A Short History of French Literature
Cum il me plaist ge me desguise;
Moult sunt en moi mue li vers,
Moult sunt li faiz aux diz divers.
Si fais cheoir dedans mes pieges
Le monde par mes privileges;
Ge puis confesser et assoldre,
(Ce ne me puet nus prelas toldre,)
Toutes gens ou que ge les truisse;
Ne sai prelat nul qui ce puisse,
Fors l'apostole solement
Qui fist cest establissement
Tout en la faveur de nostre ordre.'
FOOTNOTES:
[77] This is an account of the battle of thirty Englishmen and thirty
Bretons in the Edwardian wars.
[78] There is, it appears, no authority for the Christian name of Robert
which used to be given to Wace.
[79] Wace's _Brut_ is not the only one. The title seems to have become a
common name.
[80] The old edition of the _Roman de Rou_, by Pluquet, has been
entirely superseded by that of Dr. Hugo Andresen. 2 vols. Heilbronn,
1877-1879.
[81] Discovered recently in the Middlehill collection, and known chiefly
by an article in _Romania_ (Jan. 1882), giving an abstract and
specimens.
[82] Ed. Reiffenberg. Brussels, 1835-1845.
[83] Ed. Scheler. Brussels, 1866-1868.
[84] Well edited by Koch. Heilbronn, 1879.
[85] See especially _Hysminias and Hysmine_.
[86] Ed. F. Michel. 2 vols. Paris, 1864.
[87] _Dangier_ is not exactly 'danger.' To be 'en dangier de quelqu'un'
is to be 'in somebody's power.' _Dangier_ is supposed to stand for the
guardian of the beloved, father, brother, husband, etc. This at least
has been the usual interpretation, and seems to me to be much the more
probable. M. Gaston Paris, however, and others, see in _Dangier_ the
natural coyness and resistance of the beloved object, not any external
influence.
[88] Chaucer's authorship of the existing translation has been denied.
It is, however, certain that he did translate the poem.
[89] Ed. Stehlich. Halle, 1881.
[90] Ed. Foerster. Berne, 1880.
CHAPTER VIII.
ROMANS D'AVENTURES.
[Sidenote: Distinguishing features of Romans d'Aventures.]
The remarkable fecundity of early French literature in narrative poetry
on the great scale was not limited to the Chanson de Geste, the
Arthurian Romance, and the classical story wrought into the likeness of
one or the other of these. Towards the end of the twelfth or the
beginning of the thirteenth century a new class of narrative poems
arose, derived from each and all of these kinds, but marked by important
differences. The new form immediately reacted on the forms which had
given it birth, and produced new Chansons de Gestes, new Arthurian
Romances, and new classical stories fashioned after its own image. This
is what is called the Roman d'Aventures, of which the first and main
feature is open and almost avowed fictitiousness, and the second the
more or less complete abandonment of any attempt at cyclic arrangement
or subordination to a central theme.
[Sidenote: Looser application of the term.]
[Sidenote: Classes of Romans d'Aventures.]
Until quite recently it was not unusual to apply the term Roman
d'Aventures with less strictness, and to make it include the Romances of
the Round Table. There can, however, be no doubt that it is far better
to adopt Jean Bodel's three classes as distinguishing into separate
groups the epic poetry of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and to
restrict the title Romans d'Aventures to the later narrative
developments of the thirteenth and fourteenth. For the second
distinguishing mark which we have just indicated is striking and of more
or less universal application. In these later poems the ambition of the
writer to class his work under and with some precedent work is almost
entirely absent. He allows himself complete freedom, though he may
sometimes, in order to give his characters greater interest, connect
them nominally with some famous personage or event of the earlier
cycles. This tendency to shake off the shackles of cyclicism is early
apparent. There are episodes even in the Chansons de Gestes which have
little or no reference to Charlemagne or his peers: the Arthurian
Romances in prose and verse contain long digressions, holding but very
loosely to the Table Round, such as the adventures of Tristram and
Percivale, and still more the singular episode of Grimaud in the _Saint
Graal_. As for the third class, the Trouveres almost from the beginning
assumed the greatest licence in their handling of the classical legends.
These accordingly were less affected than any others by the change. It
is possible to divide the Romans d'Aventures themselves under the three
headings. It is further possible to indicate a large class of Chansons
de Gestes over which the influence of the Roman d'Aventures has passed.
But the Chanson having a special formal peculiarity--the assonanced or
rhymed tirade--survived the new influence better than the other two, and
keeps its name, and to some extent its character, while the Romances of
Arthur and antiquity are simply lost in the general body of tales of
adventure. These tales are for the most part written in octosyllabic
couplets on the model of Chrestien, but a very few, such as _Brun de la
Montaigne_, imitate the exterior characteristics of the Chanson.
It is further to be noticed that while the earlier poems are mostly
anonymous, the Romans d'Aventures are generally, though not always,
signed, and bear characteristics of particular authorship. In some
cases, notably in those of Adenes le Roi and Raoul de Houdenc, we have a
body of work signed or otherwise identified, which enables us to
attribute a definite literary character and position to its authors.
This, as we have noted, is impossible in the case of the national epics,
and not too easy in that of the Arthurian Romances. Until quite recently
however the Roman d'Aventures has had less of the attention of editors
than its forerunners, and the works which compose the class are still to
some extent unpublished.
