A Short History of French Literature
Amyot. Minor Translators. Dolet. Fauchet. Pasquier.
Henri Estienne. Herberay. Palissy. Pare. Olivier de Serres.
VII. MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME 241
Disenchantment of the late Renaissance. Montaigne.
Charron. Du Vair. Bodin and other Political Writers.
Brantome. Montluc. La Noue. Agrippa d'Aubigne.
Marguerite de Valois. Vieilleville. Palma-Cayet. Pierre
de l'Estoile. D'Ossat. Sully. Jeannin. Minor Memoir-writers.
General Historians.
VIII. THE SATYRE MENIPPEE. REGNIER 259
Satyre Menippee. Regnier.
INTERCHAPTER II. SUMMARY OF RENAISSANCE LITERATURE 270
BOOK III.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
CHAP. I. POETS 274
Malherbe. The School of Malherbe. Vers de Societe.
Voiture. Epic School. Chapelain. Bacchanalian School.
Saint Amant. La Fontaine. Boileau. Minor Poets of the
Seventeenth Century.
II. DRAMATISTS 290
Montchrestien. Hardy. Minor predecessors of Corneille.
Rotrou. Corneille. Racine. Minor Tragedians. Development
of Comedy. Moliere. Contemporaries of
Moliere. The School of Moliere. Regnard. Characteristics
of Molieresque Comedy.
III. NOVELISTS 319
D'Urfe. The Heroic Romances. Scarron. Cyrano de
Bergerac. Furetiere. Madame de la Fayette. Fairy
Tales. Perrault.
IV. HISTORIANS, MEMOIR-WRITERS, LETTER-WRITERS 332
General Historians. Mezeray. Historical Essayists.
St. Real. Memoir-writers. Rohan. Bassompierre.
Madame de Motteville. Cardinal de Retz. Mademoiselle.
La Rochefoucauld. Saint Simon. Madame de Sevigne.
Tallemant des Reaux. Historical Antiquaries. Du Cange.
V. ESSAYISTS, MINOR MORALISTS, CRITICS 354
Balzac. Pascal. La Rochefoucauld. La Bruyere.
VI. PHILOSOPHERS 368
Descartes. Port Royal. Bayle. Malebranche.
VII. THEOLOGIANS AND PREACHERS 379
St. Francois de Sales. Bossuet. Fenelon. Massillon.
Bourdaloue. Minor Preachers.
INTERCHAPTER III. SUMMARY OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 391
BOOK IV.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
CHAP. I. POETS 395
Literary Degeneracy of the Eighteenth Century, especially
manifest in Poetry. J. B. Rousseau. Voltaire. Descriptive
Poets. Delille. Lebrun. Parny. Chenier. Minor
Poets. Light Verse. Piron. Desaugiers.
CHAP. II. DRAMATISTS 406
Divisions of Drama. La Motte. Crebillon the Elder.
Voltaire and his followers. Lesage. Comedie Larmoyante.
La Chaussee. Diderot. Marivaux. Beaumarchais. Characteristics
of Eighteenth-century Drama.
III. NOVELISTS 416
Lesage. Marivaux. Prevost. Voltaire. Diderot. Rousseau.
Crebillon the Younger. Bernardin de St. Pierre. Restif
de la Bretonne. Chateaubriand. Madame de Stael.
Xavier de Maistre. Benjamin Constant.
IV. HISTORIANS, MEMOIR-WRITERS, LETTER-WRITERS 436
Characteristics and Divisions of Eighteenth-century History.
Rollin. Dubos. Boulainvilliers. Voltaire. Mably.
Rulhiere. Memoirs. Mme. de Staal-Delaunay. Duclos.
Besenval. Madame d'Epinay. Minor Memoirs. Memoirs
of the Revolutionary Period. Abundance of Letter-writers.
Mademoiselle Aisse. Madame du Deffand. Mademoiselle
de Lespinasse. Voltaire. Diderot. Galiani.
V. ESSAYISTS, MINOR MORALISTS, CRITICS 452
Occasional Writing in the Eighteenth-century. Periodicals.
Fontenelle. La Motte. Vauvenargues. D'Aguesseau.
Duclos. Marmontel. La Harpe. Thomas. Orthodox
Apologists. Freron. Philosophe Criticism. D'Alembert.
Diderot. Les Feuilles de Grimm. Diderot's Salons. His
General Criticism. Newspapers of the Revolution. The
Influence of Journalism. Chamfort. Rivarol. Joubert.
Courier. Senancour.
VI. PHILOSOPHERS 473
The philosophe movement. Montesquieu. Lettres Persanes.
Grandeur et Decadence des Romains. Esprit des
Lois. Voltaire. The Encyclopaedia. Diderot. D'Alembert.
Rousseau. Political Economists. Vauban, Quesnay,
etc. Turgot. Condorcet. Volney. La Mettrie. Helvetius.
Systeme de la Nature. Condillac. Joseph de
Maistre. Bonald.
VII. SCIENTIFIC WRITERS 499
Buffon. Lesser Scientific Writers. Voyages and Travels.
Linguistic and Literary Study.
INTERCHAPTER IV. SUMMARY OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 504
BOOK V.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 510
The Romantic Movement. Writers of the later Transition.
Beranger. Lamartine. Lamennais. Victor Cousin. Beyle.
Nodier. Delavigne. Soumet. The Romantic Propaganda
in Periodicals. Victor Hugo. Sainte-Beuve. His Method.
Dangers of the Method. Dumas the Elder. Honore de
Balzac. George Sand. Merimee. Theophile Gautier.
Alfred de Musset. Influence of the Romantic Leaders.
Minor Poets of 1830. Alfred de Vigny. Auguste Barbier.
