A Short History of French Literature
Gestes which the clumsy reciter quotes all wrong, and for a great
number of the sly hits at chivalry and the chivalrous romances which are
characteristic of all this literature. Thus one Jongleur, going through
the list of his knightly patrons, tells of Monseignor Augier Poupee--
'Qui a un seul coup de s'espee
Coupe bien a un chat l'oreille;'
and of Monseignor Rogier Ertaut, whose soundness in wind and limb is not
due to enchanted armour or skill in fight, but is accounted for thus--
'Quar onques ne ot cop feru' (for that never has he struck a blow).
_Le Vair Palefroi_ contains the story of a lover who carries off his
beloved on a palfrey grey from an aged wooer. _La Housse Partie_, a
great favourite, which appears in more than one form, tells the tale of
an unnatural son who turns his father out of doors, but is brought to a
better mind by his own child, who innocently gives him warning that he
in turn will copy his example. _Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse_ is one of the
innumerable stories of rough correction of scolding wives. _Brunain la
Vache au Prestre_ recounts a trick played on a covetous priest. In _Le
Dit des Perdrix_, a greedy wife eats a brace of partridges which her
husband has destined for his own dinner, and escapes his wrath by one of
the endless stratagems which these tales delight in assigning to
womankind. _Le sot Chevalier_, though extremely indecorous, deserves
notice for the Chaucerian breadth of its farce, at which it is
impossible to help laughing. _The two Englishmen and the Lamb_ is
perhaps the earliest example of English-French, and turns upon the
mistake which results in an ass's foal being bought instead of the
required animal. _Le Mantel Mautaillie_ is the famous Arthurian story
known in English as 'The Boy and the Mantle.' _Le Vilain Mire_ is the
original of Moliere's _Medecin malgre lui_. _Le Vilain qui conquist
Paradis par Plaist_ is characteristic of the curious irreverence which
accompanied mediaeval devotion. A villein comes to heaven's gate, is
refused admission, and successively silences St. Peter, St. Thomas, and
St. Paul, by very pointed references to their earthly weaknesses. As a
last specimen may be mentioned the curiously simple word-play of
_Estula_. This is the name of a little dog which, being pronounced,
certain thieves take for 'Es tu la?'
[Sidenote: Sources of Fabliaux.]
Such are a very few, selected as well as may be for their typical
character, of these stories. It is not unimportant to consider briefly
the question of their origin. Many of them belong no doubt to that
strange common fund of fiction which all nations of the earth
indiscriminately possess. A considerable number seem to be of purely
original and indigenous growth: but an actual literary source is not
wanting in many cases. The classics supplied some part of them, the
Scriptures and the lives of the saints another part; while not a little
was due to the importation of Eastern collections of stories resulting
from the Crusades. The chief of these collections were the fables of
Bidpai or Pilpai, in the form known as the romance of 'Calila and
Dimna,' and the story of Sendabar (in its Greek form Syntipas). This was
immensely popular in France under the verse form of _Dolopathos_, and
the prose form of _Les sept Sages de Rome_. The remarkable collection of
stories called the _Gesta Romanorum_ is apparently of later date than
most of the Fabliaux; but the tales of which it was composed no doubt
floated for some time in the mouths of Jongleurs before the unknown and
probably English author put them together in Latin.
[Sidenote: The Roman du Renart.]
Closely connected with the Fabliaux is one of the most singular works of
mediaeval imagination, the _Roman du Renart_[62]. This is no place to
examine the origin or antiquity of the custom of making animals the
mouthpieces of moral and satirical utterance on human affairs. It is
sufficient that the practice is an ancient one, and that the middle ages
were early acquainted with Aesop and his followers, as well as with
Oriental examples of the same sort. The original author, whoever he was,
of the epic (for it is no less) of 'Reynard the Fox,' had therefore
examples of a certain sort before his eyes. But these examples contented
themselves for the most part with work of small dimension, and had not
attempted connected or continuous story. A fierce battle has been fought
as to the nationality of Reynard. The facts are these. The oldest form
of the story now extant is in Latin. It is succeeded at no very great
interval by German, Flemish, and French versions. Of these the German as
it stands is apparently the oldest, the Latin version being probably of
the second half of the twelfth century, and the German a little later.
But (and this is a capital point) the names of the more important beasts
are in all the versions French. From this and some minute local
indications, it seems likely that the original language of the epic is
French, but French of the Walloon or Picard dialect, and that it was
written somewhere in the district between the Seine and the Rhine. This,
however, is a matter of the very smallest literary importance. What is
of great literary importance is the fact that it is in France that the
story receives its principal development, and that it makes its home.
The Latin, Flemish, and German Reynards, though they all cover nearly
the same ground, do not together amount to more than five-and-twenty
thousand lines. The French in its successive developments amounts to
more than ninety thousand in the texts already published or abstracted;
and this does not include the variants in the Vienna manuscript of
_Renart le Contrefait_, or the different developments of the _Ancien
Renart_, recently published by M. Ernest Martin.
[Sidenote: The Ancien Renart.]