[Sidenote: Adenes le Roi.]
Adenes or Adans le Roi perhaps derived his surname from the function of
king of the minstrels, if he performed it, at the court of Henry III,
duke of Brabant. He was, most likely, born in the second quarter of the
thirteenth century, and the last probable allusion to him which we have
occurs in the year 1297. The events of his life are only known from his
own poems, and consist chiefly of travels in company with different
princesses and princes of Flanders and Brabant. His literary work is
however of great importance. It consists partly of refashionings of
three Chansons de Gestes, _Les enfances Ogier_, _Berte aus grans Pies_,
and _Bueves de Commarchis_[91]. In these three poems Adenes works up the
old epics into the form fashionable in his time, and as we possess the
older versions of the first and last, the comparison of the two forms
affords a literary study of the highest interest. His last, longest, and
most important work is the Roman d'Aventures of _Cleomades_[92], a poem
extending to 20,000 verses, and not less valuable for its intrinsic
merit than as a type of its class. Its popularity in the middle ages was
immense. Froissart gives it the place occupied in the _Inferno_ by
_Lancelot_ in his description of his declaration of love to his
mistress, and allusions to it under its second title of _Le Cheval de
Fust_[93] are frequent. The most prominent feature in the story is the
introduction of a wooden horse, like that known to everybody in the
Arabian Nights, which, started and guided by means of pegs, transports
its rider whithersoever he will. Its great length allows of a very long
series of adventures, all of which are told in spirited and flowing
verse, though with considerable prolixity and a certain abuse of stock
descriptions. These two faults characterise all the Romans d'Aventures
and the Chansons which were remodelled in their style. The merits of
_Cleomades_ are not so universally found, but its extreme length is not
common. Few other Romans d'Aventures exceed 10,000 lines. An extract
from this poem will well illustrate the manner of this important class
of composition:--
Cleomades vit un chastel
encoste un plain, tres fort et bel,
ou il ot mainte bele tour.
bos et rivieres vit entour,
vignes et praieries grans.
mult fu li chastiaus bien seans.
la facon dou castel deisse,
mais je dout mult que ne meisse
trop longement au deviser:
pour ce m'en voel briement passer.
Du chastel vous dirai le non:
miols seant ne vit aine nus hom,
lors l'apieloit on Chastel-noble.
n'ot tel dusque en Constantinoble,
ne de la dusque en Osterice
n'ot plus bel, plus fort ne plus rice.
carmans a cel point i estoit
que Cleomades vint la droit.
forment li sambloit li chastiaus
de toutes pars riches et biaus.
Cleomades lors s'avisa
que viers le chastel se trera.
bien pensoit qu'en tel liu manoient
gent qui de grant afaire estoient.
che fu si qu'apries l'ajournee
mult faisoit bele matinee,
car mais estoit nouviaus entres:
c'est uns tans ki mult est ames
et de toutes gens conjois;
pour cou a non mais li jolis.
une tres grant tour haute et forte
avoit ases pries de la porte,
ki estoit couverte de plon,
plate deseure, car adon
les faisoit on ensi couvrir
pour engins et pour assallir.
Cleomades a avisee
la tour ki estoit haute et lee;
lors pense qu'il s'arestera
sor cele tour tant qu'il savra,
se il puet, la certainite
quel pais c'est la verite.
lors a son cheval adrechie
viers la tour de marbre entaillie.
les chevilletes si tourna
que droit sour la tour aresta.
si coiement s'est avales
que sour aighe coie vait nes.
[Sidenote: Raoul de Houdenc.]
Raoul de Houdenc is an earlier poet than Adenes, and represents the
Roman d'Aventures in its infancy, when it still found it necessary to
attach itself to the great cycle of the Round Table. His works, besides
some shorter poems[94], consist of the _Roman des Eles_ (Ailes), a
semi-allegorical composition, describing the wings and feathers of
chivalry, that is to say, the great chivalrous virtues, among which
Raoul, like a herald as he was, gives Largesse the first place; of
_Meraugis de Portlesguez_, an important composition, possessing some
marked peculiarities of style; and possibly also of the _Vengeance de
Raguidel_, in which the author works out one of the innumerable
unfinished episodes of the great epic of _Percevale_. Thus Raoul de
Houdenc occupies no mean place in French literature, inasmuch as he
indicates the starting-point of two great branches, the Roman
d'Aventures and the allegorical poem, and this at a very early date.
This date is not known exactly; but it was certainly before 1228, when
the Trouvere Huon de Mery alludes to him, and classes him with Chrestien
as a master of French verse. He has in truth some very noteworthy
peculiarities. The chief of these, which must soon strike any reader of
_Meraugis_, is his tendency to _enjambement_ or overlapping of couplets.
It is a curious feature in the history of French verse that the
isolation of the couplet has constantly recurred in its history, and
that as constantly reformers have striven to break up the monotony so
produced by this process of _enjambement_. Perhaps Raoul is the earliest
who thus, as an indignant critic put it at the first representation of
_Hernani_, 'broke up verses, and threw them out of window.' Besides this
metrical characteristic, the thing most noteworthy in his poems (as
might indeed have been expected from his composition of the _Roman des
Eles_) is a tendency to allegorising, and to scholastic disquisitions on
points of amatory casuistry. The whole plot of _Meraugis_ indeed turns