A Short History of French Literature
this head, though it is sometimes dealt with as a kind of miniature
epic. This is the _lai_, a term which is used in old French poetry with
two different significations. The Trouveres of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries made of it a regular lyrical form. But the most
famous of its examples, those which now pass under the name of Marie de
France, are narrative poems in octosyllabic verse and varying in length
considerably. It is agreed that the term and the thing are of Breton
origin; and the opinion which seems most probable is that the word
originally had reference rather to the style of music with which the
harper accompanied his verse, than to the measure, arrangement, or
subject of the latter. As to Marie herself[75], nothing is known about
her with certainty. She lived in England in the reign of Henry III, and
often gives English equivalents for her French words. The _lais_ which
we possess, written by her and attributed to her, are fourteen in
number. They bear the titles of _Gugemer_, _Equitan_, _Le Fresne_, _Le
Bisclaveret_, _Lanval_, _Les Deux Amants_, _Ywenec_, _Le Laustic_,
_Milun_, _Le Chaitivel_, _Le Chevrefeuille_, _Eliduc_, _Graalent_ and
_L'Espine_. Mr. O'Shaughnessy has paraphrased several of these in
English[76]; they are all narrative in character. Their distinguishing
features are fluent and melodious versification, pure and graceful
language--among the purest and most graceful, though decidedly Norman in
character, of the time--true poetical feeling, and a lively faculty of
invention and description. After Marie there was a tendency to
approximate the _lai_ to the Provencal _descort_, and at last, as we
have said, it acquired rules and a form quite alien from those of its
earlier examples. There is a general though not a universal inclination
to melancholy of subject in the early lays, a few of which are
anonymous.
* * * * *
_Note to Third Edition._--M. Gaston Paris has expressed some surprise at
my remarks on metre (p. 63). This from so accomplished a scholar is a
curious instance of the difficulty which Frenchmen seem to feel in
appreciating quantity. To an English eye and ear which have been trained
to classical prosody the trochaic rhythm of, for instance, the
Pastourelle quoted on p. 65, is unmistakable, and there are anapaestic
metres to be found here and there in early poems of the same kind.
Indeed, all French poetry is easily scanned quantitatively, though the
usual authorities protest against such scansion. Voltaire, it is said,
took Turgot's hexameters for prose, and the significance of this is the
same whether the mistake, as is probable, was mischievous or whether it
was genuine.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] Leipsic, 1870.
[68] See note at end of chapter.
[69] This miscellaneous lyric for the most part awaits collection and
publication. M. G. Raynaud has given a valuable _Bibliographie des
Chansonniers Francais des XIII'e et XIV'e siecles_. 2 vols., Paris,
1884. Also a collection of _motets_. Paris, 1881.
[70] Philippe Mouskes. This is it:
La terre fut pis en cest an
Quar li vieux Quesnes estoit mors.
[71] The best edition is in Scheler's _Trouveres Belges_. Brussels,
1876.
[72] Rheims, 1851.
[73] The most convenient place to look for Adam's history and work is
_Le Theatre Francais au Moyen Age_. Par Monmerque et Michel. Paris,
1874. There are also separate editions of him by Coussemaker, and more
recently by A. Rambeau. Marburg, 1886.
[74] By A. Jubinal. 2nd edition. 3 vols. Paris, 1874.
[75] Ed. Roquefort. 2 vols. Paris, 1820. The first volume contains the
lays; the later the fables, which have been noticed in the last chapter.
Later edition, Warnke. Halle, 1885. Marie also wrote a poem on the
Purgatory of St. Patrick. Three other lays, _Tidorel_, _Gringamor_, and
_Tiolet_ have been attributed to her, and are printed in _Romania_, vol.
viii.
[76] _Lays of France_, London, 1872.
CHAPTER VII.
SERIOUS AND ALLEGORICAL POETRY.
In consequence of the slowness with which prose was used for any regular
literary purpose in France, verse continued to do duty for it until a
comparatively late period in almost all departments of literature. By
the very earliest years of the twelfth century, and probably much
earlier (though we have no certain evidence of this latter fact),
documents of all kinds began to be written in verse of various forms.
Among the earliest serious verse that was written rank, as we might
expect, verse chronicles. It was not till 1200 at soonest that long
translations from the Latin in French prose were made, but such
translations, and original works as well, were written in French verse
long before.
[Sidenote: Verse Chronicles.]
