A Short History of French Literature
verse has taken place, and lyrical poetry, not limited as in the case of
the epics to the north of France, but extending from Roussillon to the
Pas de Calais, completes this. The twelfth century adds to these
earliest forms the important development of the mystery, extends the
subjects and varies the manner of epic verse, and begins the
compositions of literary prose with the chronicles of St. Denis and of
Villehardouin, and the prose romances of the Arthurian cycle. All this
literature is so far connected purely with the knightly and priestly
orders, though it is largely composed and still more largely dealt in by
classes of men, trouveres and jongleurs, who are not necessarily either
knights or priests, and in the case of the jongleurs are certainly
neither. With a possible ancestry of Romance and Teutonic _cantilenae_,
Breton _lais_, and vernacular legends, the new literature has a certain
pattern and model in Latin and for the most part ecclesiastical
compositions. It has the sacred books and the legends of the saints for
examples of narrative, the rhythm of the hymns for a guide to metre, and
the ceremonies of the church for a stimulant to dramatic performance. By
degrees also in this twelfth century forms of literature which busy
themselves with the unprivileged classes begin to be born. The fabliau
takes every phase of life for its subject; the folk-song acquires
elegance and does not lose raciness and truth. In the next century, the
thirteenth, mediaeval literature in France arrives at its zenith and
remains there until the first quarter of the fourteenth. The early epics
lose something of their savage charm, the polished literature of
Provence quickly perishes. But in the provinces which speak the more
prevailing tongue nothing is wanting to literary development. The
language itself has shaken off all its youthful incapacities, and,
though not yet well adapted for the requirements of modern life and
study, is in every way equal to the demands made upon it by its own
time. The dramatic germ contained in the fabliau and quickened by the
mystery produces the profane drama. Ambitious works of merit in the most
various kinds are published; _Aucassin et Nicolette_ stands side by side
with the _Histoire de Saint Louis_, the _Jeu de la Feuillie_ with the
_Miracle de Theophile_, the _Roman de la Rose_ with the _Roman du
Renart_. The earliest notes of ballade and rondeau are heard; endeavours
are made with zeal, and not always without understanding, to naturalise
the wisdom of the ancients in France, and in the graceful tongue that
France possesses. Romance in prose and verse, drama, history, songs,
satire, oratory, and even erudition, are all represented and represented
worthily. Meanwhile all nations of Western Europe have come to France
for their literary models and subjects, and the greatest writers in
English, German, Italian, content themselves with adaptations of
Chretien de Troyes, of Benoist de Sainte More, and of a hundred other
known and unknown trouveres and fabulists. But this age does not last
long. The language has been put to all the uses of which it is as yet
capable; those uses in their sameness begin to pall upon reader and
hearer; and the enormous evils of the civil and religious state reflect
themselves inevitably in literature. The old forms die out or are
prolonged only in half-lifeless travesties. The brilliant colouring of
Froissart, and the graceful science of ballade- and rondeau-writers like
Lescurel and Deschamps, alone maintain the literary reputation of the
time. Towards the end of the fourteenth century the translators and
political writers import many terms of art, and strain the language to
uses for which it is as yet unhandy, though at the beginning of the next
age Charles d'Orleans by his natural grace and the virtue of the forms
he used, emerges from the mass of writers. Throughout the fifteenth
century the process of enriching or at least increasing the vocabulary
goes on, but as yet no organising hand appears to direct the process.
Villon stands alone in merit as in peculiarity. But in this time
dramatic literature and the literature of the floating popular
broadsheet acquire an immense extension--all or almost all the vigour of
spirit being concentrated in the rough farce and rougher lampoon, while
all the literary skill is engrossed by insipid _rhetoriqueurs_ and
pedants. Then comes the grand upheaval of the Renaissance and the
Reformation. An immense influx of science, of thought to make the
science living, of new terms to express the thought, takes place, and a
band of literary workers appear of power enough to master and get into
shape the turbid mass. Rabelais, Amyot, Calvin, and Herberay fashion
French prose; Marot, Ronsard, and Regnier refashion French verse. The
Pleiade introduces the drama as it is to be and the language that is to
help the drama to express itself. Montaigne for the first time throws
invention and originality into some other form than verse or than prose
fiction. But by the end of the century the tide has receded. The work of
arrangement has been but half done, and there are no master spirits left
to complete it. At this period Malherbe and Balzac make their
appearance. Unable to deal with the whole problem, they determine to
deal with part of it, and to reject a portion of the riches of which
they feel themselves unfit to be stewards. Balzac and his successors
make of French prose an instrument faultless and admirable in precision,
unequalled for the work for which it is fit, but unfit for certain
portions of the work which it was once able to perform. Malherbe,
seconded by Boileau, makes of French verse an instrument suited only for
the purposes of the drama of Euripides, or rather of Seneca, with or
without its chorus, and for a certain weakened echo of that chorus,
under the name of lyrics. No French verse of the first merit other than
dramatic is written for two whole centuries. The drama soon comes to its
acme, and during the succeeding time usually maintains itself at a
fairly high level until the death of Voltaire. But prose lends itself to
almost everything that is required of it, and becomes constantly a more
and more perfect instrument. To the highest efforts of pathos and
sublimity its vocabulary and its arrangement are still unsuited, though
the great preachers of the seventeenth century do their utmost with it.
