A Short History of French Literature
Commedia_, though of course it has the necessary inferiority of a
collection by a great number of different hands to a work of individual
genius.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] Nennius, a Breton monk of the ninth century, has left a brief Latin
Chronicle in which is the earliest authentic account of the Legend of
Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth, _circa_ 1140, produced a _Historia
Britonum_, avowedly based on a book brought from Britanny by Walter,
Archdeacon of Oxford. No trace of this book, unless it be Nennius, can
be found. _See note at end of chapter._
[52] Department of Seine-et-Marne, near Fontainebleau.
[53] Map as a person belongs rather to English than to French history.
He lived in the last three quarters of the twelfth century.
[54] These various Romances are not by any means equally open to study
in satisfactory critical editions. To take them chronologically, M.
Hucher has published Robert de Borron's _Little Saint Graal_ in prose,
his _Percevale_, and the _Great Saint Graal_, with full and valuable if
not incontestable notes, 3 vols.; Le Mans, 1875-1878. The verse form of
the _Little Saint Graal_ was published by M. F. Michel in 1841. An
edition of _Artus_ was promised by M. Paulin Paris, but interrupted or
prevented by his death. The great works of Map, _Lancelot_ and the
_Quest_, as well as the _Mort Artus_, have never been critically edited
in full; and the sixteenth-century editions being rare and exceedingly
costly, as well as uncritical, they are not easily accessible, except in
M. Paris' Abstract and Commentary, _Les Romans de la Table Ronde_, 5
vols., 1869-1877. _Tristan_ was published partially forty years ago by
M. F. Michel. _Merlin_ was edited in 1886 by M. G. Paris and M. Ulrich.
A complete edition of Chrestien de Troyes has been undertaken by Dr.
Wendelin Foerster and has preceded to its second volume (_Yvain_). This
under its second title of _Le Chevalier au Lyon_ has also been edited by
Dr. Holland (third edition 1886). Besides this there is the great
Romance of _Percevale_ (continued by others, especially a certain
Manessier), of which M. Potvin has given an excellent edition, 6 vols.,
Mons, 1867-1872, including in it a previously unknown prose version of
the Romance of very early date; _Le Chevalier a la Charrette_, continued
by Godefroy de Lagny, and edited, with the original prose from _Lancelot
du Lac_, by Dr. Jonckbloet (The Hague, 1850); and _Erec et Enide_, by M.
Haupt (Berlin, 1860). This piecemeal condition of the texts, and the
practical inaccessibility of many of them, make independent judgment in
the matter very difficult. What is wanted first of all is a book on the
plan of M. Leon Gautier's _Epopees Francaises_, giving a complete
account of all the existing texts--for the entire editing of these
latter must necessarily take a very long time. The statements made above
represent the opinions which appear most probable to the writer, not
merely from the comparison of authorities on the subject, but from the
actual study of the texts as far as they are open to him. (_See note at
end of Chapter._)
[55] This expression occurs in the _Chanson des Saisnes_, i. 6. 7: 'Ne
sont que iij matieres a nul home atandant, De France et de Bretaigne et
de Rome la grant.'
[56] Ed. Michelant. Stuttgart, 1846.
[57] _Li Cors_, otherwise _li tors_ 'the crooked.' Since this book was
first written M. Paul Meyer has treated the whole subject of the
paragraph in an admirable monograph, _Alexandre le Grand dans la
Litterature Francaise du Moyen Age_, 2 vols. Paris, 1886.
[58] Ed. Joly. Rouen, 1870.
[59] Moland and Hericault's _Nouvelles du XIV'eme Siecle_. Paris, 1857.
Joly, _Op. cit._ See also P. Stapfer, _Shakespeare et l'Antiquite_. 2
vols. Paris, 1880.
CHAPTER V.
FABLIAUX. THE _ROMAN DU RENART_.
[Sidenote: Foreign Elements in Early French Literature.]
Singular as the statement may appear, no one of the branches of
literature hitherto discussed represents what may be called a specially
French spirit. Despite the astonishing popularity and extent of the
Chansons de Gestes, they are, as is admitted by the most patriotic
French students, Teutonic in origin probably, and certainly in genius.
The Arthurian legends have at least a tinge both of Celtic and Oriental
character; while the greater number of them were probably written by
Englishmen, and their distinguishing spirit is pretty clearly
Anglo-Norman rather than French. On the other hand, Provencal poetry
represents a temperament and a disposition which find their full
development rather in Spanish and Italian literature and character than
in the literature and character of France. All these divisions,
moreover, have this of artificial about them, that they are obviously
class literature--the literature of courtly and knightly society, not
that of the nation at large. Provencal literature gives but scanty
social information; from the earlier Chansons at least it would be hard
to tell that there were any classes but those of nobles, priests, and
fighting men; and though, as has been said, a more complicated state of
society appears in the Arthurian legends, what may be called their
atmosphere is even more artificial.
[Sidenote: The Esprit Gaulois makes its appearance.]
