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FRENCH LITERATURE
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See also:FRENCH LITERATURE . Origins.—The See also:history of See also:French literature in the proper sense of the See also:term can hardly be said to extend farther back than the rlth See also:century . The actual See also:manuscripts which we possess are seldom of older date than the century subsequent to this . But there is no doubt that by the end at least of the 11th century the French See also:language, as a completely organized See also:medium of See also:literary expression, was in full, varied and See also:constant use . For many centuries previous to this, literature had been composed in See also:France, or by natives of that See also:country, using the term France in its full See also:modern acceptation; but until the 9th century, if not later, the written language of France, so far as we know, was Latin; and despite the practice of not a few literary historians, it does not seem reasonable to See also:notice Latin writings in a history of French literature . Such a history properly busies itself only with the monuments of French itself from the See also:time when the so-called Lingua Romany Rustica assumed a sufficiently See also:independent See also:form to deserve to be called a new language . This time it is indeed impossible exactly to determine, and the See also:period at which literary compositions, as distinguished from See also:mere conversation, began to employ the new See also:tongue is entirely unknown . As See also:early as the 7th century the Lingua See also:Romana, as distinguished from Latin and from See also:Teutonic dialects, is mentioned, and this Lingua Romana would be of See also:necessity used for purposes of clerical admonition, especially in the country districts, though we need not suppose that such addresses had a very literary See also:character . On the other See also:hand, the mention, at early See also:dates, of certain cantilenae or songs com- posed in the vulgar language has served for basis to a super- structure of much ingenious See also:argument with regard to the highly interesting problem of the origin of the Chansons de Geste, the earliest and one of the greatest literary developments of See also:northern French . It is sufficient in this See also:article, where See also:speculation would be out of See also:place, to mention that only two such cantilenae actually exist, and that neither is French . One of the 9th century, the " See also:Lay of Saucourt," is in a Teutonic See also:dialect; the other, the " See also:Song of St Faron," is of the 7th century, but exists only in Latin See also:prose, the construction and See also:style of which See also:present traces of trans- lation from a poetical and See also:vernacular See also:original . As far Early as facts go, the most See also:ancient monuments of the written monu- meats French language consist of a few documents of very various character, ranging in date from the 9th to the TTth century .
The See also:oldest gives us the oaths interchanged at See also:Strassburg in 842 between See also: Whether they originated in the See also:north or the See also:south is a question on which there have been more than one or two revolutions of See also:opinion, and will probably be others still, but which need not be dealt with here . We possessin See also:round See also:numbers a See also:hundred of these chansons . Three only of them are in Provencal . Two of these, Ferabras and Betonnet d'Hanstonne, are obviously adaptations of French originals . The third, Girartz de Rossilho (See also:Gerard de See also:Roussillon), is undoubtedly Provencal, and is a See also:work of See also:great merit and originality, but its dialect is strongly tinged with the characteristics of the Langue d'OIl, and its author seems to have been a native of the debatable See also:land between the two districts . To suppose under these circumstances that the Provencal originals of the hundred others have perished seems gratuitous . It is sufficient to say that the chanson de geste, as it is now extant, is the almost exclusive See also:property of northern France . Nor is there much authority for a supposition that the early French poets merely versified with amplifications the stories of chroniclers . On the contrary, chroniclers draw largely from the chansons, and the question of priority between Roland and the pseudo-See also:Turpin, though a hard one to determine, seems to resolve itself in favour of the former . At most we may suppose, with much See also:probability, that See also:personal and See also:family tradition gave a See also:nucleus for at least the earliest . Chansons de Geste.—Early French narrative poetry was divided by one of its own writers, See also:Jean See also:Bodel, under three heads —poems See also:relating to French history, poems relating to Chansons ancient history, and poems of the Arthurian See also:cycle de Geste . (Matieres de France, de Bretagne, et de See also:Rome) . To the first only is the term chansons de geste in strictness applicable . The See also:definition of it goes partly by form and partly by See also:matter . A chanson de geste must be written in verses either of ten or twelve syllables, the former being the earlier . These verses have a See also:regular See also:caesura, which, like the end of a line, carries with it the See also:licence of a See also:mute e . The lines are arranged, not in couplets or in stanzas of equal length, but in laisses or tirades, consisting of any number of lines from See also:half a dozen to some hundreds . These are, in the earlier examples assonanced,—that is to say, the vowel See also:sound of the last syllables is identical, but the consonants need not agree . Thus, for instance, the final words of a tirade of Amis et Amiles (11 . 199-206) are erbe, nouvelle, selles, nouvelles, traversent, arrestent, guerre, cortege . Sometimes the tirade is completed by a shorter line, and the later chansons are regularly rhymed . As to the subject, a chanson de geste must be concerned with some event which is, or is supposed to be, See also:historical and French . The tendency of the trouveres was constantly to affiliate their heroes on a particular geste or family . The three See also:chief gestes are those of See also:Charlemagne himself, of Doon de Mayence, and of Garin de Monglane; but there are not a few chansons, notably those concerning the Lorrainers, and the remarkable See also:series sometimes called the See also:Chevalier an Cygne, and dealirg with the See also:crusades, which See also:lie outside these See also:groups . By this See also:joint definition of form and subject the chansons de geste are separated from the romances of antiquity, from the romances of the Round Table, which are written in octosyllabic couplets, and from the See also:romans d'aventures or later fictitious tales, some of which, such as Brun de la See also:Montaigne, are written in pure chanson form . Not the least remarkable point about the chansons de geste is their vast extent . Their number, according to the strictest definition, exceeds Too, and the length of each chanson See also:volume varies from woo lines, or thereabouts, to 20,000 or and even 30,000 . The entire See also:mass, including, it may be changes of supposed, the various versions and extensions of each early epics. chanson, is said to amount to between two and three million lines; and when, under the second See also:empire, the publication of the whole Carolingian cycle was projected, it was estimated, taking the earliest versions alone, at over 300,000 . The successive developments of the chansons de geste may be illustrated by the fortunes of Huon de See also:Bordeaux, one of the most lively, varied and romantic of the older epics, and one which is interesting from the use made of it by See also:Shakespeare, See also:Wieland and See also:Weber . In the oldest form now extant, though even this is probably not the original, Huon consists of over 1o,000 lines . A subsequent version contains 4000 more; and lastly, in the Toth century, a later poet has amplified the See also:legend to the extent of 30,000 lines . When this point had been reached, Huon began to be turned into prose, was with many of his See also:fellows published and republished during the 15th and subsequent centuries, and retains, in the form of a roughly printed See also:chap-See also:book, the favour of the country districts of France to the present See also:day . It is not, however, in the later versions that the See also:special characteristics of the chansons de geste are to be looked for . Of those which we possess, one and one only, the Chanson de Roland, belongs in its present form to the 11th century . Their date of See also:production extends, speaking roughly, from the 1th to the 14th century, their palmy days were the 11th and the 12th . After this latter period the Arthurian romances, with more complex attractions, became their rivals, and induced their authors to make great changes in their style and subject . But for a time they reigned supreme, and no better instance of their popularity can be given than the fact that manuscripts of them exist, not merely in every French dialect, but in many cases in a See also:strange macaronic See also:jargon of mingled French and See also:Italian . Two classes of persons were concerned in them . There was the See also:trouvere who composed them, and the jongleur who carried them about in manuscript or in his memory from See also:castle to castle amd sang them, intermixing frequent appeals to his auditory for silence, declarations of the novelty and the strict See also:copyright character of the chanson, revilings of See also:rival minstrels, and frequently See also:requests for See also:money in See also:plain words . Not a few of the manuscripts which we now possess appear to have been actually used by the jongleur . But the names of the authors, the trouveres who actually composed them, are in very few cases known, those of copyists, continuators, and mere possessors of manuscripts having been often mistaken for them . The moral and poetical peculiarities of the older and more See also:authentic of these chansons are strongly marked, though perhaps not quite so strongly as some of their encomiasts have contended, and as may appear to a reader of the most famous of them, the Chanson de Roland, alone . In that poem, indeed, See also:war and See also:religion are the See also:sole motives employed, and its See also:motto might be two lines from another of the finest chansons (Aliscans, 161-162) : " Dist A . Bertran ' N'avons mais nul losir, Tant ke vivons alons paiens ferir.' " In Roland there is no love-making whatever, and the See also:hero's betrothed " la belle See also:Aude " appears only in a casual gibe of her See also:brother See also:Oliver, and in the incident of her sudden See also:death at the See also:news of Roland's fall . M . See also:Leon See also:Gautier and others have See also:drawn the conclusion that this stern and masculine character was a feature of all the older chansons, and that See also:imitation of the Arthurian See also:romance is the cause of its disappearance . This seems rather a hasty inference . In Amis et Amiles, admittedly a poem of old date, the parts of Bellicent and Lubias are prominent, and the former is See also:demonstrative enough .
In Aliscans the part of the Countess Guibourc is both prominent and heroic, and is seconded by that of See also:Queen Blancheflor and her daughter Aelis
.
We might also mention Oriabel in Jourdans de Blaivies and others
.
But it may be admitted that the See also:sex which fights and counsels plays the principal part, that love adventures are not introduced at any great length, and that the See also:lady usually spares her See also:knight the trouble and possible indignities of a See also:long wooing
.
The characters of a chanson of the older style are somewhat See also:uniform
.
There is the hero who is unjustly suspected of See also:guilt or sore beset by See also:Saracens, the heroine who falls in love with him, the traitor who accuses him or delays help, who is almost always of the lineage of Ganelon, and whose ways form a very curious study
.
There are friendly paladins and subordinate traitors; there is Charlemagne (who bears throughout the marks of the epic See also:
The most remarkable of the chansons are Roland, Aliscans, Gerard de Roussillon, Amis et Amiles, Raoul de See also:Cambrai, Garin le Loherain and its sequel See also:Les quatre Fils A ymon, Les Saisnes (recounting the war of Charlemagne with Witekind), and lastly, Le Chevalier au Cygne,which is not a single poem but a series, dealing with the earlier crusades
.
The most remarkable See also:group is that centring round See also: The gentix ber contradicts, jeers at, and execrates his See also:sovereign and his fellows with the utmost freedom . He thinks nothing of striking his See also:tortoise moullier so that the See also:blood runs down her cler vis . If a servant or even an equal offends him, he will throw the offender into the See also:fire, knock his brains out, or set his whiskers ablaze . The Arthurian knight is far more of the modern See also:model in these respects . But his chief difference from his predecessor is undoubtedly in his amorous devotion to his beloved, who, if not morally See also:superior to Bellicent, Floripas, Esclairmonde, and the other Carlovingian heroines, is somewhat less forward . Even in See also:minute details the difference is strongly marked . The romances are in octosyllabic couplets or in prose, and their language is different from that of the chansons, and contains much fewer of the usual epic repetitions and stock phrases . A voluminous controversy has been held respecting the origin of these See also:differences, and of the story or stories which were destined to receive such remarkable See also:attention . Reference must be made to the article ARTHURIAN LEGEND for the history of this controversy and for an See also:account of its present See also:state . This state, however, and all subsequent states, are likely to be rather dependent upon opinion than upon actual knowledge . From the point of view of the See also:general historian of literature it may not be improper here to give a caution against the frequent use of the word " proven" in such matters . Very little in regard to early literature, except the literary value of the texts, is ever susceptible of See also:proof; although things may be made more or less probable . What we are at present concerned with, however, is a See also:body of verse and prose composed in the latter part of the 12th century and later . The earliest romances, the Saint Graal, the Que"te du Saint Graal, See also:Joseph d'Arimathie and See also:Merlin bear the names of See also:Walter See also:Map and See also:Robert de Borron . See also:Arius and part at least of See also:Lancelot du See also:Lac (the whole of which has been by turns attributed and denied to Walter Map) appear to be due to unknown authors . See also:Tristan came later, and has a stronger mixture of Celtic tradition . At the same time as Walter Map, or a little later, Chretien (or See also:Chrestien) de See also:Troyes threw the legends of the Round Table into octosyllabic verse of a singularly spirite$ and picturesque character . The chief poems attributed to him are the Chevalier au See also:Lyon (See also:Sir Ewain of See also:Wales), the Chevalier d la Charette (one ~ of the episodes of Lancelot), See also:Eric et Enide, Tristan and Percivale . These poems, independently of their merit, which is great, had an extensive literary See also:influence . They were translated by the German See also:minnesingers, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strassburg, and others . With the romances already referred to, which are mostly in prose, and which by See also:recent authorities have been put later than the verse tales which used to be postponed to them, Chretien's poems See also:complete the early forms of the Arthurian story, and See also:supply the matter of it as it is best known to See also:English readers in See also:Malory's book . Nor does that book, though far later than the original forms, convey a very false impression of the characteristics of the older romances . Indeed, the Arthurian knight, his character and adventures, are so much better known than the heroes of the Carlovingian chanson that there is less need to dwell upon them . They had, however, as has been already pointed out, great influence upon their rivals, and their See also:comparative fertility of invention, the much larger number of their dramatis personae, and the greater variety of interests to which they appealed, sufficiently explain their increased popularity .
The See also:ordinary attractions of poetry are also more largely present in them than in the chansons; there is more description, more life, and less of the mere See also:chronicle
.
They have been accused of relaxing morality, and there is perhaps some truth in the See also:charge
.
But the See also:change is after all one rather of See also:manners than of morals, and what is lost in simplicity is gained in refinement
.
Doon de Mayence is a late chanson, and Lancelot du Lac is an early romance
.
But the two beautiful scenes, in the former between Doon and Nicolette, in the latter between Lancelot, Galahault, Guinevere, and the Lady of Malehaut, may be compared as instances of the attitude of the two classes of poets towards the same subject
.
Romances of Antiquity.—There is yet a third class of early narrative poems, differing from the two former in subject, but agreeing, sometimes with one sometimes with the other in form
.
These are the classical romances—the Matiere de Rome—which are not much later than those of Charlemagne and Arthur
.