The rhymed Chronicles were numerous, but, with rare exceptions, they
cannot be said to be of any very great literary importance. Whether they
were imitated directly from the Chansons de Gestes, or _vice versa_, is
a question which, as it happens, can be settled without difficulty. For
they are almost all in octosyllabic couplets, a metre certainly later
than the assonanced decasyllabics of the earliest Chansons. The latter
form and the somewhat later dodecasyllable or Alexandrine are rarely
used for Verse Chronicles, the most remarkable exception being the
spirited _Combat des Trente_[77], which is however very late, and the
_Chronique de du Guesclin_ of the same date. There are earlier examples
of history in Alexandrines (some are found in the twelfth century, such
as the account of Henry the Second's Scotch Wars by Jordan Fantome,
Chancellor of the diocese of Winchester), but they are not numerous or
important. It is not unworthy of notice that the majority of the early
Verse Chronicles are English or Anglo-Norman. The first of importance is
that of Geoffrey Gaymar, whose Chronicle of English history was written
about 1146. Gaymar was followed by a much better known writer, the
Jerseyman Wace[78], who not only, as has been mentioned, versified
Geoffrey of Monmouth into the _Brut_[79], but produced the important
_Roman de Rou_[80], giving the history of the Dukes of Normandy and of
the Conquest of England. The date of the _Brut_ is 1155, of the _Rou_
1160. This latter is the better of the two, though Wace was not a great
poet. It consists chiefly of octosyllabics, with a curious insertion of
Alexandrines in rhymed not assonanced _laisses_. Wace was followed by
Benoist de Sainte-More, who extended his Chronicle of the Dukes of
Normandy to more than forty thousand verses. The 'Life of St. Thomas'
(Becket), by Garnier de Pont St. Maxence, also deserves notice, as does
an anonymous poem on the English wars in Ireland. But the most
interesting of this group is probably the history[81] of William
Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, who died in 1219 and who during his life
played a great part in England. It abounds in passages of historical
interest and literary value. During the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, the practice of writing history in verse gradually died out,
yet some of the most important examples date from this time. Such are
the Chronicles of Philippe Mouskes[82], a Fleming, in more than thirty
thousand verses, extending from the Siege of Troy to the year 1243.
Mouskes is of some importance in literary history, because of the great
extent to which he has drawn on the Chansons de Gestes for his
information. In 1304 Guillaume Guiart, a native of Orleans, wrote in
twelve thousand verses a Chronicle of the thirteenth century, including
a few years earlier and later. There are a large number of other Verse
Chronicles, but few of them are of much importance historically, and
fewer still of any literary interest.
History, however, was by no means the only serious subject which took
this incongruous form in the middle ages. The amount of miscellaneous
verse written during the period between the end of the eleventh and the
beginning of the fifteenth century is indeed enormous. Only a very small
portion of it has ever been printed, and the mere summary description of
the manuscripts which contain it is as yet far from complete. If it be
said generally that, during the greater part of these three hundred
years, the first impulse of any one who wished to write, no matter on
what subject, was to write in verse, and that the popular notion of the
want of literary tastes in the middle ages is utterly mistaken, some
idea may be formed of the vast extent of literature, poetical in form,
which was then produced. Much no doubt of this literature is not in the
least worthy of detailed notice; much, whether worthy or not, must from
mere considerations of space and proportion remain unnoticed here. What
is possible, is to indicate briefly the chief forms, authors, and
subjects, which fall under the heading of this chapter, and to give a
somewhat detailed account of the great serious poem of mediaeval France,
the _Roman de la Rose_. Peculiarities of metre and so forth will be
indicated where it is necessary, but it may be said generally that the
great mass of this literature is in octosyllabic couplets.
[Sidenote: Miscellaneous Satirical Verse.]
It has already been observed in discussing the Fabliaux that the first
enquirers into old French literature were led to include a very
miscellaneous assortment of poems under that head; and it may now be
added that this miscellaneous assortment with much else constitutes the
_farrago_ of the present chapter. The two great poems of the _Roman du
Renart_ and the _Roman de la Rose_ stand as representatives of the more
or less serious poetry of the time, and everything else may be said to
be included between them. Beginning nearest to the _Roman du Renart_ and
its kindred Fabliaux, we find a vast number of half-satirical styles of
poetry, many, if not most of them, known (according to what has been
noted in the preface as characteristic of mediaeval literature) by
distinctive form-names. Of these _dits_ and _debats_ have already been
noticed, but it is not easy to give a notion of the number of the
existing examples, or of the extraordinary diversity of subjects to
which both, and especially the _dits_, extend. Perhaps some estimate may
be formed from the fact that the _dits_ of three Flemish poets alone,
Baudouin de Conde, Jean de Conde, and Watriquet de Couvin, fill four
stout octavo volumes[83]. The subjects of these and of the large number
of _dits_ composed by other writers and anonymous are almost
innumerable. The earliest are for the most part simple enumerations of
the names of streets, of street cries, of guilds, of coins, and
such-like things. By degrees they become more definitely didactic, and
at last allegorical moralising masters them as it does almost every
other kind of poetry in the fourteenth century. The _debat_, sometimes
called _dispute_, or _bataille_, is an easily understood variety of the
_dit_. Ruteboeuf's principal _debat_ has been named; another in a less
serious spirit is that between _Charlot et le Barbier_. There is a
_Bataille des Vins_, a _Bataille de Careme et de Charnage_, a _Debat de
l'Hiver et l'Ete_, etc., etc. Another name much used for half-satirical,
half-didactic verse was that of _Bible_, of which the most famous
(probably because it was the first known) is that of Guyot de
Provins,--a violent onslaught on the powers that were in Church and
State by a discontented monk. An extract from it will illustrate this
division of the subject as well as anything else:--
Des fisiciens me merveil:
de lor huevre et de lor conseil
rai ge certes mont grant merveille,
nule vie ne s'apareille
a la lor, trop par est diverse
et sor totes autres perverse.
bien les nomme li communs nons;
mais je ne cuit qu'i ne soit hons
qui ne les doie mont douter.