A Short History of French Literature
Ele vint au postic; si le deffrema, si s'en isci par mi les
rues de Biaucaire par devers l'onbre, ear la lune luisoit
molt clere, et erra tant qu'ele vint a le tor u ses amis
estoit. Li tors estoit faele de lius en lius, et ele se
quatist deles l'un des pilers. si s'estraint en son mantel,
si mist sen cief par mi une creveure de la tor qui vielle
estoit et anciienne, si oi Aucasin qui la dedens pleuroit et
faisoit mot grant dol et regretoit se douce amie que tant
amoit. et quant ele l'ot asses escoute, si comenca a dire.
ALAIN CHARTIER.
La court, affin que tu l'entendes, est ung couvent de gens
qui soubz faintise du bien commun sont assemblez pour eulx
interrompre; ear il n'y a gueres de gens qui ne vendent,
achaptent ou eschangent aucunes foiz leurs rentes ou leurs
propres vestemens; ear entre nous de la court nous sommes
marchans affectez qui achaptons les autres gens et
autresfoiz pour leur argent nous leur vendons nostre
humanite precieuse. Nous leur vendons et achaptons autruy
par flaterie ou par corrupcions; mais nous scavons tres bien
vendre nous mesmes a ceulx qui ont de nous a faire. Combien
donc y peus tu acquerir qui es certain sans doubte et sans
peril? veulx tu aller a la court vendre ou perdre ce bien de
vertu, que tu as acquis hors d'icelle court? Certes, frere,
tu demandes ce que tu deusses reffuser, tu te fies en ce
dont tu te deusses deffier et fiches ton esperance en ce que
te tire a peril. Et se tu y viens, la court te servira de
tant de mensonges controverses d'une part, et de l'autre de
bailler tant de tours et de charges que tu auras dedans toy
mesmes bataille continuelle et soussiz angoisseux et pour
certain homme qui pourra bonnement dire que ceste vie fust
bieneuree qui par tant de tempestes est achatee et en tant
de contrarietez esprouvee.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] Ed. Montaiglon. Paris, 1854.
[143] A good example of these is the _Saint Voyage de Jerusalem_ of the
Seigneur d'Anglure (1385), edited by MM. Bonnardot and Longnon. Paris,
1878.
[144] _Nouvelles du 13'e et du 14'e siecle._ Ed. Moland et Hericault. 2
vols. Paris, 1856.
[145] Paris, 1876.
[146] Paris, 1858.
[147] Ed. Settegast. Halle, 1881.
[148] Ed. Guichard. Paris, 1843.
[149] Ed. Jannet. Paris, 1853; 2nd ed. 1857.
[150] Ed. Wright. Paris, 1858.
[151] Ed. Fournier, _Theatre Francais avant la Renaissance_. Paris, n. d.
[152] Ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, viii. 1-259.
INTERCHAPTER I.
SUMMARY OF MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE.
In the foregoing book a view has been given of the principal
developments of mediaeval literature in France. The survey has extended,
taking the extremest chronological limits, over some eight centuries.
But, until the end of the eleventh, the monuments of ancient French
literature are few and scattered, and the actual manuscripts which we
possess date in hardly any case further back than the twelfth. In
reality the history of mediaeval literature in France is the history of
the productions of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and early
fifteenth centuries with a long but straggling introduction, ranging
from the eighth or even the seventh. Its palmy time is unquestionably in
the twelfth and the thirteenth. During these two hundred years almost
every kind of literature is attempted. Vast numbers of epic poems are
written; one great story, that of Arthur, exercises the imagination as
hardly any other story has exercised it either in ancient or in modern
times; the drama is begun in all its varieties of tragedy, comedy, and
opera; lyric poetry finds abundant and exquisite expression; history
begins to be written, not indeed from the philosophic point of view, but
with vivid and picturesque presentment of fact; elaborate codes are
drawn; vernacular homilies, not mere rude colloquial discourses, are
composed; the learning of the age, such as it is, finds popular
treatment; and in particular a satiric literature, more abundant and
more racy if less polished than any that classical antiquity has left
us, is committed to writing. It is often wondered at and bewailed that
this vigorous growth was succeeded by a period of comparative stagnation
in which little advance was made, and in which not a little decided
falling off is noticeable. Except the formal lyric poetry of the
fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and the multiplied dramatic
energy of the latter, nothing novel or vigorous appears for some hundred
and forty years, until the extreme verge of the period, when the
substitution of the prose tale, as exemplified in the work attributed to
Antoine de la Salle, for the verse Fabliau, opens a prospect which four
centuries of progress have not closed. The early perfection of Italian,
a language later to start than French, has been regretfully compared
with this, and the blame has been thrown on the imperfection of
mediaeval arrangements for educating the people. The complaint is
mistaken, and almost foolish. It is not necessary to look much further
than Italian itself to see the Nemesis of a too early development.