The chief subjects with which their authors busied themselves were the conquests of See also: The authorities consulted for these poems were, as may be supposed, none of the best . Dares Phrygius, Dictys Cretensis, the pseudo-See also:Callisthenes supplied most of them . But the inexhaustible invention of the trouveres themselves was the chief authority consulted . The adventures of See also:Medea, the wanderings of Alexander, the Trojan See also:horse, the story of See also:Thebes, were quite sufficient to See also:spur on to exertion the minds which had been accustomed to spin a chanson of some ro,000 lines out of a casual allusion in some preceding poem . It is needless to say that anachronisms did not disturb them . From first to last the writers of the chansons had not in the least troubled themselves with attention to any such matters . Charlemagne himself had his life and exploits accommodated to the need of every poet who treats of him, and the same is the case with the heroes of antiquity . Indeed, Alexander is made in many respects a prototype of Charlemagne . He is regularly knighted, he has twelve peers, he holds tournaments, he has relations with Arthur, and comes in contact with fairies, he takes flights in the See also:air, dives in the See also:sea and so forth . There is perhaps more avowed imaginationin these classical stories than in either of the other divisions of French epic poetry . Some of their authors even confess to the practice of fiction, while the trouveres of the chansons invariably assert the historical character of their facts and personages, and the authors of the Arthurian romances at least start from facts vouched for, partly by See also:national tradition, partly by the authority of religion and the church . The classical romances, however, are important in two different ways . In the first place, they connect the early literature of France, however loosely, and with links of however dubious authenticity, with the great history and literature of the past . They show a certain amount of See also:scholar-See also:ship in their authors, and in their hearers they show a capacity of taking an interest in subjects which are not merely those directly connected with the See also:village or the tribe . The chansons de geste had shown the creative See also:power and independent character of French literature . There is, at least about the earlier ones, nothing borrowed, traditional or scholarly . They See also:smack of the See also:soil, and they See also:rank France among the very few countries which, in this matter of indigenous growth, have yielded more than folk-songs and fireside tales . The Arthurian romances, less independent in origin, exhibit a wider range of view, a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more extensive command of the See also:sources of poetical and romantic interest . The classical epics superadd the only ingredient necessary to an accomplished literature-that is to say, the knowledge of what has been done by other peoples and other literatures already, and the readiness to take See also:advantage of the materials thus supplied . Romans d'Aventures.—These are the three earliest developments of French literature on the great See also:scale . They led, however, to a See also:fourth, which, though later in date than all except their latest forms and far more loosely associated as a group, is so closely connected with them by literary and social considerations that it had best be mentioned here . This is the roman d'aventures, a See also:title given to those almost avowedly fictitious poems which connect themselves, mainly and centrally, neither with French history, with the Round Table, nor with the heroes of antiquity . These began to be written in the 13th century, and continued until the prose form of fiction became generally preferred . The later forms of the chansons de geste and the Arthurian poems might indeed be well called romans d'aventures them-selves . See also:Hugues Ca pet, for instance, a chanson in form and class of subject, is certainly one of this latter See also:kind in treatment; and there is a larger class of semi-Arthurian romance, which so to speak branches off from the See also:main See also:trunk . But for convenience See also:sake the definition we have given is preferable . The style and subject of these romans d'aventures are naturally extremely various . See also:Guillaume de Palerme deals with the adventures of a Sicilian See also:prince who is befriended by a were-See also:wolf; Le Roman de l'escoufle, with a heroine whose See also:ring is carried off by a See also:sparrow-See also:hawk (escoufle), like Prince Camaralzaman's See also:talisman; See also:Guy of See also:Warwick, with one of the most famous of imaginary heroes; Meraugis de Portleguez is a sort of See also:branch or offshoot of the romances of the Round Table; Cleomades, the work of the trouvere See also:Adenes le Roi, who also rehandled the old chanson subjects of Ogier and Berle aux grans pies, connects itself once more with the Arabian Nights as well as with See also:Chaucer forwards in the introduction of a flying See also:mechanical horse . There is, in short, no possibility of classifying their subjects . The See also:habit of See also:writing in gestes, or of necessarily connecting the new work with an older one, had ceased to be binding, and the See also:instinct of fiction writing was See also:free; yet those romans d'aventures do not rank quite as high in literary importance as the classes which preceded them . This under-valuation arises rather from a lack of originality and distinctness of savour than from any shortcomings in treatment . Their versification, usually octosyllabic, is pleasant enough; but there is not much distinctness of character about them, and their incidents often strike the reader with something of the sameness, but seldom with much of the naivete, of those of the older poems . Nevertheless some of them attained to a very high popularity, such, for instance, as the Partenopex de See also:Blois of See also:Denis Pyramus, which has a See also:motive drawn from the story of See also:Cupid and See also:Psyche and the charming Floire et Blanchefleur, giving the woes of a See also:Christian prince and a Saracen slave-girl . With them may be connected a certain number of early romances and See also:fictions of various dates in prose, none of which can See also:vie in See also:charm with Aucassin et Nicolette (13th century), an exquisite literary presentment of See also:medieval sentiment in its most delightful form . In these classes may be said to be summed up the literature of feudal chivalry in France . They were all, except perhaps the last, General composed by one class of persons, the trouver es, and character- performed by another, the jongleurs . The latter, 'sties of indeed, sometimes presumed to compose for himself, early and was denounced as a troveor batard by the indignant narrative. members of the superior See also:caste . They were all originally intended to be performed in the palais marberin of the See also:baron to an See also:audience of knights and ladies, and, when See also:reading became more common, to be read by such persons . They dealt therefore chiefly, if not exclusively, with the class to whom they were addressed . The See also:bourgeois and the villain, personages of See also:political nonentity at the time of their early composition, come in for far slighter notice, although occasionally in the few curious instances we have mentioned, and others, persons of a class inferior to the seigneur See also:play an important part . The habit of private See also:wars and of insurrection against the sovereign supply the motives of the chanson de geste, the love of gallantry, See also:adventure and foreign travel those of the romances Arthurian and See also:miscellaneous . None of these motives much affected the See also:lower classes, who were, with the early See also:developed See also:temper of the See also:middle- and lower-class Frenchman, already See also:apt to think and speak cynically enough of tournaments, courts, crusades and the other occupations of the See also:nobility . The communal See also:system was springing up, the towns were receiving royal encouragement as a counterpoise to the authority of the nobles . The corruptions and maladministration of the church attracted the See also:satire rather of the citizens and peasantry who suffered by them, than of the nobles who had less to fear and even something to gain. spread of On the other hand, the See also:gradual spread of learning, literary See also:taste, inaccurate and See also:ill-digested perhaps, but still learning, not only opened up new classes of subjects, but opened them to new classes of persons . The thousands of students who flocked to the See also:schools of See also:Paris were not all princes or nobles . Hence there arose two new classes of literature, the first consisting of the embodiment of learning of one kind or other in the vulgar tongue . The other, one of the most remarkable developments of sportive literature which the See also:world has seen, produced the second indigenous literary growth of which France can boast, namely, the fabliaux, and the almost more remarkable work which is an immense See also:conglomerate of fabliaux, the great beast-epic of the Roman de Renart . Fabliaux.—There are few literary products which have more originality and at the same time more diversity than the See also:fabliau . The epic and the See also:drama, even when they are independently produced, are similar in their main characteristics all the world over . But there is nothing in previous literature which exactly corresponds to the fabliau . It comes nearest to the Aesopic See also:fable and its eastern origins or See also:parallels . But differs from these in being less allegorical, less obviously moral (though a moral of some sort is usually if not always enforced), and in having a much more See also:direct personal interest . It is in many degrees further removed from the See also:parable, and many degrees nearer to the novel . The story is the first thing, the moral the second, and the latter is never suffered to interfere with the former . These observations apply only to the fabliaux, properly so called, but the term has been used with considerable looseness . The collectors of those interesting pieces, Barbazan, Meon, Le See also:Grand d'Aussy, have included in their collections large numbers of miscellaneous pieces such as dits (rhymed descriptions of various See also:objects, the most famous known author of which was Baudouin de See also:Conde, 13th century), and Mats (discussions between two persons or contrasts of the attributes of two things), sometimes even short romances, farces and See also:mystery plays . Not that the fable proper—the prose classical beast-story of " See also:Aesop "--was neglected . See also:Marie de France—the poetess to be mentioned again for her more strictly poetical work—is the most literaryof not a few writers who composed what were often, after the mysterious original poet, named Ysopets . Aesop, See also:Phaedrus, See also:Babrius were translated and imitated in Latin and in the vernacular by this class of writer, and some of the best known of " fablers " date from this time . The fabliau, on the other hand, according to the best definition of it yet achieved, is " the See also:recital, generally comic, of a real or possible incident occurring in ordinary human life." The See also:comedy, it may be added, is usually of a satiric kind, and occupies itself with every class and rank of men, from the king to the villain . There is no limit to the variety of these lively verse-tales, which are invariably written in eight-syllabled couplets . Now the subject is the misadventure of two Englishmen, whose See also:ignorance of the French language makes them confuse donkey and See also:lamb; now it is the fortunes of an exceedingly foolish knight, who has an amiable and ingenious See also:mother-in-See also:law; now the deserved sufferings of an avaricious or ill-behaved See also:priest; now the bringing of an ungrateful son to a better mind by the See also:wisdom of babes and sucklings . Not a few of the See also:Canterbury Tales are taken directly from fabliaux; indeed, Chaucer, with the possible exception of See also:Prior, is our nearest approach to a fabliau-writer . At the other end of See also:Europe the prose novels of See also:Boccaccio and other Italian See also:tale-tellers are largely based upon fabliaux . But their influence in their own country was the greatest . They were the first expression of the spirit which has since animated the most national and popular developments of French literature . See also:Simple and unpretending as they are in form, the fabliaux announce not merely the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles and the Heptameron, L'Avocat Patelin, and Pantagruel, but also L'Avare and the Roman comique, Gil Blas and Candide . They indeed do more than merely prophesy the spirit of these great performances —they directly See also:lead to them . The prose-tale and the See also:farce are the direct outcomes of the fabliau, and the prose-tale and the farce once given, the novel and the comedy inevitably follow . The special period of fabliau composition appears to have been the 12th and 13th centuries . It signifies on the one See also:side the growth of a lighter and more sportive spirit than had social yet prevailed, on another the rise in importance of import-other and lower orders of men than the priest and the "See also:ice of See also:noble, on yet another the consciousness on the 'part fabliaux of these lower orders of the defects of the two privileged classes, and of the shortcomings of the system of polity under which these privileged classes enjoyed their privileges . There is, how-ever, in the fabliau proper not so very much of direct satire, this being indeed excluded by the definition given above, and by the thoroughly See also:artistic spirit in which that definition is observed . The fabliaux are so numerous and so various that it is difficult to select any as specially representative . We may, however, mention, both as See also:good examples and as interesting from their subsequent history, Le Vair Palfroi, treated in English by See also:Leigh See also:Hunt and by See also:Peacock; Le Vilain Mire, the original consciously or unconsciously followed in Le Medecin malgre lui; Le Roi d'Angleterre et le jongleur d'See also:Ali; La houce partie; Le Sot Chevalier, an indecorous but extremely amusing story; Les deux bordeors ribaus, a See also:dialogue between two jongleurs of great literary interest, containing allusions to the chansons de geste and romances most in vogue; and Le vilain qui conquist paradis See also:par See also:plait, one of the numerous instances of what has unnecessarily puzzled moderns, the association in medieval times of sincere and unfeigned faith with extremely free handling of its objects . This lightheartedness in other subjects sometimes bubbled over into the fatrasie, an almost pure nonsense-piece, See also:parent of the later amphigouri . Roman de Renart.—If the fabliaux are not remarkable for direct satire, that element is supplied in more than compensating quantity by an extraordinary composition which is closely related to them . Le Roman de Renart, or History of Reynard the See also:Fox, is a poem, or rather series of poems, which, from the end of the 12th to the middle of the 14th century, served the See also:citizen poets of northern France, not merely as an outlet for literary expression, but also as a vehicle of satirical comment,--now on the general vices and weaknesses of humanity, now on the usual corruptions in church and state, now on the various historical events which occupied public attention from time to time . The enormous popularity of the subject is shown by the long vogue which it had, and by the empire which it exercised over generations of writers who differed from each other widely in style and temper . Nothing can be farther from the allegorical erudition, the political diatribes and the sermonizing moralities of the authors of Renart le Contre-fait than the sly naivete of the writers of the earlier branches . Yet these and a long and unknown series of intermediate bards the fox-king pressed into his service, and it is scarcely too much to say that, during the two centuries of his reign, there was hardly a thought in the popular mind which, as it See also:rose to the See also:surface, did not find expression in an addition to the huge cycle of Renart . We shall not See also:deal with the controversies which have been raised as to the origin of the poem and its central See also:idea . The latter may have been a travestie of real persons and actual events, or it may (and much more probably) have been an expression of thoughts and experiences which recur in every See also:generation . France, the See also:Netherlands and See also:Germany have contended for the See also:honour of producing Renart; French, Flemish, German and Latin for the honour of first describing him . It is sufficient to say that the spirit of the work seems to be more that of the borderland between France and See also:Flanders than of any other See also:district, and that, wherever the idea may have originally arisen, it was incomparably more fruitful in France than in any other country . The French poems which we possess on the subject amount in all to nearly roo,000 lines, independently of mere See also:variations, but including the different versions of Renart le Contre-fait . This vast See also:total is divided into four different poems . The most ancient and remarkable is that edited by Meon under the title of Roman du Renart, and containing, with some additions made by M . Chabaille, 37 branches and about 32,000 lines . It must not, however, be supposed that this total forms a continuous poem like the Aeneid or See also:Paradise Lost . Part was See also:pretty certainly written by See also:Pierre de Saint-See also:Cloud, but he was not the author of the whole . On the contrary, the See also:separate branches are the work of different authors, hardly any of whom are known, and, but for their community of subject and to some extent of treatment, might. be regarded as separate poems . The history of Renart, his victories over Isengrim, the wolf, Bruin, the bear, and his other unfortunate rivals, his family See also:affection, his outwittings of King Noble the See also:Lion and all the See also:rest, are too well known to need fresh description here . It is perhaps in the subsequent poems, though they are far less known and much less amusing, that the hold which the idea of Renart had obtained on the mind of northern France, and the ingenious uses to which it was put, are best shown . The first of these is Le Couronnement Renart, a poem of between 3000 and 4000 lines, attributed, on no grounds whatever, to the poetess Marie de France, and describing how the hero by his ingenuity got himself crowned king . This poem already shows signs of direct moral application and generalizing . These are still more apparent in Renart le Nouvel, a composition of some 8000 lines, finished in the See also:year 1288 by the See also:Fleming Jacquemart Gielee .
Here the personification, of which, in noticing the Roman de la rose, we shall soon have to give extended mention, becomes evident
.
Instead of or at least beside the lively personal Renart who used to steal sausages, set Isengrim fishing with his tail, or make use of Chanticleer's See also:comb for a purpose for which it was certainly never intended, we have Renardie, an See also:abstraction of guile and See also:hypocrisy, triumphantly prevailing over other and better qualities
.
Lastly, as the Roman de la rose of William of Lorris is paralleled by Renart le Nouvel, so its continuation by Jean de Meung is paralleled by the great See also:miscellany of Renart le Contrefait, which, even in its existing versions, extends to fully 50,000 lines
.
Here we have, besides floods of miscellaneous erudition and discourse, political argument of the most direct and important kind
.
The wrongs of the lower orders are bitterly urged
.
They are almost openly incited to revolt; and it is scarcely too much to say, as M
.
Lenient has said, that the closely following See also:Jacquerie is but a See also:practical carrying out of the doctrines of the See also:anonymous satirists of Renart le Contre fait, one of whom (ifindeed there was more than one) appears to have been a clerk of Troyes
.
Early Lyric Poetry.—Side by side with these two forms of literature, the epics and romances of the higher classes, and the fabliau, which, at least in its original, represented rather the feelings of the lower, there See also:grew up a third kind, consisting of purely lyrical poetry
.
The song literature of medieval France is extremely abundant and beautiful
.
From the 12th to the 15th century it received constant accessions, some signed, some anonymous, some purely popular in their character, some the work of more learned writers, others again produced by members of the See also:aristocracy
.
Of the latter class it may fairly be said that the See also:catalogue of royal and noble authors boasts few if any names superior to those of See also:Thibaut de See also:Champagne, king of See also:Navarre at the beginning of the 13th century, and Charles d'See also:
Paulin Paris was able to enumerate some hundreds of French chansonniers between the See also:firth and the 13th century
.
The earliest song literature, chiefly known in the delightful collection of Bartsch (Allfranzosische Romanzen and Pastourellen), is mainly sentimental in character
.