But for clear exposition, smooth and agreeable narrative, sententious
and pointed brevity, witty repartee, it soon proves itself to have no
superior and scarcely an equal in Europe. In these directions
practitioners of the highest skill apply it during the seventeenth
century, while during the eighteenth its powers are shown to the utmost
of their variety by Voltaire, and receive a new development at the hands
of Rousseau. Yet, on the whole, it loses during this century. It becomes
more and more unfit for any but trivial uses, and at last it is employed
for those uses only. Then occurs the Revolution, repeating the mighty
stir in men's minds which the Renaissance had given, but at first
experiencing more difficulty in breaking up the ground and once more
rendering it fertile. The faulty and incomplete genius of Chateaubriand
and Madame de Stael gives the first evidence of a new growth, and after
many years the romantic movement completes the work. That movement
occupied almost the whole of two generations and though at the close of
the second its force may appear to be spent, the results remain, and no
new or reactionary movement is visible, and the efforts of the Romantics
themselves have been crowned with an almost complete regeneration of
letters, if not of language. The poetical power of French has been once
more triumphantly proved, and its productiveness in all branches of
literature has been renewed, while in that of prose fiction there has
been almost created a new class of composition.
Finally, we may sum up even this summary. For volume and merit taken
together the product of these eight centuries of literature excels that
of any European nation, though for individual works of the supremest
excellence they may perhaps be asked in vain. No French writer is lifted
by the suffrages of other nations--the only criterion when sufficient
time has elapsed--to the level of Homer, of Shakespeare, or of Dante,
who reign alone. Of those of the authors of France who are indeed of the
thirty but attain not to the first three, Rabelais and Moliere alone
unite the general suffrage; and this fact roughly but surely points to
the real excellence of the literature which these men are chosen to
represent. It is great in all ways, but it is greatest on the lighter
side. The house of mirth is more suited to it than the house of
mourning. To the latter, indeed, the language of the unknown minstrel
who told Roland's death, of him who gave utterance to Camilla's wrath
and despair, and of him who in our day sang how the mountain wind makes
mad the lover who cannot forget, has amply made good its title of
entrance. But for one Frenchman who can write admirably in this strain
there are a hundred who can tell the most admirable story, formulate the
most pregnant reflexion, point the acutest jest. There is thus no really
great epic in French, few great tragedies, and those imperfect and in a
faulty kind, little prose like Milton's or like Jeremy Taylor's, little
verse (though more than is generally thought) like Shelley's or like
Spenser's. But there are the most delightful short tales, both in prose
and in verse, that the world has ever seen, the most polished jewellery
of reflexion that has ever been wrought, songs of incomparable grace,
comedies that must make men laugh so long as they are laughing animals,
and above all such a body of narrative fiction, old and new, prose and
verse, as no other nation can show for art and for originality, for
grace of workmanship in him who fashions, and for certainty of delight
to him who reads.
FOOTNOTES:
[294] The courtesy of Messrs. A. and C. Black allows me to repeat the
following passage from an article of mine in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_. For this repetition I may borrow from a better writer than
myself the excuse that a man cannot say exactly the same thing in two
different sets of words so as to please himself, or perhaps others.
INDEX.
About, Edmond (1828-1885), novelist and journalist, 559.
Academic influences, 486, 506-508.
criticism, 564.
Academie Francaise, 334, 353, 367, 504-508.
Actors, societies of, 122.
Adalbert, St., 3.
_Adam, mystery of_, 111.
Adam de la Halle (13th cent.), trouvere and dramatist, 69, 70.
Adenes le Roi (13th cent.), trouvere, 23 note 1, 93, 95.
_Adolescence Clementine_, 174.
_Adolphe_, 435.
Aguesseau, H.F. d' (1668-1751), orator, 457, 480.
Aisse, Mlle. (1693-1733), letter-writer, 445.
Alba, 31.
_Albigensian War, Chronicle of_, 30.
Alembert, Jean le Rond d' (1717-1785), encyclopaedist, 419, 462, 481,
483, 499.
Alexander of Bernay (12th cent.), trouvere, 43.
Alexandrines, 75, 76, 213, 300.
_Aliscans_, 19, 22.
_Alixandre, Chanson d'_, 43.
Allainval, Leonor J. C. Soulas d' (1700-1753), dramatist, 412.
Allegory, 81.
_Almanach de nos Grands Hommes_, 466.
_Alzire_, 408.
_Amphitryon_, 312.
_Amadas et Idoine_, 97.
_Amadis of Gaul_, 237, 319, 320.
_Amants Magnifiques_, 312.
Amerval, Eloy d' (15th cent.), poet, 172.
_Amis et Amiles_, 12, 21, 147.
story of, 16.
passage from, 18.
Amyot, Jacques (1513-1594), translator, 232, 234, 246, 270.
_Ancien Theatre Francais_, 117 seqq.
_Anciennes Poesies Francaises_, 181, 182.
Andrieux, Francois G. J. S. (1759-1833), dramatist and poet, 403, 414.
_Andromaque_, 302.
_Andromede_, 298.