French, like English, which had a yet tardier literary growth, has
pursued its course unhasting, unresting, to the present hour. Italian
since the close of the sixteenth century has contributed not a single
masterpiece to European literature, and not much that can be called good
second-rate. It is not impossible that the political troubles of
France--the Hundred Years' War especially--checked the intellectual
development of the country, but if so, the check was in the long run
altogether salutary. The middle ages were allowed to work themselves
out--to produce their own natural fruit before the full influx of
classical literature. What is more, a breathing time was allowed after
the exhaustion of the first set of influences, before the second was
felt. Hence the French renaissance was a far more vigorous growth than
the renaissance of Italy, which displays at once the signs of precocity
and of premature decay. But we are more immediately concerned at the
present moment with the literary results of the middle ages themselves.
It is only of late years that it has been possible fully to estimate
these, and it is now established beyond the possibility of doubt that to
France almost every great literary style as distinguished from great
individual works is at this period due. The testimony of Brunetto Latini
as to French being the common literary tongue of Europe in the
thirteenth century has been quoted, and those who have read the
foregoing chapters attentively will be able to recall innumerable
instances of the literary supremacy of France. It must of course be
remembered that she enjoyed for a long time the advantage of enlisting
in her service the best wits of Southern England, of the wide district
dominated by the Provencal dialects, and of no small part of Germany and
of Northern Italy. But these countries took far more than they gave: the
Chansons de Gestes were absorbed by Italy, the Arthurian Romances by
Germany; the Fabliaux crossed the Alps to assume a prose dress in the
Southern tongue; the mysteries and miracles made their way to every
corner of Europe to be copied and developed. To the origination of the
most successful of all artificial forms of poetry--the sonnet--France
has indeed no claim, but this is almost a solitary instance. The three
universally popular books (to use the word loosely) of profane
literature in the middle ages, the epic of Arthur, the satire of Reynard
the Fox, the allegorical romance of the Rose, are of French origin. In
importance as in bulk no literature of these four centuries could dare
to vie with French.
This astonishing vigour of imaginative writing was however accompanied
by a corresponding backwardness in the application of the vernacular to
the use of the exacter and more serious departments of letters. Before
Comines, the French chronicle was little more than gossip, though it was
often the gossip of genius. No philosophical, theological, ethical, or
political work deserving account was written in French prose before the
beginning of the sixteenth century. The very language remained utterly
unfitted for any such use. Its vocabulary, though enormously rich in
mere volume, was destitute of terms of the subtlety and precision
necessary for serious prose; its syntax was hardly equal to anything but
a certain loose and flowing narration, which, when turned into the
channel of argument, became either bald or prolix. The universal use of
Latin for graver purposes had stunted and disabled it. At the same time
great changes passed over the language itself. In the fourteenth century
it lost with its inflections not a little of its picturesqueness, and
had as yet hit upon no means of supplying the want. The loose
orthography of the middle ages had culminated in a fantastic redundance
of consonants which was reproduced in the earliest printed books. This,
as readers of Rabelais are aware, was an admirable assistance to
grotesque effect, but it was fatal to elegance or dignity except in the
omnipotent hands of a master like Rabelais himself. In the fifteenth
century, moreover, the stereotyped forms of poetry were losing their
freshness and grace while retaining their stately precision. The faculty
of sustained verse narrative had fled the country, only to return at
very long intervals and in very few cases. The natural and almost
childish outspokenness of early times had brought about in all
departments of comic literature a revolting coarseness of speech. The
farce and the prose tale almost outdo the more naif _fabliau_ in this.
Nothing like a critical spirit had yet manifested itself in matters
literary, unless the universal following of a few accepted models may be
called criticism. The very motives of the mediaeval literature, its
unquestioning faith, its sense of a narrow circle of knowledge
surrounded by a vast unknown, its acceptance of classes and orders in
church and state (tempered as this acceptance had been by the sharpest
satire on particulars but by hardly any argument on general points),
were losing their force. Everything was ready for a renaissance, and the
next book will show how the Renaissance came and what it did.
BOOK II.
THE RENAISSANCE.
CHAPTER I.
VILLON, COMINES, AND THE LATER FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
[Sidenote: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance.]
[Sidenote: Characteristics of Fifteenth-century Literature.]
To determine at what period exactly mediaeval literature ceases in
France and modern literature begins, is not one of the easiest problems
of literary history. It has sometimes been solved by the obvious
expedient of making out of the fifteenth century a period of transition,
sometimes by continuing the classification of 'mediaeval' until the time
when Marot and Rabelais gave unmistakeable evidence of the presence and
working of the modern spirit. Perhaps, however, there may, after all,
have been something in the instinct which, in words clumsily enough
chosen, made Boileau date modern French poetry from Villon[153], and
there can hardly be any doubt that, as far as spirit if not form goes,
modern French prose dates from Comines. These two contemporary authors,
moreover, have in them the characteristic which perhaps more than any
other distinguishes modern from mediaeval literature, the predominance
of the personal element. In their works, especially if Villon be taken
with the immediately preceding and partially contemporary Charles
d'Orleans, a difference of the most striking kind is noticeable at once.
It is not that the prince who served the god Nonchaloir so piously is