Gerard de Nerval. Curiosites Romantiques. Petrus Borel.
Louis Bertrand. Second Group of Romantic Poets.
Theodore de Banville. Leconte de Lisle. Charles Baudelaire.
Minor Poets of the Second Romantic Group.
Dupont. The Parnasse. Minor and later Dramatists.
Scribe. Ponsard. Emile Augier. Eugene Labiche. Dumas
the Younger. Victorien Sardou. Classes of Nineteenth-century
Fiction. Minor and later Novelists. Jules Janin.
Charles de Bernard. Jules Sandeau. Octave Feuillet.
Murger. Edmond About. Feydeau. Gustave Droz.
Flaubert. The Naturalists. Emile Zola. Journalists
and Critics. Paul de St. Victor. Hippolyte Taine.
Academic Critics. Linguistic and Literary Study of
French. Philosophical Writers. Comte. Theological
Writers. Montalembert. Ozanam. Lacordaire. Ernest
Renan. Historians. Thierry. Thiers. Guizot. Mignet.
Michelet. Quinet. Tocqueville. Minor Historians.
CONCLUSION 579
INDEX 591
BOOK I.
MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE.
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGINS.
[Sidenote: Relation of French to Latin.]
Of all European literatures the French is, by general consent, that
which possesses the most uniformly fertile, brilliant, and unbroken
history. In actual age it may possibly yield to others, but the
connection between the language of the oldest and the language of the
newest French literature is far closer than in these other cases, and
the fecundity of mediaeval writers in France far exceeds that of their
rivals elsewhere. For something like three centuries England, Germany,
Italy, and more doubtfully and to a smaller extent, Spain, were content
for the most part to borrow the matter and the manner of their literary
work from France. This brilliant literature was however long before it
assumed a regularly organized form, and in order that it might do so a
previous literature and a previous language had to be dissolved and
precipitated anew. With a few exceptions, to be presently noticed,
French literature is not to be found till after the year 1000, that is
to say until a greater lapse of time had passed since Caesar's campaigns
than has passed from the later date to the present day. Taking the
earliest of all monuments, the Strasburg Oaths, as starting-point, we
may say that French language and French literature were nine hundred
years in process of formation. The result was a remarkable one in
linguistic history. French is unquestionably a daughter of Latin, yet it
is not such a daughter as Italian or Spanish. A knowledge of the older
language would enable a reader who knew no other to spell out, more or
less painfully, the meaning of most pages of the two Peninsular
languages; it would hardly enable him to do more than guess at the
meaning of a page of French. The long process of gestation transformed
the appearance of the new tongue completely, though its grammatical
forms and the bulk of its vocabulary are beyond all question Latin. The
history of this process belongs to the head of language, not of
literature, and must be sought elsewhere. It is sufficient to say that
the first mention of a _lingua romana rustica_ is found in the seventh
century, while allusions in Latin documents show us its gradual use in
pulpit and market-place, and even as a vehicle for the rude songs of the
minstrel, long before any trace of written French can be found.
[Sidenote: Influence of Latin Literature.]
Meanwhile, however, Latin was doing more than merely furnishing the
materials of the new language. The literary faculty of the Gauls was
early noticed, and before their subjection had long been completed they
were adepts at using the language of the conquerors. It does not fall
within our plan to notice in detail the Latin literature of Gaul and
early France, but the later varieties of that literature deserve some
little attention, because of the influence which they undoubtedly
exercised on the literary forms of the new language. In early French
there is little trace of the influence of the Latin forms which we call
classical. It was the forms of the language which has been said to have
'dived under ground with Naevius and come up again with Prudentius' that
really influenced the youthful tongue. Ecclesiastical Latin, and
especially the wonderful melody of the early Latin hymn-writers, had by
far the greatest effect upon it. Ingenious and not wholly groundless
efforts have been made to trace the principal forms of early French
writing to the services and service-books of the church, the chronicle
to the sacred histories, the lyric to the psalm and the hymn, the
mystery to the elaborate and dramatic ritual of the church. The _Chanson
de Geste_, indeed, displays in its matter and style many traces of
Germanic origin, but the metre with its regular iambic cadence and its
rigid caesura testifies to Latin influence. The service thus performed
to the literature was not unlike the service performed to the language.
In the one case the scaffolding, or rather the skeleton, was furnished
in the shape of grammar; in the other a similar skeleton, in the shape
of prosody, was supplied. Important additions were indeed made by the
fresh elements introduced. Rhyme Latin had itself acquired. But of the
musical refrains which are among the most charming features of early
French lyric poetry we find no vestige in the older tongue.
[Sidenote: Early Monuments.]
The history of the French language, as far as concerns literature, from
the seventh to the eleventh century, can be rapidly given. The earliest
mention of the Romance tongue as distinguished from Latin and from
German dialect refers to 659, and occurs in the life of St. Mummolinus
or Momolenus, bishop of Noyon, who was chosen for that office because of
his knowledge of the two languages, Teutonic and Romanic[5]. We may
therefore assume that Mummolinus preached in the _lingua Romana_. To the
same century is referred the song of St. Faron, bishop of Meaux[6], but
this only exists in Latin, and a Romance original is inferred rather
than proved. In the eighth century the Romance eloquence of St. Adalbert
is commended[7], and to the same period are referred the glossaries of
Reichenau and Cassel, lists containing in the first case Latin and
Romance equivalents, in the second Teutonic and Romance[8]. By the
beginning of the ninth century it was compulsory for bishops to preach
in Romance, and to translate such Latin homilies as they read[9]; and to
this same era has been referred a fragmentary commentary on the Book of
Jonah[10], included in the latest collection of 'Monuments[11].' In 842
we have the Strasburg Oaths, celebrated alike in French history and