The order and history of the building up of this vast composition are as
follows. The oldest known 'branches,' as the separate portions of the
story are called, date from the beginning of the thirteenth century.
These are due to a named author, Pierre de Saint Cloud. But it is
impossible to say that they were actually the first written in French:
indeed it is extremely improbable that they were so. However this may
be, during the thirteenth century a very large number of poets wrote
pieces independent of each other in composition, but possessing the same
general design, and putting the same personages into play. In what has
hitherto been the standard edition of _Renart_, Meon published
thirty-two such poems, amounting in the aggregate to more than thirty
thousand verses. Chabaille added five more in his supplement, and M.
Ernest Martin has found yet another in an Italianised version. This last
editor thinks that eleven branches, which he has printed together,
constitute an 'ancient collection' within the _Ancien Renart_, and have
a certain connection and interdependence. However this may be, the
general plan is extremely loose, or rather non-existent. Everybody knows
the outline of the story of Reynard; how he is among the animals (Noble
the lion, who is king, Chanticleer the cock, Firapel the leopard,
Grimbart the badger, Isengrin the wolf, and the rest) the special
representative of cunning and valour tempered by discretion, while his
enemy Isengrin is in the same way the type of stupid headlong force, and
many of the others have moral character less strongly marked but
tolerably well sustained. How this general idea is illustrated the
titles of the branches show better than the most elaborate description.
'How Reynard ate the carrier's fish;' 'how Reynard made Isengrin fish
for eels;' 'how Reynard cut the tail of Tybert the cat;' 'how Reynard
made Isengrin go down the well;' 'of Isengrin and the mare;' 'how
Reynard and Tybert sang vespers and matins;' 'the pilgrimage of
Reynard,' and so forth. Written by different persons, and at different
times, these branches are of course by no means uniform in literary
value. But the uniformity of spirit in most, if not in all of them, is
extremely remarkable. What is most noticeable in this spirit is the
perpetual undertone of satirical comment on human life and its affairs
which distinguishes it. The moral is never obtrusively put forward, and
it is especially noteworthy that in this _Ancien Renart_, as contrasted
with the later development of the poem, there is no mere allegorising,
and no attempt to make the animals men in disguise. They are quite
natural and distinct foxes, wolves, cats, and so forth, acting after
their kind, with the exception of their possession of reason and
language.
[Sidenote: Le Couronnement Renart.]
The next stage of the composition shows an alteration and a degradation.
_Renart le Couronne_, or _Le Couronnement Renart_[63], is a poem of some
3400 lines, which was once attributed to Marie de France, for no other
reason than that the manuscript which contains it subjoins her _Ysopet_
or fables. It is, however, certainly not hers, and is in all probability
a little later than her time. The main subject of it is the cunning of
the fox, who first reconciles the great preaching orders Franciscans and
Dominicans; then himself becomes a monk, and inculcates on them the art
of _Renardie_; then repairs to court as a confessor to the lion king
Noble who is ill, and contrives to be appointed his successor, after
which he holds tournaments, journeys to Palestine, and so forth. It is
characteristic of the decline of taste that in the list of his army a
whole bestiary (or list of the real and fictitious beasts of mediaeval
zoology) is thrust in; and the very introduction of the abstract term
_Renardie_, or foxiness, is an evil sign of the abstracting and
allegorising which was about to spoil poetry for a time, and to make
much of the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries tedious
and heavy. The poem is of little value or interest. The only
chronological indication as to its composition is the eulogy of William
of Flanders, killed ('jadis,' says the author) in 1251.
[Sidenote: Renart le Nouvel.]
The next poem of the cycle is of much greater length, and of at least
proportionately greater value, though it has not the freshness and
_verve_ of the earlier branches. _Renart le Nouvel_ was written in 1288
by Jacquemart Gielee, a Fleming. This poem is in many ways interesting,
though not much can be said for its general conception, and though it
suffers terribly from the allegorising already alluded to. In its first
book (it consists of more than 8000 lines, divided into two books and
many branches) Renart, in consequence of one of his usual quarrels with
Isengrin, gets into trouble with the king, and is besieged in
Maupertuis. But the sense of verisimilitude is now so far lost, that
Maupertuis, instead of being a fox's earth, is an actual feudal castle;
and more than this, the animals which attack and defend it are armed in
panoply, ride horses, and fight like knights of the period. Besides this
the old familiar and homely personages are mixed up with a very strange
set of abstractions in the shape of the seven deadly sins. All this is
curiously blended with reminiscences and rehandlings of the older and
simpler adventures. Another remarkable feature about _Renart le Nouvel_
is that it is full of songs, chiefly love songs, which are given with
the music. Its descriptions, though prolix, and injured by allegorical
phrases, are sometimes vigorous.
[Sidenote: Renart le Contrefait.]
The cycle was finally completed in the second quarter of the fourteenth
century by the singular work or works called _Renart le Contrefait_.
This has, unfortunately, never been printed in full, nor in any but the
most meagre extracts and abstracts. Its length is enormous; though, in