an extended and more stately and difficult version of the former, and the characteristic of both being the identity of rhyme and refrain in the several stanzas. It is quite uncertain at what time these fashions were first cultivated, but the earliest poets who appear to have practised them extensively were born at the close of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th centuries. Of these Guillaume de Machault (c.1300-1380) is the oldest. He has left us 80,000 verses, never yet completely printed. Eustache Deschamps (c.1340-c.1410) was nearly as prolific, but more fortunate as more meritorious, the Société des anciens Textes having at last provided a complete edition of him. Froissart the historian (1333-1410) was also an agreeable and prolific poet. Deschamps, the most famous as a poet of the three, has left us nearly 1200 ballades and nearly 200 rondeaux, besides much other verse all manifesting very considerable poetical powers. Less known but not less noteworthy, and perhaps the earliest of all, is Jehannot de Lescurel, whose personality is obscure, and most of whose works are lost, but whose remains are full of grace. Froissart appears to have had many countrymen in Hainault and Brabant who devoted themselves to the art of versification; and theLivre des cent balladesof the Marshal Boucicault (1366-1421) and his friends—c.1390—shows that the French gentleman of the 14th century was as apt at the ballade as his Elizabethan peer in England was at the sonnet.