The See also:collector divides it under the two heads of romances and pastourelles, the former being usually the celebration of the loves of a noble knight and See also:maiden, and recounting how Belle Doette or See also:Eglantine or Oriour sat at her windows or in the tourney See also:gallery, or embroidering See also:silk and samite in her chamber, with her thoughts on Gerard or Guy or See also: (1201-1253), who See also:united by his possessions and ancestry a connexion ae Th;bCbaaatn2 with the north and the south, and who employed the pagne. methods of both districts but used the language of the north only . Thibaut was supposed to be the See also:lover of See also:Blanche of See also:Castile, the mother of St Louis, and a great deal of his verse is concerned with his love for her . But while knights and nobles were thus employing lyric poetry in courtly and sentimental verse, lyric forms were being freely employed by others, both of high and low birth, for more general purposes . Blanche and Thibaut themselves came in for contemporary lampoons, and both at this time and in the times immediately following, a cloud of writers composed light verse, sometimes of a lyric sometimes of a narrative kind, and sometimes in a mixture of both . By far the most remarkable of these is Rutebceuf (a name which Rutebceuf. is perhaps a See also:nickname), the first of a long series of French poets to whom in recent days the title Bohemian has been applied, who passed their lives between gaiety and misery, and celebrated their See also:lot in both conditions with copious verse . Rutebceuf is among the earliest French writers who tell us their personal history and make personal appeals . But he does not confine himself to these . He discusses the history of his times, romances dealing with the crusades, and entitled Le Chevalier au Cygne . Baudouin de Sebourc dates from the early years of the 14th century . It is strictly a chanson de geste in form, and also in the general run of its incidents . The hero is dispossessed of his See also:inheritance by the agency of traitors, fights his See also:battle with the world and its injustice, and at last prevails over his enemy Gaufrois, who has succeeded in obtaining the See also:kingdom of See also:Fries-land and almost that of France . Gaufrois has as his assistants two personages who were very popular in the poetry of the time, viz., the See also:Devil, and Money . These two sinister figures pervade the fabliaux, tales and fantastic literature generally of the time . M . Lenient, the historian of French satire, has well remarked that a romance as long as the Renart might be spun out of the separate short poems of this period which have the Devil for hero, and many of which form a very interesting transition between the fabliau and the mystery . But the Devil is in one respect a far inferior hero to Renart . He has an adversary in the Virgin, who constantly upsets his best-laid schemes, and who does not always treat him quite fairly . The abuse of See also:usury at the time, and the exactions of the See also:Jews and See also:Lombards, were severely See also:felt, and Money itself, as personified, figures largely in the popular literature of the time . Roman de la Rose.—A work of very different importance from all of these, though with seeming touches of the same spirit, a work which deserves to take rank among the most important of the middle ages, is the Roman de la rose, Lwmord~amsof . —one of the few really remarkable books which is the work of two authors, and that not in collaboration but in continuation one of the other . The author of the earlier part was Guillaume de Lorris, who lived in the first half of the 13th century; the author of the later part was Jean de Meung, who was born about the middle of that century, and whose part in the Roman dates at least from its extreme end . This great poem exhibits in its two parts very different characteristics, which yet go to make up a not inharmonious whole . It is a love poem, and yet it is satire . But both gallantry and raillery are treated in an entirely allegorical spirit; and this See also:allegory, while it makes the poem tedious to hasty appetites of to-day, was exactly what gave it its charm in the eyes of the middle ages . It might be described as an Ars amoris crossed with a Quodlibeta . This mixture exactly See also:hit the taste of the time, and continued to hit it for two centuries and a half . When its obvious and gallant meaning was attacked by moralists and theologians, it was easy to quote the example of the See also:Canticles, and to furnish See also:esoteric explanations of the allegory . The writers of the 16th century were never tired of quoting and explaining it . See also:Antoine de Baif, indeed, gave the simple and obvious meaning, and declared that " La rose c'est d'amours le guerdon gracieux "; but See also:Marot, on the other hand, gives us the choice of four mystical interpretations,—the rose being either the state of wisdom, the state of See also:grace, the state of eternal happiness or the Virgin herself . We cannot here analyse this celebrated poem . It is sufficient to say that the lover meets all sorts of obstacles in his pursuit of the rose, though he has for a See also:guide the metaphorical personage See also:Bel-Accueil . The early part, which belongs to William of Lorris, is remarkable for its gracious and fanciful descriptions . See also:Forty years after Lorris's jean de death, Jean de Meung completed it in an entirely Meung. different spirit . He keeps the allegorical form, and indeed introduces two new personages of importance, Nature and Faux-semblant . In the mouths of these personages and of another, Raison, he puts the most extraordinary mixture of erudition and satire . At one time we have the history of classical heroes, at another theories against the hoarding of money, about See also:astronomy, about the duty of mankind to increase and multiply . Accounts of the origin of See also:loyalty, which would have cost the poet his head at some periods of history, and even communistic ideas, are also to be found here . In Faux-semblant we have a real creation of the theatrical hypocrite . All this miscellaneous and apparently incongruous material in fact explains the success of the poem . It has the one characteristic which has at all times secured the popularity of great See also:works of literature . It holds the See also:mirror up firmly and fully to its age . As we find in See also:Rabelais upbraids the nobles for their See also:desertion of the Latin empire of See also:Constantinople, considers the expediency of crusading, inveighs against the religious orders, and takes part in the disputes between the See also:pope and the king . He composes pious poetry too, and in at least one poem takes care to distinguish between the church which he venerates and the corrupt churchmen whom he lampoons . Besides Rutebceuf the most characteristic figure of his class and time (about the middle of the 13th century) is Adam de la Halle, commonly called the Hunchback Adam de of See also:Arras . The earlier poems of Adam are of a senti- la See also:Kane . See also:mental character, the later ones satirical and somewhat ill-tempered . Such, for instance, is his invective against his native See also:city . But his chief importance consists in his jeux, the Jeu de la feuillie, the Jeu de See also:Robin et See also:Marion, dramatic compositions which led the way to the regular dramatic form .
Indeed the general tendency of the 13th century is to satire, fable and farce, even more than to serious or sentimental poetry
.
We
should perhaps except the laic, the chief of which
Lets
.
are known under the name of Marie de France
.
These
See also:lays are exclusively See also:Breton in origin, though not in application, and the term seems originally to have had reference rather to the music to which they were sung than to the manner or matter of the pieces
.
Some resemblance to these lays may perhaps be traced in the genuine Breton songs published by M
.
Luzel
.
The subjects of the lais are indifferently taken from the Arthurian cycle, from ancient story, and from popular tradition, and, at any See also:rate in Marie's hands, they give occasion for some passionate, and in the modern sense really romantic, poetry
.
The most famous of all is the Lay of the See also:Honeysuckle, traditionally assigned to Sir Tristram
.
Satiric and Didactic Works.—Among the direct satirists of the middle ages, one of the earliest and foremost is Guyot de Provins, a See also: The hero Audigier is a model of cowardice and disloyalty; his father and mother, Turgibus and Rainberge, are deformed and repulsive . The exploits of the hero himself are coarse and hideous failures, and the whole poem can only be taken as a counterblast to the spirit of chivalry . Elsewhere a trouvere, prophetic of Rabelais, describes a vast battle between all the nations of the world, the See also:quarrel being suddenly atoned by the arrival of a holy man bearing a huge flagon of See also:wine . Again, we have the history of a See also:solemn crusade undertaken by the citizens of a country See also:town against the neighbouring castle . As erudition and the See also:fancy for allegory gained ground, satire naturally availed itself of the opportunity thus afforded it; the disputes of Philippe le Bel with the pope and the See also:Templars had an immense literary influence, partly in the concluding portions of the Renart, partly in the Roman de la rose, still to be mentioned, and partly in other satiric allegories of which the chief is the romance of $auvel, attributed to See also:Francois de Rues . The hero of this is an allegorical personage, half man and half horse, signifying the See also:union of bestial degradation with human ingenuity and cunning . Fauvel (the name, it may be See also:worth while to recall, occurs in See also:Langland) is a divinity in his way . All the personages of state, from See also:kings and popes to mendicant friars, pay their See also:court to him . But this serious and discontented spirit betrays itself also in compositions which are not parodies or travesties in form . One of the latest, if not absolutely the latest (for Cuvelier's still later Chronique de Du Guesclin is only a most interesting imitation of the chanson form adapted to recent events), of the chansons de geste is Baudouin de Sebourc, one of the members of the great romance or cycle of Baudouin de Sebourc . frequent and popular . The same century, moreover, which witnessed these developments of well-intentioned if not always judicious erudition witnessed also a considerable change in lyrical poetry .
Hitherto such poetry had chiefly Artif cia/ been composed osed in the melodious but unconstrained formsse
.
of
forms of the romance and the pastourelle
.
In the
14th century the writers of northern France subjected themselves to severer rules
.
In this age arose the forms which for so long a time were to occupy French singers,—the See also:ballade, the See also:rondeau, the See also:rondel, the See also:triolet, the See also:chant royal and others
.
These received considerable alterations as time went on
.
We possess not a few See also:Arles poeticae, such as that of Eustache See also:Deschamps at the end of the 14th century, that formerly ascribed to See also:Henri de Croy and now to See also:Molinet at the end of the 15th, and that of See also: He has See also:left us 8o,000 verses, never yet completely printed . Eustache Deschamps (c . 1340–c . 1410) was nearly as prolific, but more fortunate as more meritorious, the Societe See also:des anciens Textes having at last provided a complete edition of him . See also:Froissart the historian (1333–1410) was also an agreeable and prolific poet . Deschamps, the most famous as a poet of the three, has left us nearly 1200 ballades and nearly 200 rondeaux, besides much other verse all manifesting very considerable poetical See also:powers . Less known but not less noteworthy, and perhaps the earliest of all, is Jehannot de Lescurel, whose personality is obscure, and most of whose works are lost, but whose remains are full of grace . Froissart appears to have had many countrymen in Hainault and See also:Brabant who devoted themselves to the See also:art of versification; and the Livre des cent ballades of the See also:Marshal See also:Boucicault (1366–1421) and his See also:friends—c . 1390—shows that the French See also:gentleman of the 14th century was as apt at the ballade as his Elizabethan peer in See also:England was at the See also:sonnet . Early Drama.—Before passing to the prose writers of the middle ages, we have to take some notice of the dramatic productions of those times—productions of an extremely interesting character, but, like the immense Mysteries See also:majority of medieval literature, poetic in form . The and miracles . origin or the revival of dramatic composition in France has been hotly debated, and it has been sometimes contended that the tradition of Latin comedy was never entirely lost, but was handed on chiefly in the convents by adaptations of the Terentian plays, such as those of the See also:nun Hroswitha .
There is no doubt that the mysteries (subjects taken from the sacred writings) and See also:miracle plays (subjects taken from the legends of the See also:saints and the Virgin) are of very early date
.
The mystery of the Foolish Virgins (partly French, partly Latin), that of Adam and perhaps that of See also:Daniel, are of the 12th century, though due to unknown authors
.
Jean Bodel and Ruteboeuf, already mentioned, gave, the one that of Saint See also:Nicolas at the confines of the 12th and 13th, the other that of See also:Theophile later in the 13th itself
.
