A History of French Literature

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Edward Dowden. A History of French Literature

PREFACE

BOOK THE FIRST. THE MIDDLE AGES

CHAPTER I. NARRATIVE RELIGIOUS POETRY—THE NATIONAL EPIC—THE EPIC OF ANTIQUITY—ROMANCES OF LOVE AND COURTESY

I. NARRATIVE RELIGIOUS POETRY

II. THE NATIONAL EPIC

III. THE EPIC OF ANTIQUITY

IV. ROMANCES OF LOVE AND COURTESY

CHAPTER II. LYRICAL POETRY—FABLES, AND RENARD THE FOX—FABLIAUX—THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE

I. LYRICAL POETRY

II. FABLES, AND RENARD THE FOX

III. FABLIAUX

IV. THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE

CHAPTER III. DIDACTIC LITERATURE—SERMONS—HISTORY

I. DIDACTIC LITERATURE

II. SERMONS

III. HISTORY

CHAPTER IV. LATEST MEDIÆVAL POETS—THE DRAMA

I. LATEST MEDIÆVAL POETS

II. THE DRAMA

BOOK THE SECOND. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I. RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION

CHAPTER II. FROM THE PLÉIADE TO MONTAIGNE

BOOK THE THIRD. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I. LITERARY FREEDOM AND LITERARY ORDER

CHAPTER II. THE FRENCH ACADEMY—PHILOSOPHY (DESCARTES)—RELIGION (PASCAL)

CHAPTER III. THE DRAMA (MONTCHRESTIEN TO CORNEILLE)

CHAPTER IV. SOCIETY AND PUBLIC LIFE IN LETTERS

CHAPTER V. BOILEAU AND LA FONTAINE

CHAPTER VI. COMEDY AND TRAGEDY—MOLIÈRE—RACINE

I

II

CHAPTER VII. BOSSUET AND THE PREACHERS—FÉNELON

I

II

III

CHAPTER VIII. TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

BOOK THE FOURTH. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I. MEMOIRS AND HISTORY—POETRY—THE THEATRE—THE NOVEL

I

II

III

IV

CHAPTER II. MONTESQUIEU—VAUVENARGUES—VOLTAIRE

I

II

III

CHAPTER III. DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA—PHILOSOPHERS, ECONOMISTS, CRITICS—BUFFON

I

II

III

CHAPTER IV. ROUSSEAU—BEAUMARCHAIS—BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE—ANDRÉ CHÉNIER

I

II

III

IV

BOOK THE FIFTH. 1789-1850

CHAPTER I. THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMPIRE—MADAME DE STAËL—CHATEAUBRIAND

I

II

III

CHAPTER II. THE CONFLICT OF IDEAS

CHAPTER III. POETRY OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

CHAPTER IV. THE NOVEL

I

II

III

IV

V

CHAPTER V. HISTORY—LITERARY CRITICISM

I

II

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE MIDDLE AGES

SIXTEENTH CENTURY

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

REVOLUTION AND NINETEENTH CENTURY

INDEX

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The literature of the Middle Ages is an expression of the spirit of feudalism and of the genius of the Church. From the union of feudalism and Christianity arose the chivalric ideals, the new courtesy, the homage to woman. Abstract ideas, ethical, theological, and those of amorous metaphysics, were rendered through allegory into art. Against these high conceptions, and the overstrained sentiment connected with them, the positive intellect and the mocking temper of France reacted; a literature of satire arose. By degrees the bourgeois spirit encroached upon and overpowered the chivalric ideals. At length the mediæval conceptions were exhausted. Literature dwindled as its sources were impoverished; ingenuities and technical formalities replaced imagination. The minds of men were prepared to accept the new influences of the Renaissance and the Reformation.

The oldest monument of the French language is found in the Strasburg Oaths (842); the oldest French poem possessing literary merit is the Vie de Saint Alexis, of which a redaction belonging to the middle of the eleventh century survives. The passion of piety and the passion of combat, the religious and the warrior motives, found early expression in literature; from the first arose the Lives of Saints and other devout writings, from the second arose the chansons de geste. They grew side by side, and had a like manner of development. If one takes precedence of the other, it is only because by the chances of time Saint Alexis remains to us, and the forerunners of the Chanson de Roland are lost. With each species of poetry cantilènes—short lyrico-epic poems—preceded the narrative form. Both the profane and what may be called the religious chanson de geste were sung or recited by the same jongleurs—men of a class superior to the vulgar purveyors of amusement. Gradually the poems of both kinds expanded in length, and finally prose narrative took the place of verse.

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The didactic literature, moral and scientific, of the Middle Ages is abundant, and possesses much curious interest, but it is seldom original in substance, and seldom valuable from the point of view of literary style. In great part it is translated or derived from Latin sources. The writers were often clerks or laymen who had turned from the vanities of youth—fabliau or romance—and now aimed at edification or instruction. Science in the hands of the clergy must needs be spiritualised and moralised; there were sermons to be found in stones, pious allegories in beast and bird; mystic meanings in the alphabet, in grammar, in the chase, in the tourney, in the game of chess. Ovid and Virgil were sanctified to religious uses. The earliest versified Bestiary, which is also a Volucrary, a Herbary, and a Lapidary, that of Philippe de Thaon (before 1135), is versified from the Latin Physiologus, itself a translation from the work of an Alexandrian Greek of the second century. In its symbolic zoology the lion and the pelican are emblems of Christ; the unicorn is God; the crocodile is the devil; the stones "turrobolen," which blaze when they approach each other, are representative of man and woman. A Bestiaire d'Amour was written by Richard de Fournival, in which the emblems serve for the interpretation of human love. A Lapidary, with a medical—not a moral—purpose, by Marbode, Bishop of Rennes, was translated more than once into French, and had, indeed, an European fame.

The Latin sermons of the Middle Ages were countless; but it is not until Gerson and the close of the fourteenth century that we find a series of discourses by a known preacher written and pronounced in French. It is maintained that these Latin sermons, though prepared in the language of the Church, were delivered, when addressed to lay audiences, in the vernacular, and that those composite sermons in the macaronic style, that is, partly in French, partly in Latin, which appear in the thirteenth century and are frequent in the fifteenth, were the work of reporters or redactors among the auditory. On the other hand, it is argued that both Latin and French sermons were pronounced as each might seem suitable, before the laity, and that the macaronic style was actually practised in the pulpit. Perhaps we may accept the opinion that the short and simple homilies designed for the people, little esteemed as compositions, were rarely thought worthy of preservation in a Latin form; those discourses which remain to us, if occasionally used before an unlearned audience, seem to have been specially intended for clerkly hearers. The sermons of St. Bernard, which have been preserved in Latin and in a French translation of the thirteenth century, were certainly not his eloquent popular improvisations; they are doctrinal, with crude or curious allegorisings of Holy Scripture. Those of Maurice de Sully, Archbishop of Paris, probably also translated from the Latin, are simpler in manner and more practical in their teaching; but in these characteristics they stand apart from the other sermons of the twelfth century.

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