It is far otherwise with the division of literature which we are now
about to handle. The Fabliaux[60], or short verse tales of old France,
take in the whole of its society from king to peasant with all the
intervening classes, and represent for the most part the view taken of
those classes by each other. Perhaps the _bourgeois_ standpoint is most
prominent in them, but it is by no means the only one. Their tone too is
of the kind which has ever since been specially associated with the
French genius. What is called by French authors the _esprit gaulois_--a
spirit of mischievous and free-spoken jocularity--does not make its
appearance at once, or in all kinds of work. In most of the early
departments of French literature there is a remarkable deficiency of the
comic element, or rather that element is very much kept under. The
comedy of the Chansons consists almost entirely in the roughest
horse-play; while the knightly notion of _gabz_ or jests is exemplified
in the _Voyage de Charlemagne a Constantinople_, where it seems to be
limited to extravagant, and not always decent, boasts and gasconnades.
More comic, but still farcical in its comedy, is the curious running
fire of exaggerated expressions of poltroonery which the Red Lion keeps
up in _Antioche_, while the names and virtues of the Christian leaders
are being catalogued to Corbaran. In the Arthurian Romances also the
comic element is scantily represented, and still takes the same form of
exaggeration and horse-play. At the same time it is proper to say that
both these classes of compositions are distinguished, at least in their
earlier examples, by a very strict and remarkable decency of language.
In the Fabliaux the state of things is quite different. The attitude is
always a mocking one, not often going the length of serious satire or
moral indignation, but contenting itself with the peculiar ludicrous
presentation of life and humanity of which the French have ever since
been the masters. In the Fabliaux begins that long course of scoffing at
the weaknesses of the feminine sex which has never been interrupted
since. In the Fabliaux is to be found for the first time satirical
delineation of the frailties of churchmen instead of adoring celebration
of the mysteries of the Church. All classes come in by turns for
ridicule--knights, burghers, peasants. Unfortunately this freedom in
choice of subject is accompanied by a still greater freedom in the
choice of language. The coarseness of expression in many of the Fabliaux
equals, if it does not exceed, that to be found in any other branch of
Western literature.
[Sidenote: Definition of Fabliaux.]
The interest of the Fabliaux as a literary study is increased by the
precision with which they can be defined, and the well-marked period of
their composition. According to the excellent definition of its latest
editor, the Fabliau[61] is 'le recit, le plus souvent comique, d'une
aventure reelle ou possible, qui se passe dans les donnees moyennes de
la vie humaine,' the recital, for the most part comic, of a real or
possible event occurring in the ordinary conditions of human life. M. de
Montaiglon, to be rigidly accurate, should have added that it must be in
verse, and, with very rare, if any, exceptions, in octosyllabic
couplets. Of such Fabliaux, properly so called, we possess perhaps two
hundred. They are of the most various length, sometimes not extending to
more than a score or so of lines, sometimes containing several hundreds.
They are, like most contemporary literature, chiefly anonymous, or
attributed to persons of whom nothing is known, though some famous
names, especially that of the Trouvere Ruteboeuf, appear among their
authors. Their period of composition seems to have extended from the
latter half of the twelfth century to the latter half of the fourteenth,
no manuscript that we have of them being earlier than the beginning of
the thirteenth century, and none later than the beginning of the
fifteenth. If, however, their popularity in their original form ceased
at the latter period, their course was by no means run. They had passed
early from France into Italy (as indeed all the oldest French literature
did), and the stock-in-trade of all the Italian _Novellieri_ from
Boccaccio downwards was supplied by them. In England they found an
illustrious copyist in Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales are perfect
Fabliaux, informed by greater art and more poetical spirit than were
possessed by their original authors. In France itself the Fabliaux
simply became farces or prose tales, as the wandering reciter of verse
gave way to the actor and the bookseller. They appear again (sometimes
after a roundabout journey through Italian versions) in the pages of the
French tale-tellers of the Renaissance, and finally, as far as collected
appearance is concerned, receive their last but not their least
brilliant transformation in the _Contes_ of La Fontaine. In these the
cycle is curiously concluded by a return to the form of the original.
[Sidenote: Subjects and character of Fabliaux.]
Until MM. de Montaiglon and Raynaud undertook their edition, which has
been slowly completed, the study of the Fabliaux was complicated by the
somewhat chaotic conditions of the earlier collections. Barbazan and his
followers printed as Fabliaux almost everything that they found in verse
which was tolerably short. Thus, not merely the mediaeval poems called
_dits_ and _debats_, descriptions of objects either in monologue or
dialogue, which come sometimes very close to the Fabliau proper, but
moral discourses, short romances, legends like the _Lai d'Aristote_, and
such-like things, were included. This interferes with a comprehension of
the remarkably characteristic and clearly marked peculiarities of the
Fabliau indicated in the definition given above. As according to this
the Fabliau is a short comic verse tale of ordinary life, it will be
evident that the attempts which have been made to classify Fabliaux
according to their subjects were not very happy. It is of course
possible to take such headings as Priests, Women, Villeins, Knights,
etc., and arrange the existing Fabliaux under them. But it is not
obvious what is gained thereby. A better notion of the _genre_ may
perhaps be obtained from a short view of the subjects of some of the
principal of those Fabliaux whose subjects are capable of description.
_Les deux Bordeors Ribaux_ is a dispute between two Jongleurs who boast
their skill. It is remarkable for a very curious list of Chansons de