But the later moralities, soties, and farces seem to be also in part a very probable development of the simpler and earlier forms of the fabliau and of the tenson or jeuparti, a poem in simple dialogue much used by both troubadours
the characteristics of the See also:Renaissance, in Montaigne those of the sceptical reaction from Renaissance and reform alike, in See also:Moliere those of the society of France after See also:Richelieu had tamed and levelled it, in See also:Voltaire and See also: See also:Dante, in his De vulgari eloquio, acknowledges the excellence of the didactic writers of the Langue d'Oil . We have already alluded to the Bestiary of Philippe de Thaun, a See also:Norman trouvere who lived and wrote in England during the reign of Henry Beauclerc . Besides the Bestiary, which from its See also:dedication to Queen Adela has been conjectured to belong to the third See also:decade of the 12th century, Philippe wrote also in French a See also:Liber de creaturis, both works being translated from the Latin . These works of mystical and apocryphal physics and See also:zoology became extremely popular in the succeeding centuries, and were frequently imitated . A moralizing turn was also given to them, which was much helped by the importation of several miscellanies of Oriental origin, partly tales, partly didactic in character, the most celebrated of which is the Roman des See also:sept sages, which, under that title and the variant of Dolopathos, received repeated treatment from French writers both in prose and verse . The See also:odd notion of an Ovide moralise used to be ascribed to Philippe de Vitry, See also:bishop of See also:Meaux (1291?–1391?), a person complimented by See also:Petrarch, but is now assigned to a certain Chretien Legonais . Art, too, soon demanded exposition in verse, as well as science . The favourite pastime of the See also:chase was repeatedly dealt with, notably in the Roi Modus (1325), mixed prose and verse; the Deduits de la See also:chasse (1387), of Gaston de See also:Foix, prose; and the Tresor de Venerie of See also:Hardouin (1394), verse . Very soon didactic verse extended itself to all the arts and sciences . See also:Vegetius and his military precepts had found a See also:home in French octosyllables as early as the 12th century; the end of the same age saw the ceremonies of See also:knighthood solemnly versified, and napes (maps) du monde also soon appeared . At last, in 1245, Gautier of See also:Metz translated from various Latin works into French verse a sort of See also:encyclopaedia, while another, incongruous but known as L'lmage du monde, exists from the same century . Profane knowledge was not the only subject which exercised didactic poets at this time . Religious handbooks and commentaries on the scriptures were common in the 13th and following centuries, and, under the title of Castoiements, Enseignements and Doctrinaux, moral See also:treatises became common . The most famous of these, the Castoiement d'un pere a son fils, falls under the class, already mentioned, of works due to oriental influence, being derived from the See also:Indian Panchatantra . In the 14th century the influence of the Roman de la rose helped to render moral verse and trouveres . The fabliau has been sufficiently dealt with already . It chiefly supplied the subject; and some miracle-plays and farces are little more than fabliaux thrown into dialogue . Of the jeux-partis there are many examples, varying from very simple questions and answers to something like regular dramatic dialogue; even short romances, such as Aucassin et Nicolette, were easily susceptible of dramatization . But the Jeu de la feuillie (or feuillee) of Adam de la Halle seems to be the earliest piece, profane in subject, containing something more than mere dialogue . The poet has not indeed gone far for his subject, for he brings in his own wife, father and friends, the interest being complicated by the introduction of stock characters (the See also:doctor, the monk, the See also:fool), and of certainfairies—personages already popular from the later romances of chivalry . Another piece of Adam's, Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, also already alluded to, is little more than a simple throwing into See also:action of an ordinary pastourelle with a considerable number of songs to music . Nevertheless later criticism has seen, and not unreasonably, in these two pieces the origin in the one case of farce, and thus indirectly of comedy proper, in the other of comic See also:opera . For a long time, however, the mystery and miracle-plays remained the See also:staple of theatrical performance, and until the 13th century actors as well as performers were more or less taken from the See also:clergy . It has, indeed, been well pointed out that the offices of the church were themselves dramatic performances, and required little more than development at the hands of the mystery writers . The occasional festive outbursts, such as the Feast of See also:Fools, that of the Boy Bishop and the rest, helped on the development . The variety of mysteries and miracles was very great . A single manuscript contains forty miracles of the Virgin, averaging from 1200 to 1500 lines each, written in octosyllabic couplets, and at least as old as the 14th century, most of them perhaps much earlier . The mysteries proper, or plays taken from the scriptures, are older still . Many of these are exceedingly long . There is a Mystere de l'Ancien Testament, which extends to many volumes, and must have taken See also:weeks to See also:act in its entirety . The Mystere de la See also:Passion, though not quite so long, took several days, and recounts the whole history of the gospels . The best apparently of the authors of these pieces, which are mostly anonymous, were two See also:brothers, Arnoul and See also:Simon Greban (authors of the Actes des apotres, and in the - first case of the Passion), c . 1450, while a certain Jean See also:Michel (d . 1493) is credited with having continued the Passion from 30,000 lines to 50,000 . But these performances, though they held their ground until the middle of the 16th century and extended their range of subject from sacred to profane history—legendary as in the Destruction de Troie, contemporary as in the Siege d'Orleans—were soon rivalled by the more profane performances of the moralities, the farces and the soties . The palmy time of all these three kinds is the 15th century, while the Confrerie de la Passion itself, the special performers of the sacred drama, only obtained the licence constituting it by an See also:ordinance of Charles VI. in 1402 . In See also:order, however, to take in the whole of the medieval See also:theatre at a glance, we may anticipate a little . The Confraternity was not itself the author or performer of the profaner kind of dramatic performance . This latter was due to two other bodies, the clerks of the Bazoche and the Enfans sans Souci . As the Confraternity was chiefly composed of tradesmen and persons very similar to See also:Peter See also:Quince and his associates, so the clerks of the Bazoche were members of the legal profession of Paris, and the Enfans sans Souci were mostly See also:young men of family . The morality was the special property of the first, the sotie of the second . But as the moralities were sometimes decidedly tedious plays, though by no means brief, they were varied by the introduction of farces, of which the jeux already mentioned were the early germ, and of which L'Avocat Patelin, dated by some about 1465 and certainly about 200 years subsequent to Adam de la Halle, is the most famous example . The morality was the natural result on the See also:stage of the immense literary popularity of allegory in the Roman de la rose and its imitations . There is hardly an abstraction, a virtue, a See also:vice, adisease, or anything else of the kind, which does not figure in these compositions . There is Bien Advise and Mal Advise, the good boy and the See also:bad boy of nursery stories, who fall Moralities. in respectively with Faith, See also:Reason and Humility, and with Rashness, Luxury and Folly . There is the hero Mange-Tout, who is invited to See also:dinner by Banquet, and meets after dinner very unpleasant See also:company in Colique, Goutte and Hydropisie . Honte-de-dire-ses-Peches might seem an anticipation of Puritan nomenclature to an English reader who did not re-member the contemporary or even earlier personae of Langland's poem . Some of these moralities possess distinct dramatic merit; among these is mentioned Les Blasphemateurs, an early and remarkable presentation of the See also:Don Juan story . But their general character appears to be gravity, not to say dullness . The Enfans sans Souci, on the other hand, were definitely satirical, and nothing if not amusing . The chief of the society was entitled Prince des Sots, and his See also:crown was a See also:hood decorated soties. with asses' ears . The sotie was directly satirical, and only assumed the See also:guise of folly as a stalking-horse for See also:shooting wit . It was more Aristophanic than any other modern form of comedy, and like its predecessor, it perished as a result of its political application . Encouraged for a moment as a political See also:engine at the beginning of the 16th century, it was soon absolutely forbidden and put down, and had to give place in one direction to the See also:lampoon and the prose pamphlet, in another to forms of comic satire more general and vague in their See also:scope . The farce, on the other hand, having neither moral purpose nor political intention, was a purer work of art, enjoyed a wider range of subject, and was in no danger of any permanent extinction . Farcical interludes were interpolated in the mysteries themselves; short farces introduced and rendered palatable the moralities, while the sotie was itself but a variety of farce, and all the kinds were sometimes combined in a sort of tetralogy . It was a short composition, 500 verses being considered sufficient, while the morality might run to at least l000 verses, the miracle-play to nearly See also:double that number, and the mystery to some 40,000 or 50,000, or indeed to any length that the author could find in his See also:heart to bestow upon the audience, or the audience in their See also:patience to suffer from the author . The number of persons and See also:societies who acted these performances grew to be very large, being estimated at more than 5000 towards the end of the 15th century . Many fantastic personages came to join the Prince des Sots, such as the Empereur de See also:Galilee, the Princes de 1'Etrille, and des Nouveaux Maries, the Roi de l'Epinette, the Recteur des Fous . Of the pieces which these societies represented one only, that of Maitre Patelin, is now much known; but many are almost equally amusing . Patelin itself has an immense number of versions and See also:editions . Other farces are too numerous to See also:attempt to classify; they bear, however, in their subjects, as in their manner, a remarkable resemblance to the fabliaux, their source . Conjugal disagreements, the unpleasantness of mothers-in-law, the shifty or, in the earlier stages, clumsy See also:valet and chambermaid, the mishaps of too loosely given ecclesiastics, the abuses of See also:relics and pardons, the See also:extortion, violence, and sometimes cowardice of the seigneur and the soldiery, the corruption of See also:justice, its delays and its pompous apparatus, supply the subjects . The treatment is rather narrative than dramatic in most cases, as might be expected, but makes up by the liveliness of the dialogue for the deficiency of elaborately planned action and interest . All these forms, it will be observed, are directly or indirectly comic . Tragedy in the middle ages is represented only by the religious drama, except for a brief period towards the decline of that form, when the . " profane " mysteries referred to above came to be represented . These were, however, rather " histories," in the Elizabethan sense, than tragedies proper . Prose History.—In France, as in all other countries of whose literary developments we have any See also:record, literature in prose is considerably later than literature in verse . We have certain glosses or vocabularies possibly dating as far chroa Early lcfes . back as the 8th or even the 7th century; we have the Strassburg oaths, already described, of the 9th, and .a. commentary Profane drama . an the See also:prophet See also:Jonas which is probably as early . In the loth century there are some charters and muniments in the verna- cular; of the firth the laws of William the Conqueror are the most important document; while the Assises de See also:Jerusalem of See also:Godfrey of See also:Bouillon date, though not in the form in which we now possess them, from the same age . The r2th century gives us certain See also:translations of the Scriptures, and the remarkable Arthurian romances already alluded to; and thenceforward French prose, though long less favoured than verse, begins to grow in importance . History, as is natural, was the first subject which gave it a really satisfactory opportunity of developing its powers . For a time the French chroniclers contented themselves with Latin prose or with French verse, after the See also:fashion of See also:Wace and the Belgian, Philippe Mouskes (1215—1283) . These, after a fashion universal in medieval times, began from fabulous or merely literary_ origins, and just as See also:Wyntoun later carries back the history of See also:Scotland to the terrestrial paradise, so does Mouskes start that of France from the See also:rape of See also:Helen . But soon prose See also:chronicles, first translated, then original, became common; the earliest of all is said to have been that of the pseudo-Turpin, which thus recovered in prose the language which had originally clothed it in verse, and which, to gain a false See also:appearance of authenticity, it had exchanged still earlier for Latin . Then came French selections and versions from the great series of historical compositions undertaken by the monks of St Denys, the so-called Grandes Chroniques de France from the date of 1274, when they first took form in the hands of a monk styled Primat, to the reign of Charles V.,'when they assumed the title just given . But the first really remarkable author who used French prose as a vehicle of historical expression is Geoff roi de See also:Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, who was born rather after the middle of the 12th century, and died in See also:Greece in 1212 . Under the title of Conquete de Constanlinoble Villehardouin has left us a history Mk- of the fourth crusade, which has been accepted by all 6and rdouln . competent See also:judges as the best picture extant of feudal chivalry in its See also:prime . The Conquete de Constanlinoble has been well called a chanson de geste in prose, and indeed in the surprising nature of the feats it celebrates, in the abundance of detail, and in the vivid and picturesque poetry of the narration, it equals the very best of the chansons . Even the repetition of the same phrases which is characteristic of epic poetry repeats itself in this epic prose; and as in the chansons so in Villehardouin, few motives appear but religious fervour and the love of fighting, though neither of these excludes a lively appetite for See also:booty and a constant tendency to disunion and disorder . Villehardouin was continued by Henri de See also:Valenciennes, whose work is less remarkable, and has more the appearance of a rhymed chronicle thrown into prose, a See also:process which is known to have been actually applied in some cases . Nor is the transition from Villehardouin to Jean de See also:Joinville (considerable in point of time, for Joinville was not born till ten years after Villehardouin's death) in point of literary history immediate . The rhymed chronicles of Philippe Mouskes and Guillaume Guiart belong to this See also:interval; and in prose the most remarkable works are the Chronique de See also:Reims, a well-written history, having the interesting characteristics of taking the lay and popular side, and the great compilation edited (in the modern sense) by Baudouin d'See also:Avesnes (1213-1289) . Joinville ( ? 1224—1317), whose special iOinrIlle, subject is the Life of St Louis, is far more modern than even the half-century which separates him from Villehardouin would lead us to suppose . There is nothing of the knight-errant about him personally, notwithstanding his devotion to his hero . Our Lady of the Broken Lances is far from being his favourite saint . He is an admirable writer, but far less simple than Villehardouin; the good King Louis tries in vain to make him See also:share his own rather high-flown devotion . Joinville is shrewd, practical, there is even a See also:touch of the Voltairean about him; but he, unlike his predecessor, has political ideas and antiquarian curiosity, and his descriptions are often very creditable pieces of deliberate literature . It is very remarkable that each of the three last centuries of See also:feudalism should have had one specially and extraordinarilygifted chronicler to describe it . What Villehardouin is to the 12th and Joinville to the 13th century, that Jean Froissart (1337—1410) is to the 14th . His picture is the most famous as it is the most varied of the three, but it has Froissart. special drawbacks as well as special merits . French critics have indeed been scarcely See also:fair to Froissart, because of his early partiality to our own nation in the great quarrel of the time, forgetting that there was really no reason why he as a Hainaulter should take the French side . But there is no doubt that if the duty of an historian is to take in all the political problems of his time, Froissart certainly comes short of it . Although the feudal state in which knights and churchmen were alone of estimation was at the point of death, and though new orders of society were becoming important, though the See also:distress and confusion of a transition state were evident to all, Froissart takes no notice of them . Society is still to him all knights and ladies, tournaments, skirmishes and feasts . He depicts these, not like Joinville, still less like Villehardouin, as a sharer in them, but with the facile and picturesque See also:pen of a sympathizing literary onlooker . As the comparison of the Conquete de Constantinoble with a chanson de geste is inevitable, so is that of Froissart's Chronique with a roman d'aventures . For Provencal Literature see the separate article under that heading . 25th Century . The 15th century holds a See also:peculiar and some-what disputed position in the history of French literature, as, indeed, it does in the history of the literature of all Europe, except Italy . It has sometimes been regarded as the final stage of the medieval period, sometimes as the earliest of the modern, the influence of the Renaissance in Italy already filtering through . Others again have taken the easy step of marking it as an age of transition . There is as usual truth in all these views . Feudality died with Froissart and Eustache Deschamps . The modern spirit can hardly be said to arise before Rabelais and See also:Ronsard . Yet the 15th century, from the point of view of French literature, is much more remarkable than its historians have been wont to confess . It has not the strongly marked and compact originality of some periods, and it furnishes only one name of the highest order of literary interest; but it abounds in names of the second rank, and the very difference which exists between their styles and characters testifies to the existence of a large number of separate forces working in their different manners on different persons . Its theatre we have already treated by anticipation, and to it we shall afterwards recur . It was the palmy time of the early French stage, and all the dramatic styles"which we have enumerated then came to perfection . Of no other kind of literature can the same be said . The century which witnessed the invention of See also:printing naturally devoted itself at first more to the spreading of old literature than to the production of new . Yet as it perfected the early drama, so it produced the prose tale . Nor, as regards individual and single names, can the century of Charles d'Orleans, of Alain See also:Chartier, of Christine de See also:Pisan, of Coquillart, of See also:Comines, and, above all, of Villon, be said to lack illustrations . First among the poets of the period falls to be mentioned the shadowy personality of See also:Olivier See also:Basselin . Modern criticism has attacked the identity of the jovial See also:miller, who See also:Christina was once supposed to have written and perhaps & pis". invented the songs called See also:vaux de See also:vire, and to have also carried on a patriotic warfare against the English . But though Jean le Houx may have written the poems published under Basselin's name two centuries later, it is taken as certain that an actual Olivier wrote actual vaux de vire at the beginning of the 15th century . About Christine de Pisan (1363—1430) and Alain Chartier (1392-c . 1430) there is no such doubt . Christine was the daughter of an Italian astrologer who was patronized by Charles V . She was born in Italy but brought up in France, and she enriched the literature of her adopted country Alain with much learning, good sense and patriotism . She c artier. wrote history, devotional works and poetry; and though her literary merit is not of the highest, it is very far from despicable . Alain Chartier, best known to modern readers by the story of See also:Margaret of Scotland's See also:Kiss, was a writer of a some- what similar character . In both Christine and Chartier there is a great deal of rather heavy moralizing, and a great deal of rather pedantic erudition . But it is only fair to remember that the intolerable political and social evils of the day called for a good deal of moralizing, and that it was the See also:function of the writers of this time to fill up as well as they could the scantily filled vessels of medieval science and learning . A very different person is Charles d'Orleans (1391-1465), one of the Charles a,o greatest of grands seigneurs, for he was the father r~aas . of a king of France, and See also:heir to the duchies of Orleans and See also:Milan . Charles, indeed, if not a Roland or a See also:Bayard, was an admirable poet . He is the best-known and perhaps the best writer of the graceful poems in which an artificial versification is strictly observed, and helps by its recurrent lines and modulated rhymes to give to poetry something of a musical See also:accompaniment even without the addition of music properly so called . His ballades are certainly inferior to those of Villon, but his rondels are unequalled . For fully a century and a half these forms engrossed the attention of French lyrical poets . Exercises in them were produced in enormous numbers, and of an excellence which has only recently obtained full recognition even in France . Charles d'Orleans is himself sufficient proof of what can be done in them in the way of elegance, sweetness, and grace which some have unjustly called effeminacy . But that this effeminacy was no natural or inevitable See also:fault of the ballades and the rondeaux was fully proved by the most remarkable literary figure of the 15th century in France . To Francois Villon (1431–1463 ?), Viilon. as to other great single writers, no attempt can be made to do justice in this place . His remarkable life and character especially lie outside our subject . But he is universally recognized as the most important single figure of French literature before the Renaissance . His work is very strange in form, the undoubtedly genuine part of it consisting merely of two compositions, known as the great and little Testament, written in stanzas of eight lines of eight syllables each, with lyrical compositions in ballade and rondeau form interspersed . Nothing in old French literature can compare with the best of these, such as the " Ballade des dames du temps jadis," the "Ballade pour sa mere," "La See also:Grosse Margot," " Les Regrets de la belle Heaulmiere," and others; while the whole composition is full of poetical traits of the most extra-ordinary vigour, picturesqueness and pathos . Towards the end of the century the poetical production of the time became very large . The artificial See also:measures already alluded to, and others far more artificial and infinitely less beautiful, were largely practised . The typical poet of the end of the 15th century is Guillaume Cretin (d . 1525), who distinguished himself by writing verses with punning rhymes, verses ending with double or See also:treble repetitions of the same sound, and many other tasteless absurdities, in which, as See also:Pasquier remarks, " it perdit toute la grace et la cretin, liberte de la composition." The other favourite direction of the poetry of the time was a vein of allegorical moralizing drawn from the Roman de la rose through the medium of Chartier and Christine, which produced " Castles of Love,"" Temples of Honour,"and such like . The See also:combination of these drifts in verse-writing produced a school known in literary history, from a happy phrase of the satirist Coquillart (v. inf.) ,as the " Grands Rhetoriqueurs." The chief of these besides Cretin were Jean Molinet (d . 1507); Jean Meschinot (c . 1420-1491), author of the Lunettes des princes; Florimond Robertet (d . 1522); Georges See also:Chastellain (1404-1475), to be mentioned again; and Octavien de Saint-Gelais (1466-1502), father of a better poet than himself . Yet some of the See also:minor poets of the time are not to be despised . Such are Henri Baude (143x'1490), a less pedantic writer than most, Martial d'See also:Auvergne (1440-1508), whose principal work is L'Amant rendu cordelier au service de l'amour, and others, many of whom formed part of the poetical court which Charles d'Orleans kept up at Blois after his See also:release . While the serious poetry of the age took this turn, there was no lack of lighter and satirical verse . Villon, indeed, were it not for the See also:depth and pathos of his poetical sentiment, mightbe claimed as a poet of the lighter order, and the patriotic diatribes against the English to which we have alluded easily passed into satire . The political quarrels of the latter part of the century also provoked much satirical composition . The disputes of the Bien Public and those between Louis XI. and Charles of See also:Burgundy employed many pens . The most remark-able piece of the light literature of the first is " Les Anes Volants," a ballad on some of the early favourites of Louis . The battles of France and Burgundy were waged on See also:paper between Gilles des Ormes and the above-named Georges Chastelain, typical representatives of the two styles of 15th-century poetry already alluded to—Des Ormes being the lighter and more graceful writer, Chastelain a pompous and learned allegorist . The most remarkable representative of purely light poetry outside the theatre is Guillaume Coquillart (1421-1510), a lawyer of Champagne, who resided for the greater part of his coqui--lart . life in Reims . This city, like others, suffered from the pitiless tyranny of Louis XI . The beginnings of the See also:standing See also:army which Charles VII. had started were extremely unpopular, and the use to which his son put them by no means removed this unpopularity . Coquillart described the military man of the period in his See also:Monologue du gendarme casse . Again, when the king entertained the idea of unifying the taxes and laws of the different provinces, Coquillart, who was named See also:commissioner for this purpose, wrote on the occasion a satire called Les Droits nouveaux . A certain kind of satire, much less good-tempered than the earlier forms, became indeed common at this See also:epoch . M . Lenient has well pointed out that a new satirical personification dominates this literature . It is no longer Renart with his cynical gaiety, or the curiously travestied and almost amiable Devil of the Middle Ages . Now it is Death as an incident ever present to the See also:imagination, celebrated in the thousand repetitions of the Danse See also:Macabre, sculptured all over the buildings of the time, even frequently performed on holidays and in public . With the usual tendency to follow See also:pattern, the idea of the " See also:dance " seems to have been extended, and we have a Danse aux aveugles (1464) from Pierre Micha.ut, where the teachers are See also:fortune, love and death, all See also:blind . All through the century, too, anonymous verse of the lighter kind was written, some of it of great merit . The folk-songs already alluded to, published by Gaston Paris, show one side of this composition, and many of the pieces contained in M. de Montaiglon's extensive Recueil des anciennes poesies francaises exhibit others . The 15th century was perhaps more remarkable for its achievements in prose than in poetry . It produced, indeed, no prose writer of great distinction, except Comines; but it witnessed serious, if not extremely successful, efforts at prose composition . The invention of printing finally substituted the reader for the listener, and when this substitution has been effected, the main inducement to treat unsuitable subjects in verse is gone . The study of the See also:classics at first hand contributed to the same end . As early as 1458 the university of Paris had a See also:Greek See also:professor . But long before this time translations in prose had been made . Pierre Bercheure (Bersuire) (1290--1352) had already translated See also:Livy . See also:Nicholas See also:Oresme (c . 1334-1382), the See also:tutor of Charles V., gave a version of certain Aristotelian works, which enriched the language with a large number of terms, then strange enough, now See also:familiar . Raoul de Presles (1316–1383) turned into French the De civitate Dei of St See also:Augustine . These writers or others composed Le Songe du vergier, an elaborate discussion of the power of the pope . The famous See also:chancellor, Jean Charlier or See also:Gerson (1363-1429), to whom the Imitation has among so many others been attributed, spoke. constantly and wrote often in the vulgar tongue, though he attacked the most famous and popular work in that tongue,'the Roman de la rose . Christine de Pisan , and Alain Chartier were at least as much prose writers as poets; and the latter, while he, like Gerson, dealt much with the reform of the church, used in his Quadriloge invectif really forcible language for the purpose of spurring on the nobles of France to put an end to her sufferings and evils . These moral and didactic treatises were but continuations of others, which for convenience sake we have hitherto left unnoticed . Though verse was in the centuries prior to the 15th the favourite medium for literary composition, it was by no means the only one; and moral and educational treatises—some referred toabove—already existed in pedestrian phrase . Certain See also:household books (Livres de raison) have been preserved, some of which date as far back as the 13th century . These contain not merely accounts, but family chronicles, receipts and the like . Accounts of travel, especially to the Holy Land, culminated in the famous Voyage of See also:Mandeville which, though it has never been of so much importance in French as in English, perhaps first took vernacular form in the French tongue . Of the 14th century, we have a Menagier de Paris, intended for the instruction of a young wife, and a large number of miscellaneous treatises of art, science and morality, while private letters, mostly as yet unpublished, exist in considerable numbers, and are generally of the moralizing character; books of devotion, too, are naturally frequent . But the most important divisions of medieval See also:energy in prose composition are the spoken exercises of the See also:pulpit and the See also:bar . The beginnings of French sermons have been much discussed, especially the question whether St See also:Bernard, whose discourses we possess in ancient, but doubtfully contemporary French, pronounced them in that language or in Latin . Towards the end of the 12th century, however, the sermons of See also:Maurice de Sully (1160-1196) present the first undoubted examples of See also:homiletics in the vernacular, and they are followed by many others—so many indeed that the 13th century alone See also:counts 261 See also:sermon-writers, besides a large body of anonymous work . These sermons were, as might indeed be expected, chiefly cast in a somewhat scholastic form—theme, exordium, development, example and peroration following in regular order . The 14th-century sermons, on the other hand, have as yet been little investigated . It must, however, be remembered that this age was the most famous of all for its scholastic illustrations, and for the early vigour of the Dominican and Franciscan orders . With the end of the century and the beginning of the 15th, the importance of the pulpit begins to revive . The early years of the new age have Gerson for their representative, while the end of the century See also:sees the still more famous names cf Michel Menot (1450-1518), Olivier Maillard (c . 1430-1502), and Jean Rauhn (1443-1514), all remarkable for the practice of a vigorous and homely style of See also:oratory, recoil- See also:ing before no aid of what we should nowadays style buffoonery, and manifesting a creditable indifference to the indignation of principalities and powers . Louis XI. is said to have threatened to throw Maillard into the See also:Seine, and many instances of the bold- ness of these preachers and the rough vigour of their oratory have been preserved . Froissart had been followed as a chronicler by Enguerrand de See also:Monstrelet (c . 1390-1453) and by the historio- graphers of the Burgundian court, Chastelain, already mentioned, whole interesting Chronique de Jacques de See also:Lalaing is much the most attractive part of his work, and Olivier de la See also:Marche . The memoir and chronicle writers, who were to be of so much import- ance in French literature, also begin to be numerous at this period . See also:Juvenal des,See also:Ursins (1388-1473) , an anonymous bourgeois de Paris (two such indeed), and the author of the Chronique scandaleuse, may be mentioned as presenting the character of minute observation and record which has distinguished the class ever since . Jean le maire de (not des) Belges (1473-c . 1525) was historiographer to Louis XII. and wrote Illustrations des Gaules . But Comines (1445-1509) is no imitator of Froissart Comines . _ or of any one else . The last of the quartette of great French medieval historians, he does not yield to any of his three predecessors in originality or merit, but he is very different from them . He fully represents the See also:mania of the time for statecraft, and his book has long ranked with that of See also:Machiavelli as a See also:manual of the art, though he has not the absolutely non-moral character of the Italian . His See also:memoirs, considered merely as literature, show a style well suited to their purport,—not, indeed, brilliant or picturesque, but clear, terse and thoroughly well suited to the expression of the acuteness, observation and common sense of their author . But pcpse was not content with the domain of serious literature.It had already long possessed a respectable position as a vehicle of romance, and the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries were pre-eminently the time when the epics of chivalry were re-edited and extended in Nouvelle, The cent prose . Few, however, of these extensions offer much Nouvelle,. literary interest . On the other hand, the best prose of the century, and almost the earliest which deserves the title of a satisfactory literary medium, was employed for the telling of romances in See also:miniature . The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles is undoubtedly the first work of prose belles-lettres in French, and the first, moreover, of a long and most remarkable class of literary work in which French writers may See also:challenge all corners with the certainty of victory—the short prose tale of a comic character . This remarkable work has usually been attributed, like the somewhat similar but later Heptameron, to a See also:knot of literary courtiers gathered round a royal personage, in this case the dauphin Louis, afterwards Louis XI . Some evidence has recently been produced which seems to show that this tradition, which attributed some of the tales to Louis himself, is erroneous, but the question is still undecided . The subjects of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles are by no means new . They are simply the old themes of the fabliaux treated in the old way . The novelty is in the application of prose to such a purpose, and in the crispness, the fluency and the elegance of the prose used . The fortunate author or editor to whom these admirable tales have of late been attributed is Antoine de la Salle (1398-1461), who, if this attribution and certain others be correct, must be allowed to be one of the most original and fertile authors of early French literature . La Salle's one acknowledged work is the story of See also:Petit Jehan de Saintre, a short romance exhibiting great command of character and abundance of delicate draughtsmanship . To this not only the authorship, part-authorship or editorship of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles has been added; but the still more famous and important work of L'Avocat Patelin has been assigned by respectable, though of course conjecturing, authority to the same paternity . The generosity of critics towards La Salle has not even stopped here . A fourth masterpiece of the period, Les Quinze Joies de mariage, has also been assigned to him . This last work, like the other three, is satirical in subject, and shows for the time a•wonderful mastery of the language . Of the fifteen joys of See also:marriage, or, in other words, the fifteen miseries of husbands, each has a See also:chapter assigned to it, and each is treated with the peculiar mixture of gravity and ridicule which it requires . All who have read the book confess its See also:infinite wit and the grace of its style . It is true that it has been reproached with See also:cruelty and with a lack of the moral sentiment . But humanity and morality were not the strong point of the 15th century . There is, it must be admitted, about most of its productions a lack of poetry and a lack of imagination, produced, it may be, partly by political and other conditions outside literature, but very observable in it . The old forms of literature itself had lost their interest, and new ones possessing influence strength to last and power to develop themselves of the had not yet appeared . It was impossible, even if the Rena Is-taste for it had survived, to spin out the old themes See also:sauce. any longer . But the new forces required some time to set to work, and to avail themselves of the tremendous weapon which the See also:press had put into their hands . When these things had adjusted themselves, literature of a varied and vigorous kind became once more possible and indeed necessary, nor did it take long to make its appearance . 26th Century.—In no country was the literary result of the Renaissance more striking and more manifold than in France . The double effect of the study of antiquity and the religious See also:movement produced an outburst of literary developments of the most diverse kinds, which even the fierce and sanguinary See also:civil dissensions of the See also:Reformation did not succeed in checking . While the Renaissance in Italy had mainly exhausted its effects by the middle of the 16th century, while in Germany those effects only paved the way for a national literature, and did not them selves greatly contribute thereto, while in England it was not Early sermon-writers . Antoine de la Salle . till the extreme end of „..c period that a great literature was forthcoming—in France almost the whole century was marked by the production of See also:capital works in every branch of literary effort . Not even the 17th century, and certainly not the 18th, can show such a group of prose writers and poets as is formed by See also:Calvin, St See also:Francis de Sales, Montaigne, du Vair, See also:Bodin, d'See also:Aubigne, the authors of the Satire Menippee, See also:Monluc, Brant6me, Pasquier, Rabelais, des Periers, Herberay des Essarts, See also:Amyot, Gamier, Marot, Ronsard and the rest of the " See also:Pleiades” and finally See also:Regnier . These great writers are not merely remark-able for the vigour and originality of their thoughts, the freshness, variety and grace of their fancy, the abundance of their learning and the solidity of their arguments in the cases where argument is required . Their great merit is the creation of a language and a style able to give expression to these good gifts . The foregoing account of the medieval literature of France will have shown sufficiently that it is not lawful to despise the literary capacities and achievements of the older French . But the old language, with all its merits, was ill-suited to be a vehicle for any but the simpler forms of literary composition . Pleasant or affecting tales could be told in it with interest and pathos . Songs of charming naivete and grace could be sung; the requirements of the epic and the chronicle were suitably furnished . But it was barren of the terms of art and science; it did not readily lend itself to sustained eloquence, to impassioned poetry or to logical discussion . It had been too long accustomed to leave these things to Latin as their natural and legitimate exponent, and it See also:bore marks of its original character as a lingua rustica, a tongue suited for homely conversation, for folk-See also:lore and for See also:ballads, rather than for the business of the See also:forum and the court, the speculations of the study, and the declamation of the theatre . Efforts had indeed been made, culminating in the heavy and tasteless erudition of the schools of Chartier and Cretin, to supply the defect; but it was reserved for the 16th century completely to efface it . The series of prose writers from Calvin to Montaigne, of poets from Marot to Regnier, elaborated a language yielding to no modern tongue in beauty, richness, flexibility and strength, a language which the reactionary purism of succeeding generations defaced rather than improved, and the merits of which have in still later days been triumphantly vindicated by the See also:confession and the practice of all the greatest writers of modern France . 16th-Century Poetry.—The first few years of the 16th century were naturally occupied rather with the last developments of the medieval forms than with the production of the new model . The clerks of the Bazoche and the Confraternity of the Passion still produced and acted mysteries, moralities and farces . The poets of the " Grands Rhetoriqueurs " school still wrote elaborate allegorical poetry . Chansons de geste, rhymed romances and fabliaux had long ceased to be written . But the press was multiplying the contents of the former in the prose form which they had finally assumed, and in the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles there already existed admirable specimens of the short prose tale . There even were signs, as in some writers already mentioned and in See also:Roger de Collerye, a lackpenny but light-hearted See also:singer of the early part of the century, of definite enfranchisement in verse . But the first See also:note of the new literature was sounded by Maros See also:Clement Marot (1496/7-1544) . The son of an See also:elder poet, Jehan des Mares called Marot (1463-1523), Clement at first wrote, like his father's contemporaries, allegorical and mythological poetry, afterwards collected in a volume with a charming title, L' See also:Adolescence clementine . It was not till he was nearly See also:thirty years old that his work became really remarkable . From that time forward till his death, about twenty years after-wards, he was much involved in the troubles and persecutions of the Huguenot party to which he belonged; nor was the See also:protection of See also:Marguerite d'See also:Angouleme, the chief patroness of See also:Huguenots and men of letters, always efficient . But his troubles, so far from harming, helped his literary faculties; and his epistles, epigrams, blasons (descendants of the medieval dits), and coq_-dl'dne became remarkable for their easy and polished style, their light and graceful wit, and a certain elegance which had not as yet been even attempted in any modern tongue, though the Italian humanists had not been far from it in so ae of their Latin compositions . Around Marot arose a wb*e school of disciples and imitators, such as See also:Victor Brodeau (1470?-1540), the great authority on rondeaux, Maurice See also:Sceve, a fertile author of blasons, Salel, Marguerite herself (1492-1549), of whom more hereafter, and Mellin de Saint Gelais (1491-1558) . The last, son of the bishop named above, is a courtly writer of occasional pieces, who sustained as well as he could the style marotique against Ronsard, and who has the See also:credit of introducing the regular sonnet into French . But the inventive vigour of the age was so great that one school had hardly become popular before another pushed it from its See also:stool, and even of the Marotists just mentioned Sceve and Salel are often regarded as chief and member respectively of a Lyonnese coterie, intermediate between the schools of Marot and of Ronsard, containing other members of repute such as Antoine Hemet and Charles See also:Fontaine and claiming See also:Louise See also:Labe (v. inf.) herself . Pierre de Ronsard . Ronsard (x524-1585) was the chief of this latter . At first a courtier and a diplomatist, See also:physical disqualification made him change his career . He began to study the classics under Jean See also:Daurat (1508-1588), and with his See also:master and five other writers, See also:Etienne See also:Jodelle (1532-1573), Remy See also:Belleau (1528-1577), See also:Joachim du Bellay (1525-1560), Jean Antoine de BaIf (1532-1589), and See also:Pontus de Tyard (d . 1605, bishop of See also:Ch3.lons-sur-Sa6ne), composed the famous " Pleiade." The See also:object of this See also:band was to bring the French language, in vocabulary, The constructions and application, on a level with the See also:pleiad, classical See also:tongues by borrowings from the latter . They would have imported the Greek licence of See also:compound words, though the See also:genius of the French language is but little adapted thereto; and they wished to reproduce in French the regular tragedy, the Pindaric and Horatian See also:ode, the Virgilian epic, &c . But it is an See also:error (though one which until recently was very common, and which perhaps requires pretty thorough study of their work completely to extirpate it) to suppose that they advocated or practised indiscriminate borrowing . On the contrary both in du Bella.y's famous manifesto, the De5ense et See also:illustration de la langue francaise, and in Ronsard's own work, caution and attention to the genius and the tradition of French are insisted upon . Being all men of the highest See also:talent, and not a few of them men of great genius, they achieved much that they designed, and even where they failed exactly to achieve it, they very often indirectly produced results as important and more beneficial than those which they intended . Their ideal of a separate poetical language distinct from that intended for prose use was indeed a doubtful if not a dangerous one . But it is certain that Marot, while setting an example of elegance and grace not easily to be imitated, set also an example of trivial and, so to speak, pedestrian language which was only too imitable . If France was ever to possess a literature containing something besides fabliaux and farces, the tongue must be enriched and strengthened . This See also:accession of See also:wealth and vigour it received from Ronsard and the Ronsardists . Doubtless they went too far and provoked to some extent the reaction which See also:Malherbe led . Their importations were sometimes unnecessary . It is almost impossible to read the Franciade of Ronsard, and not too easy to read the tragedies of Jodelle and Gamier, See also:fine as the latter are in parts . But the best of Ronsard's sonnets and odes, the finest of du Bellay's Antiquites de Rome (translated into English by See also:Spenser), the exquisite Vanneur of the same author, and the Avril of Belleau, even the finer passages of d'Aubigne and du Bartas, are not only admirable in themselves, and of a kind not previously found in French literature, but are also such things as could not have been previously found, for the simple reason that the medium of expression was wanting . They constructed that medium for themselves, and no force of the reaction which they provoked was able to undo their work . Adverse criticism and the natural course of time rejected much that they had added . The charming diminutives they loved so much went out of fashion; their compounds (sometimes it must be confessed, justly) had their letters of See also:naturalization promptly cancelled; many a gorgeous See also:adjective, including some which could trace their See also:pedigree to the earliest ages of French literature, but which bore an unfortunate likeness to the new-corners, was proscribed . But for all that no language has ever had its destiny influenced more powerfully and more beneficially by a small literary clique than the language of France was influenced by the example and disciples of that Ronsard whom for two centuries it was the fashion to deride and decry . In a See also:sketch such as the present it is impossible to give a separate account of individual writers, the more important of whom will be found treated under their own names . The Ron . The effort of the " Pleiade " proper was continued and shared by a considerable number of minor poets, some of them, as has been. already noted, belonging to different groups and schools . Olivier de See also:Magny (d . 1560) and Louise Labe (b . 1526) were poets and lovers, the lady deserving far the higher rank in literature . There is more depth of passion in the writings of " La Belle Cordiere," as this Lyonnese poetess was called, than in almost any of her contemporaries . Jacques Tahureau (1527-1555) scarcely deserves to be called a minor poet . There is less than the usual See also:hyperbole in the contemporary comparison of him to See also:Catullus, and he reminds an Englishman of the school represented nearly a century later by See also:Carew, See also:Randolph and Suckling . The title of a part of his poem— Mignardises amoureuses de l'admiree—is characteristic both of the style and of the time . Jean Doublet (c . 1528-c.1580), Amadis Jamyn (c . 1530-1585), and Jean de la See also:Taille (154o-16o8) deserve mention at least as poets, but two other writers require a longer allusion . Guillaume de Salluste, seigneur du Bartas (1544-1590), whom See also:Sylvester's See also:translation, See also:Milton's imitation, and DO B'' the copious citations of See also:Southey's Doctor, have made known if not familiar in England, was partly a See also:disciple and partly a rival of Ronsard . His poem of See also:Judith was eclipsed by his better-known La Divine Sepmaine or epic of the Creation . Du Bartas was a great user and abuser of the double compounds alluded to above, but his style possesses much stateliness, and has a peculiar solemn eloquence which he shared with the other French Calvinists, and which was derived from the study partly of Calvin and partly of the Bible . See also:Theodore See also:Agrippa d'Aubigne (15J2-1630), like du Bartas, was a Calvinist . His and odes as became a Ronsardist, but his chief poetical work is the satirical poem of Les Tragiques, in which the author brands the factions, corruptions and persecutions of the time, and in which there are to be found alexandrines of a strength, vigour and original See also:cadence hardly to be discovered elsewhere, See also:save in See also:Corneille and Victor See also:Hugo . Towards the end of the century, Philippe See also:Desportes (1546-2606) and Jean See also:Bertaut (1552-1611), with much enfeebled strength, but with a certain grace, continue the Ronsardizing tradition . Among their See also:con-temporaries must be noticed Jean See also:Passerat (1534-1602), a writer of much wit and vigour and rather resembling Marot than Ronsard, and See also:Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (1536-1607), the author of a valuable Ars poetica and of the first French satires which actually bear that title . Jean le Houx (fl. c. r600) continued, rewrote or invented the vaux de vire, commonly known as the work of Olivier Basselin, and already alluded to, while a still lighter and more See also:eccentric verse style was cultivated by Etienne Tabourot des Accords (1549-1590), whose epigrams and other pieces were collected under odd titles, Les Bigarrures, Les Touches, &c . A curious pair are Guy du Faur de See also:Pibrac (1529-1584) and Pierre Mathieu (b . 1563), authors of moral quatrains, which were learnt by heart in the schools of the time, replacing the distichs of the grammarian See also:Cato, which, translated into French, had served the same purpose in the middle ages . The See also:nephew of Desportes, Mathurin Regnier (1573-1613), marks the end, and at the same time perhaps the See also:climax, of the . Regnier. poetry of the century . A descendant at once of the older Gallic spirit of Villon and Marot, in virtue of his consummate acuteness, terseness and wit, of the school of Ronsard by his erudition, his command of language, and his scholarship, Regnier is perhaps the best representative of French poetry at the See also:critical time when it had got together all its materials, had lost none of its native vigour and force, and had not yet submitted to the cramping and numbing rules and restrictions which the next century introduced . The satirical poems of Regnier, and especially the admirable See also:epistle to See also:Rapin, in which he denounces and rebuts the critical dogmas of Malherbe, are models of See also:nervous strength, while some of the elegies and odes contain expression not easily to be surpassed of the softer feelings of affection and regret . No poet has had more influence on the revival of French poetry in the last century than Regnier, and he had imitators in his own time, the chief of whom was Courval-Sonnet (Thomas Sonnet, sieur de Courval) (1577-1635), author of satires of some value for the history of manners . 16th-Century Drama.—The change which dramatic poetry underwent during the 16th century was at least as remarkable as that undergone by poetry proper . The first half of the period saw the end of the religious mysteries, the licence of which had irritated both the See also:parliament and the clergy . Louis XII., at the beginning of the century, was far from discouraging the disorderly but popular and powerful theatre in which the Confraternity of the Passion, the clerks of the Bazoche, and the Enfans sans souci enacted mysteries, moralities, soties and farces . He made them, indeed, an instrument in his quarrel with the papacy, just as Philippe le Bel had made use of the allegorical poems of Jehan de Meung and his fellows . Under his patronage were produced the chief works of Gringore or See also:Gringoire (c . 1480-1547), by far the most remarkable writer of this class of composition . His Prince des sots and his Mystere de St Louis are among the best of their kind . An enormous volume of composition of this class was produced between 1500 and 1550 .
One morality by itself, L'Homme juste et l'homme mondain, contains some 36,000 lines
.
But in 1548, when the Confraternity was formally established at the Hotel de Bourgogne, leave to play sacred subjects was expressly refused it
.
Moralities and soties dragged on under difficulties till the end of the century, and the farce, which is immortal, continually affected comedy
.
But the effect of the Renaissance was to sweep away all other vestiges of the medieval drama, at least in the capital
.
An entirely new class of subjects, entirely new modes of treatment, and a different kind of performers were introduced
.
The change naturally came from Italy
.
In the close relationship with that country which France had during the early years of the century, Italian translations of the classical masterpieces were easily imported
.
Soon French translations were made afresh of the See also:Electra, the See also:Hecuba, the Iphigenia in See also:Aulis, and the French humanists hastened to compose original tragedies on the classical model, especially as exhibited in the Latin tragedian See also:Seneca
.
It was impossible that the " Pleiade " should not eagerly seize such an opportunity of carrying out its principles, and one of its members, Jodelle (1532-1573), devoting himself mainly to dramatic composition, fashioned at once the first tragedy, Regular Cleopatre, and the first comedy, See also:Eugene, thus setting tragedy the example of the style of composition which for two and
centuries and a half Frenchmen were to regard as the comedy. highest effort of literary ambition
.
The See also:amateur performance of these dramas by Jodelle and his friends was followed by a Bacchic procession after the manner of the ancients, which caused a great deal of See also:scandal, and was represented by both Catholics and Protestants as a See also:pagan See also:orgy
.
The Cleop6tre is remarkable as being the first French tragedy, nor is it destitute of merit
.
It is curious that in this first instance the curt antithetic
r nxoµvOLa, which was so long characteristic of French plays and plays imitated from them, and which See also: There appears also the grandiose and smooth but See also:stilted declamation which came rather from the imitation of Seneca than of See also:Sophocles, and the tradition of which was never to be lost . Cleopdtre was followed by See also:Didon, which, unlike its predecessor, is entirely in alexandrines, and observes the regular See also:alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes . Jodelle was followed by Jacques See also:Grevin (1540?-1570) with a Mort de Cesar, which shows an improvement in tragic art, and two still better comedies, Les Ebahis and La Tresoriere by Jean de la Taille (154o-1608), who made still further progress tYAu- gemus was of a more varied character . He wrote sonnets bigne . towards the accepted French dramatic pattern in his See also:Saul furieux and his Corrivaux, Jacques, his brother (1541-1562), and Jean de la Peruse (1529-1554), who wrote a Medee . A very Daimler. different poet from all these is Robert Gamier (1545- 160r) . Gamier is the first tragedian who deserves a place not too far below See also:Rotrou, Corneille, See also:Racine, Voltaire and Hugo, and who may be placed in the same class with them . He See also:chose his subjects indifferently from classical, sacred and medieval lit See also:erature . Sedecie, a play dealing with the See also:capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, is held to be his masterpiece, and Bradamante deserves notice because it is the first tragi-comedy of merit in French, and because the famous confidant here makes his first appearance . See also:Garnier's successor, Antoine de Monchretien or Montchrestien (c . 1576-1621), set the example of dramatizing contemporary subjects . His masterpiece is L'E°cossaise, the first of many dramas on the See also:fate of See also:Mary, queen of Scots . While tragedy thus clings closely to See also:antique models, comedy, as might be expected in the country of the fabliaux, is more independent . Italy had already a comic school of some originality, and the French farce was too vigorous and lively a production to permit of its being entirely overlooked . The first comic writer of great LVeY, merit was Pierre See also:Larivey (c . 1550-c . 1612), an Italian by descent . Most if not all of his plays are founded on Italian originals, but the translations or adaptations are made with the greatest freedom, and almost deserve the title of original works . The style is admirable, and the skilful management of the action contrasts strongly with the languor, the awkward See also:adjustment, and the lack of dramatic interest found in con-temporary tragedians . Even Moliere found something to use in Larivey . 16th-Century Prose Fiction.—Great as is the importance of the 16th century in the history of French poetry, its importance in the history of French prose is greater still . In poetry the middle ages could fairly hold their own with any of the ages that have succeeded them . The epics of chivalry, whether of the cycles of Charlemagne, Arthur, or the classic heroes, not to mention the miscellaneous romans d'aventures, have indeed more than held their own . Both relatively and absolutely the Franciade of the 16th century, the Pucelle of the 17th, the Henriade of the 18th, cut a very poor figure beside Roland and Percivale, Gerard de Roussillon, and Parthenopex de Blois . The romances, ballads and pastourelles, signed and unsigned, of medieval France were not merely the origin, but in some respects the superiors, of the lyric poetry which succeeded them . Thibaut de Champagne, Charles d'Orleans and Villon need not See also:veil their crests in any society of bards . The charming forms of the rondel, the rondeau and the ballade have won admiration from every competent poet and critic who has known them . The fabliaux give something more than promise of La Fontaine, and the two great compositions of the Roman du Renart and the Roman de la rose, despite their faults and their alloy, will always command the admiration of all persons of taste and See also:judgment who take the trouble to study them . But while poetry had in the middle ages no reason to blush for her French representatives, prose (always the younger and less forward See also:sister) had far less to boast of . With the exception of chronicles and prose romances, no prose works of any real importance can be quoted before the end of the 15th century, and even then the chief if not the only place of importance must be assigned to the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, a work of admirable prose, but necessarily light in character, and not yet demonstrating the efficacy of the French language as a medium of expression for serious and weighty thought . Up to the time of the Renaissance and the consequent reformation, Latin had, as we have already remarked, been considered the sufficient and natural See also:organ for this expression . In France as in other countries the disturbance in religious thought may undoubtedly claim the See also:glory of having repaired this disgrace of the vulgar tongue, and of having fitted and taught it to See also:express whatever thoughts the theologian, the historian, the philosopher, the politician and the savant had occasion to utter . But the use of prose as a vehicle for lighter themes was more continuous with the literature that preceded,and serves as a natural transition from poetry and the drama to history and science . Among the prose writers, therefore, of the 16th century we shall give the first place to the novelists and romantic writers . Among these there can be no doubt of the See also:precedence, in every sense of the word, of Francois Rabelais (c . 1490-1553), the one French writer (or with Moliere one of the two) Rabelais. whom critics the least inclined to appreciate the characteristics of French literature have agreed to place among the few greatest of the world . With an immense erudition representing almost the whole of the knowledge of his time, with an untiring faculty of invention, with the judgment of a philosopher, and the common sense of a man of the world, with an observation that let no characteristic of the time pass unobserved, and with a tenfold portion of the special Gallic See also:gift of good-humoured satire, Rabelais united a height of speculation and depth of insight and a vein of poetical imagination rarely found in any writer, but altogether portentous when taken in See also:conjunction with his other characteristics . His great work has been taken for an exercise of transcendental See also:philosophy, for a concealed theological polemic, for an allegorical history of this and that personage of his time, for a merely literary utterance, for an attempt to tickle the popular ear and taste . It is all of these, and it is none—all of them in parts, none of them in deliberate and exclusive intention . It may perhaps be called the exposition and commentary of all the thoughts, feelings, aspirations and knowledge of a particular time and nation put forth in attractive literary form by a man who for once combined the practical and the literary spirit, the power of knowledge and the power of expression . The work of Rabelais is the mirror of the 16th century in France, reflecting at once its comeliness and its uncomeliness, its high aspirations, its voluptuous tastes, its political and religious dissensions, its keen criticism, its eager appetite and hasty digestion of learning, its gleams of poetry, and its ferocity of manners . In Rabelais we can divine the " Pleiade " and Marot, the Cymbalum mundi and Montaigne, Amyot and the Amadis, even Calvin and See also:Duperron . It was inevitable that such extraordinary works as Gargantua and Pantagruel should attract special imitators in the direction of their outward form . It was also inevitable that this imitation should frequently See also:fix upon these Rabelaisian characteristics which are least deserving of imitation, and most likely to be depraved in the hands of imitators . It See also:fell within the See also:plan of the master to indulge in what has been called f atrasie, the huddling together, that is to say, of a medley of language and images which is best known to English readers in the not always successful following of See also:Sterne . It pleased him also to disguise his naturally terse, strong and nervous style in a See also:burlesque envelope of redundant language, partly ironical, partly the result of superfluous erudition, and partly that of a certain childish wantonness and exuberance, which is one of his raciest and pleasantest characteristics . In both these points he was some-what corruptly followed . But fortunately the romancical writers of the 16th century had not Rabelais for their sole model, but were also influenced by the simple and straightforward style of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles . The joint influence gives us some admirable work . Nicholas of Troyes, a saddler of Champagne, came too early (his Grand Parangon des nouvelles nouvelles appeared in 1536) to copy Rabelais . But See also:Noel du Fail (d. c . 1585?), a See also:judge at See also:Rennes, shows the double influence in his See also:Pro Qs rustiques and Contes d'Eutrapel, both of which, especially the former, are lively and well-written pictures of contemporary life and thought, as the country See also:magistrate actually saw and dealt with them . In 1558, however, appeared two works of far higher literary and social interest . These are the Heptameron of the queen of Navarre, and the Conies et joyeux devis of Bonaventure des Periers (c . 1500-1544) . Des Periers, who was a courtier of Marguerite's, has peelers, sometimes been thought to have had a good deal to do with the first-named work as well as with the second, and was also the author of a curious Lucianic satire, strongly sceptical in cast, the Cymbalum mundi . Indeed, not merely the queen's prose works, but also the poems gracefully entitled Les Marguerites de la Marguerite, are often attributed to the literary men whom the sister of Francis I. gathered round her . However this may be, some single influence of power enough to give unity and distinctness of savour evidently presided over the composition of the Heptameron . The See also:Nap- tamlron . Composed as it is on the model of Boccaccio, its See also:tone and character are entirely different, and few works have a more individual charm . The Tales of des Periers are shorter, simpler and more homely; there is more wit in them and less refinement . But both works breathe, more powerfully perhaps than any others, the peculiar mixture of cultivated and poetical voluptuousness with a certain religiosity and a vigorous spirit of action which characterizes the French Renaissance . Later in time, but too closely connected with Rabelais in form and spirit to be here omitted, came the See also:Mayen de parvenir of Beroalde de Verville (1558?-1612?), a singular fatrasie, uniting wit, wisdom, learning and indecency, and crammed with anecdotes which are always amusing though rarely decorous . At the same time a fresh vogue was given to the chivalric romance by Herberay's translation of A madis de Gaula . French writers have supposed a French original for the claw. madis of Amadis in some lost roman d'aventures . It is of course impossible to say that this is not the case, but there is not one tittle of evidence to show that it is . At any rate the adventures of Amadis were prolonged in See also:Spanish through generation after generation of his descendants . This vast work Herberay des Essarts in 1540 undertook to translate or re-translate, but it was not without the assistance of several followers that the task was completed . Southey has charged Herberay with corrupting the simplicity of the original, a charge which does not concern us here . It is sufficient to say that the French Amadis is an excellent piece of literary work, and that Herberay deserves no mean place among the fathers of French prose . His book had an immense popularity; it was translated into many foreign See also:languages, and for some time it served as a favourite reading book for foreigners studying French . Nor is it to be doubted that the romancers of the See also:Scudery and Calprenede type in the next century were much more influenced both for good and harm by these Amadis romances than by any of the earlier tales of chivalry . 16th-Century Historians.—As in the case of the tale-tellers, so in that of the historians, the writers of the 16th century had traditions to continue . It is doubtful indeed whether many of them can See also:risk comparison as artists with the great names of Villehardouin and Joinville, Froissart and Comines . The 16th century, however, set the example of dividing the functions of the chronicler, setting those of the historian proper on one side, and of the See also:anecdote-monger and biographer on the other . The efforts at regular history made in this century were not of the highest value . But on the other hand the practice of memoir-writing, in which the French were to excel every nation in the world, and of literary See also:correspondence, in which they were to excel even their memoirs, was solidly founded . One of the earliest historical writers of the century was See also:Claude de Seyssel (1450-1520), whose history of Louis XII. aims not unsuccessfully at style . De See also:Thou (1553-1617) wrote in Latin, but Bernard de See also:Girard, sieur du Haillan (1537-1610), composed a Histoire de France on Thucydidean principles as transmitted through the successive mediums of See also:Polybius, See also:Guicciardini and See also:Paulus See also:Aemilius . The instance invariably quoted, after See also:Thierry, of du Haillan's method is his introduction, with appropriate speeches, of two Merovingian statesmen who argue out the relative merits of See also:monarchy and See also:oligarchy on the occasion of the See also:election of Pharamond . Besides du Haillan, la Popelinicre (c . 1540-1608), who less ambitiously attempted a history of Europe during his own time, and expended immense labour on the collection of See also:information and materials, deserves mention . There is no such poverty of writers of memoirs . Robert de la See also:Mark, du Bellay, Marguerite de See also:Valois (the youngest or third Marguerite, first wife of Henri IV., 1553-1615), See also:Villars, Tavannes, La Tour d'Auvergne, and many others composedcommentaries and autobiographies., The well-known and very agreeable Histoire du gentil seigneur de Bayart (1524) is by an anonymous " Loyal Serviteur." See also:Vincent Carloix (fl . 1550), the secretary of the marshal de Vielleville, composed some memoirs abounding in detail and incident . The Lettres of See also:Cardinal d'Ossat (1536-1604) and the Negotiations of Pierre See also:Jeannin (1540-1622) have always had a high place among documents of their kind . But there are four collections of memoirs concerning this time which far exceed all others in interest and importance . The turbulent dispositions of the time, the loose dependence of the nobles and even the smaller gentry on any single or central authority, the rapid changes of political situations, and the singularly active appetite, both for See also:pleasure and for business, for learning and for war, which distinguished the French gentleman of the 16th century, place the memoirs of Francois de Lanoue (1531-1591), Blaise de Mon[t]luc (1503-1577), Agrippa d'Aubigne and Pierre de Bourdeille[s] Brant6me (1540-1614) almost at the head of the literature of their class . The name of Brant6me is known to all who have the least See also:tincture of French literature, and the works of the others are not inferior in interest, and perhaps superior in spirit and conception, to the Dames Galantes, the Grands Capitaines and the Hommes See also:illustres . The commentaries of See also:Montluc, which Henri Quatre is said to have called the soldier's Bible, are exclusively military and deal with affairs only . Montluc was See also:governor in See also:Guienne, where he repressed the savage Huguenots of the south with a savagery worse than their own . He was, however, a See also:partisan of order, not of Catholicism . He hung and shot both parties with perfect impartiality, and refused to have anything to do with the See also:massacre of St See also:Bartholomew . Though he was a man of no learning, his style is excellent, being vivid, flexible and straightforward . Lanoue, who was a moderate in politics, has left his principles reflected in his memoirs . D'Aubigne, so often to be mentioned, gives the extreme Huguenot side as opposed to the, royalist partisanship of Montluc and the via See also:media of Lanoue . Brant6me, on the other hand, is quite free See also:Brantome. from any political or religious prepossessions, and, indeed, troubles himself very little about any such matters . He is the shrewd and somewhat cynical observer, moving through the See also:crowd and taking note of its ways, its outward appearance, its heroisms and its follies . It is really difficult to say whether the recital of a noble See also:deed of arms or the telling of a scandalous story about a court lady gave him the most pleasure; and impossible to say which he did best . Certainly he had ample material for both exercises in the history of his time . The branches of literature of which we have just given an account may be fairly connected, from the historical point of view, with work of the same kind that went before as well as with work of the same kind that followed them . It was not so with the literature of See also:theology, law, politics and erudition, which the 16th century also produced, and with which it for the first time enlarged the range of composition in the vulgar tongue . Not only had Latin been invariably adopted as the language of composition on such subjects, but the style of the treatises dealing with such matters had been traditional rather than original . In speculative philosophy or See also:metaphysics proper even this century did not See also:witness a great development; perhaps, indeed, such a development was not to be expected until the minds of men had in some degree settled down from their agitation on more practical matters . It is not without significance that Calvin (1509-1564) is the great figure in serious French prose in the first half of the century, Montaigne the corresponding figure in the second half . After Calvin and Montaigne we expect See also:Descartes . 16th-Century Theologians.—In France, as in all other countries, the Reformation was an essentially popular movement, though from special causes, such as the See also:absence of political Calvin. homogeneity, the nobles took a more active part both with pen and See also:sword in it than was the case in England . But the great textbook of the French Reformation was not the work of any noble . Jean Calvin's Institution of the Christian Religion is a book equally remarkable in matter and in form, in circum- were characteristic of the time . This doubt assumes the form stances and in result . It is the first really great composition in argumentative French prose . Its severe See also:logic and careful arrangement had as much influence on the manner of future thought, both in France and the other regions whither its wide-spread popularity carried it, as its style had on the expression of such thought . It was the work of a man of only seven-andtwenty, and it is impossible to exaggerate the originality of its manner when we remember that hardly any models of French prose then existed except tales and chronicles, which required and exhibited totally different qualities of style . It is indeed probable that had not the Institution been first written by its author in Latin, and afterwards translated by him, it might have had less dignity and vigour; but it must at the same time be remembered that this process of composition was at least equally likely, in the hands of any but a great genius, to produce a heavy and pedantic style neither French nor Latin in character . Some-thing like this result was actually produced in some of Calvin's minor works, and still more in the works of many of his followers, whose lumbering language gained for itself, in allusion to their See also:exile from France, the title of " style refugie." Nevertheless, the use of the vulgar tongue on the See also:Protestant side, and the See also:possession of a work of such importance written therein, gave the Reformers an immense advantage which their adversaries were some time in neutralizing . Even before the Institution, Lefevre d'Etaples (x455-1537) and Guillaume See also:Farel (1489-1565) saw and utilized the importance of the vernacular . Calvin (1509-1564) was much helped by Pierre Viret (1511-1571), who wrote a large number of small theological and moral dialogues, and of satirical See also:pamphlets, destined to captivate as well as to instruct the lower See also:people . The more famous See also:Beza (Theodore de Beze) (1519-1605) wrote chiefly in Latin, but he composed in French an ecclesiastical history of the Reformed churches and some translations of the See also:Psalms . Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde (1530-1593), a gentleman of Brabant, followed Viret as a satirical pamphleteer on the Protestant side . On the other hand, the See also:Catholic champions at first affected to disdain the use of the vulgar tongue, and their pamphleteers, when they did attempt it, were unequal to the task . Towards the end of the century a more decent war was waged with Philippe du Plessis See also:Mornay (1549-1623) on the Protestant side, whose work is at least as much directed against freethinkers and enemies of See also:Christianity in general as against the dogmas and discipline of Rome . His adversary, the redoubtable Cardinal du See also:Perron (1556-1618), who, originally a Calvinist, went over to the other side, employed French most vigorously in controversial works, chiefly with reference to the See also:eucharist . Du Perron was celebrated as the first controversialist of the time, and obtained dialectical victories over all corners . At the same time the bishop of See also:Geneva, St Francis of Sales (1567-1622), supported the Catholic side, partly by controversial works, but still more by his devotional writings . The Introduction to a Devout Life, which, though actually published early in the next century, had been written some time previously, shares with Calvin's Institution the position of the most important theological work of the period, and is in remark- able contrast with it in style and sentiment as well as in principles and plan . It has indeed been accused of a certain effeminacy, the appearance of which is in all probability mainly due to this very contrast . The 16th century does not, like the 17th, dis- tinguish itself by literary exercises in the pulpit . The furious preachers of the See also:League, and their equally violent opponents, have no literary value . 16th-Century Moralists and Political Writers.—The religious dissensions and political disturbances of the time could not fail to exert an influence on ethical and philosophical ttaigne. thought . Yet, as we have said, the century was not prolific of pure philosophical speculation . The scholastic tradition, though long sterile, still survived, and with it the habit of composing in Latin all works in any way connected with philosophy . The Logic of See also:Ramus in 1555 is cited as the first departure from this See also:rule . Other philosophical works are few, and chiefly express the doubt and the freethinking which of See also:positive religious See also:scepticism only in the Cymbalum mundi of Bonaventure des Periers, a remarkable series of dialogues which excited a great See also:storm, and ultimately drove the author to commit See also:suicide . The Cymbalum mundi is a curious anticipation of the 18th century . The literature of doubt, however, was to receive its principal accession in the famous essays of Michel Eyguem, seigneur de Montaigne (1533-1592) . It would be a See also:mistake to imagine the existence of any sceptical propaganda in this charming and popular book . Its principle is not scepticism but egotism; and as the author was profoundly sceptical, this quality necessarily rather than intentionally appears . We have here to deal only very superficially with this as with other famous books, but it cannot be doubted that it expresses the mental attitude of the latter part of the century as completely as Rabelais expresses the mental attitude of the early part . There is considerably less vigour and life in this attitude . Inquiry and protest have given way to a placid conviction that there is not much to be found out, and that it does not much matter; the erudition though abundant is less indiscriminate, and is taken in and given out with less gusto; exuberant drollery has given way to quiet See also:irony; and though neither business nor pleasure is decried, both are regarded rather as useful pastimes incident to the life of man than with the eager appetite of the Renaissance . From the purely literary point of view, the style is remarkable from its absence of pedantry in construction, and yet for its See also:rich vocabulary and picturesque brilliancy . The follower and imitator of Montaigne, Pierre See also:Charron (1541-1603), carried his master's scepticism to a some-what more positive degree . His principal book, De la sagesse, scarcely deserves the comparative praise which Pope has given it . On the other hand Guillaume du Vair (1556.1621), a lawyer and orator, takes the positive rather than the negative side in morality, and regards the vicissitudes in human affairs from the religious and theological point of view in a series of works characterized by the special merit of the style of great orators . The revolutionary and innovating instinct which showed itself in the 16th century with reference to church See also:government and See also:doctrine spread naturally enough to political matters . The intolerable disorder of the religious wars naturally set the thinkers of the age speculating on the doctrines of government in general . The favourite and general study of antiquity helped this tendency, and the great accession of royal power in all the monarchies of Europe invited a speculative if not a practical re-action . The persecutions of the Protestants naturally provoked a republican spirit among them, and the violent antipathy of the League to the houses of Valois and See also:Bourbon made its partisans adopt almost openly the principles of See also:democracy and tyrannicide . The greatest political writer of the age is Jean Bodin (1530-1596), whose Republique is founded partly on speculative considerations like the political theories of the ancients, Eoa1n. and partly on an extended historical inquiry . Bodin, like most lawyers who have taken the royalist side, is for unlimited monarchy, but notwithstanding this, he condemns religious persecution and discourages See also:slavery . In his speculations on the connexion between forms of government and natural causes, he serves as a See also:link between See also:Aristotle and See also:Montesquieu . On the other hand, the causes which we have mentioned made a large number of writers adopt opposite conclusions . Etienne de la Boetie (1530-1563), the friend of Montaigne's youth, composed the Contre un or Discours de la See also:servitude volontaire, a protest against the monarchical theory . The boldness of the protest and the affectionate admiration of Montaigne have given la Boetie a much higher reputation than any extant work of his actually deserves . The Contre un is a kind of See also:prize See also:essay, full of empty declamation borrowed from the ancients, and showing no grasp of the practical conditions of politics . Not much more historically based, but far more vigorous and original, is the Franco-Gallia of Francois Hotmann (1524-1590), a work which appeared both in Latin and French, which extols the authority of the states-general, represents them as direct successors of the political institutions of Gauls and Franks, and maintains the right of insurrection . In the last quarter of the century political animosity knew no See also:bounds . The Protestants beheld a divine instrument in See also:Poltrot de mere, the Catholics in Jacques Clement . The Latin treatises of See also:Hubert See also:Languet (1518—1581) and See also:Buchanan formally vindicated—the first, like Hotmann, the right of See also:rebellion based on an original See also:contract between prince and people, the second the right of tyrannicide . Indeed, as Montaigne confesses, divine authorization for political violence was claimed and denied by both parties according as the possession or the expectancy of power belonged to each, and the excesses of the preachers and pamphleteers knew no bounds . Every one, however, was not carried away . The literary merits of the chancellor Michel de 1'H6pital (1507-1573) are not very great, but his efforts to promote See also:peace and moderation were unceasing . On the other side Lanoue, with far greater literary gifts, pursued the same ends, and pointed out the ruinous consequences of continued dissension . Du Plessis Mornay took a part in political discussion even more important than that which he bore in religious polemics, and was of the utmost service to Henri Quatre in defending his cause against the League, as was also Hurault, another author of state papers . Du Vair, already mentioned, powerfully assisted the same cause by his successful See also:defence of the Salic law, the disregard of which by the Leaguer states-general was intended to lead to the See also:admission of the Spanish claim to the crown . But the foremost work against satire the League was the famous Satire Menippee (1594), See also:minim& in a literary point of view one of the most remarkable of political books . The Menippee was the work of no single author, but was due, it is said, to the collaboration of five, Pierre Leroi, who has the credit of the idea, Jacques See also:Gillot, Florent Chretien, Nicolas Rapin (1541-1596) and Pierre See also:Pithou (1530-1596), with some assistance in verse from Passerat and Gilles See also:Durand . The book is a kind of burlesque See also:report of the meeting of the states-general, called for the purpose of supporting the views of the League in 1593 . It gives an account of the procession of opening, and then we have the supposed speeches of the principal characters—the duc de See also:Mayenne, the papal See also:legate, the See also:rector of the university (a ferocious Leaguer) and others . But by far the most remarkable is that attributed to Claude d'Aubray, the See also:leader of the Tiers Eta', and said to be written by Pithou, in which all the evils of the time and the malpractices of the leaders of the League are exposed and branded . The satire is extraordinarily See also:bitter and yet perfectly good-humoured . It resembles in character rather that of Butler, who unquestionably imitated it, than any other . The style is perfectly suited to the purpose, having got rid of almost all vestiges of the cumbrousness of the older tongue without losing its picturesque quaintness . It is no wonder that, as we are told by contemporaries, it did more for Henri Quatre than all other writings in his cause . In connexion with politics some mention of legal orators and writers may be necessary . In 1539 the ordinance of Villers-Cotterets enjoined the exclusive use of the French language in legal See also:procedure . The bar and See also:bench of France during the century produced, however, besides those names already mentioned in other connexions, only one deserving of special notice, that of Etienne Pasquier (1529-1615), author of a celebrated speech against the right of the See also:Jesuits to take part in public teaching . This he inserted in his great work, Recherches de la France, a work dealing with almost every aspect of French history whether political, antiquarian or literary . 16th-Century Savants.—One more See also:division, and only one, that of scientific and learned writers pure and simple, remains . Much of the work of this kind during the period was naturally done in Latin, the vulgar tongue of the learned . But in France, as in other countries, the study of the classics led to a vast number of translations, and it so happened that one of the translators deserves as a prose writer a rank among the highest . Many of the authors already mentioned contributed to the literature of translation . Des Periers translated the Platonic dialogue Lysis, la Boetie some works of See also:Xenophon and See also:Plutarch, du Vair the De See also:corona, the In Ctesiphontem and the Pro Milone . Salel attempted the Iliad, Belleau the false See also:Anacreon, Baif some plays of See also:Plautus and See also:Terence . Besides these Lefevre d'Etaples gave a version of the Bible, Saliat one of See also:Herodotus, and Louis Leroi (1510-1577), not to be confounded with the part author of the Menippee, many works of See also:Plato, Aristotle and other Greek writers . But while most if not all of these translators owed the merits of their work to their originals, and deserved, much more deserve, to be read only by those to whom those originals are sealed, Jacques Amyot (1513-1593), bishop of See also:Auxerre, Amyot. takes rank as a French classic by his translations of Plutarch, See also:Longus and See also:Heliodorus . The admiration which Amyot excited in his own time was immense . Montaigne declares that it was thanks to him that his contemporaries knew how to speak and to write, and the See also:Academy in the next age, though not too much inclined to honour its predecessors, ranked him as a model . His Plutarch, which had an enormous influence at the time, and coloured perhaps more than any classic the thoughts and writings of the 16th century, both in French and English, was then considered his masterpiece . Nowadays perhaps, and from the purely literary standpoint, that position would be assigned to his exquisite version of the exquisite story of See also:Daphnis and Chloe . It is needless to say that See also:absolute fidelity and exact scholarship are not the pre-eminent merits of these versions . They are not philological exercises, but works of art . On the other hand, Claude See also:Fauchet (153o-16o1) in two antiquarian works, Antiquites gauloises et francoises and L'Origine de la langue et de la poesie francaise, displays a remarkable critical faculty in sweeping away the fables which had encumbered history . Fauchet had the (for his time) wonderful habit of consulting manuscripts, and we owe to him literary notices of many of the trouveres . At the same time Francois Grude, sieur de la Croix du See also:Maine (1552-1592), and Antoine Duverdier (1544-1600) founded the study of bibliography in France . Pasquier's Recherches, already alluded to, carries out the principles of Fauchet independently, and besides treating the history of the past in a true critical spirit, supplies us with voluminous and invaluable information on contemporary politics and literature . He has, moreover, the merit which Fauchet had not, of being an excellent writer . Henri See also:Estienne [Stephanus] (1528-1598) also deserves notice in this place, both for certain treatises on the French language, full of critical crotchets, and also for his curious Apologie pour Herodote, a remarkable book not particularly easy to class . It consists partly of a defence of its nominal subject, partly of satirical polemics on the Protestant side, and is filled almost equally with erudition and with the buffoonery and fatrasie of the time . The book, indeed, was much too Rabelaisian to suit the tastes of those in whose defence it was composed . The 16th century is somewhat too early for us to speak of science, and such science as was then composed falls for the most part outside French literature . The famous See also:potter, Bernard See also:Palissy (1510-1590), however, was not much less skilful as a fashioner of words than as a fashioner of pots, and his description of the difficulties of his experiments in enamelling, which lasted sixteen years, is well known . The great surgeon See also:Ambrose See also:Pare (c . 1510-Ingo) was also a writer, and his descriptions of his military experiences at See also:Turin, Metz and elsewhere have all the charm of the 16th-century memoir . The only other writers who require special mention are Olivier de See also:Serres (1539-1619), who composed, under the title of Theatre d'See also:agriculture, a complete See also:treatise on the various operations of rural See also:economy, and Jacques du Fouilloux (1521-1580), who wrote on See also:hunting (La Venerie) . Both became extremely popular and were frequently reprinted . 17th-Century Poetry.—It is not always easy or possible to make the end or the beginning of a literary epoch synchronize exactly with historical dates . It happens, however, that for Malherbe. once the beginning of the 17th century coincides almost exactly with an entire revolution in French literature . The change of direction and of critical See also:standard given by Francois de Malherbe (1556-1628) to poetry was to last for two whole centuries, and to determine, not merely the language and complexion, but also the form of French verse during the whole of that time . Accidentally, or as a matter of logical consequence (it would not be proper here to attempt to decide the question), poetry became almost synonymous with drama . It is true, as we shall have to point out, that there were, in the early part of the 17th century at least, poets, properly so called, of no contemptible merit . But their merit, in itself respectable, sank in comparison with the far greater merit of their dramatic rivals . Theophile de Viau and See also:Racan, Voiture and Saint-Amant cannot for a moment be mentioned in the same rank with Corneille . It is certainly curious, if it is not something more than curious, that this decline in poetry proper should have coincided with the so-called reforms of Malherbe . The tradition of respect for this elder and more gifted Boileau was at one time all-powerful in France, and, notwithstanding the Romantic movement, is still strong . In rejecting a large number of the importations of the Ronsardists, he certainly did good service . But it is difficult to avoid ascribing in great measure to his influence the origin of the chief faults of modern French poetry, and modern French in general, as compared with the older language . He pronounced against " poetic diction " as such, forbade the overlapping (enjambement) of verse, insisted that the middle pause should be of sense as well as sound, and that rhyme must satisfy See also:eye as well as ear . Like Pope, he sacrificed everything to "correctness," and, unluckily for French, the See also:sacrifice was made at a time when no writer of an absolutely supreme order had yet appeared in the language . With Shakespeare and Milton, not to mention scores of writers only inferior to them, safely garnered, Pope and his followers could do us little harm . Corneille and Moliere unfortunately came after Malherbe . Yet it would be unfair to this writer, however badly we may think of his influence, to deny him talent, and even a certain amount of poetical See also:inspiration . He had not felt his own influence, and the very influences which he despised and proscribed produced in him much tolerable and some admirable verse, though he is not to be named as a poet with Regnier, who had the courage, the sense and the good taste to oppose and ridicule his innovations . Of Malherbe's school, Honorat de Bueil, See also:marquis de Racan (1589-1670), and Francois de . See also:Maynard (1582-1646) were the most remarkable . The former was a true poet, though not a very strong one . Like his master, he is best when he follows the models whom that master contemned . Perhaps more than any other poet, he set the example of the classical alexandrine, the smooth and melodious but monotonous and rather effeminate measure which Racine was to bring to the highest perfection, and which his successors, while they could not improve its smoothness, were to make more and more monotonous until the genius of Victor Hugo once more See also:broke up its facile See also:polish, supplied its stiff uniformity, and introduced vigour, variety, See also:colour and distinctness in the place of its feeble sameness and its See also:pale indecision . But the vigour, not to say the licence, of the 16th century could not thus See also:die all at once . In Theophile de Viau (1591-1626) the early years of the 17th century had their Villon . The later poet was almost as unfortunate as the earlier, and almost as disreputable, but he had a great share of poetical and not a small one of critical power . The etoile enragee under which he complains that he was born was at least kind to him in this respect; and his readers, after he had been forgotten for two centuries, have once more done him justice . Racan and Theophile were followed in the second quarter of the century by two schools which sufficiently well represented the tendencies of each . The first was that of Vincent Voiture (1598-1648), See also:Isaac de See also:Benserade (1612-1691), and other poets such as Claude de Maleville (1597-1647), author of La Belle Matineuse, who were connected more or less with the famous literary coterie of the Hotel de See also:Rambouillet . Theophile was less worthily succeeded by a class, it can hardly be called a school of poets, some of whom, like Gerard Saint-Amant (1594-1660), wrote drinking songs of merit and other light pieces; others, like See also:Paul See also:Scarron (1610-166o) and Sarrasin (1603 ? 4 ? 5?-1654), devoted themselves rather to burlesque of serious verse . Most of the great dramatic authors of the time also wrote miscellaneous poetry, and there was even an epic school of the most singular kind, in ridiculing and discrediting which Boileau for once did undoubtedly good service . The Pucelle of Jean See also:Chapelain (1595-1674), the unfortunate author who was deliberately trained and educated for a poet, who enjoyed for some time a sort of dictatorship in French literature on the strength of his forthcoming work, and at whom from the day of its publication every critic of French literature has agreed to laugh, was the most famous and perhaps the worst of these . But Georges de Scudery (1601-1667) wrote an See also:Alaric, the Pere le Moyne (16oz-1671) a Saint Louis, Jean See also:Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1595-1676), a dramatist and critic of some note, a See also:Clovis, and Saint-Amant a Mozse, which were not much better, though Theophile Gautier in his Grotesques has valiantly defended these and other contemporary versifiers . And indeed it cannot be denied that even the epics, especially Saint Louis, contain flashes of finer poetry than France was to produce for more than a century outside of the drama . Some of the lighter poets and classes of poetry just alluded to also produced some remarkable verse . The Precieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet, with all their absurdities, encouraged if they did not produce good literary work . In their society there is no doubt that a great reformation of manners took place, if not of morals, and that the tendency to literature elegant and polished, yet not destitute of vigour, which marks the 17th century, was largely developed side by side with much scandal-mongering and anecdotage . Many of the authors whom these influences inspired, such as Voiture, Saint-Evremond and others, have been or will be noticed . But even such poets and wits as Antoine Baudouin de Senece (1643-1737), Jean de Segrais (1624-1701), Charles Faulure de Ris, sieur de Charleval (1612-1693), Antoine Godeau (1605-1672), Jean Ogier de Gombaud (1590-1666), are not without interest in the history of literature; while if Charles Cotin (1604-1682) sinks below this level and deserves Moliere's See also:caricature of him as Trissotin in Les Femmes savantes, Gilles de See also:Menage (1630-1692) certainly rises above it, notwithstanding the See also:companion satire of Vadius . Menage's name naturally suggests the See also:Ana which arose at this time and were long fashionable, stores of endless See also:gossip, some-times providing instruction and often amusement . The Guirlande de Julie, in which most of the poets of the time celebrated Julie d'Angennes, daughter of the marquise de Rambouillet, is perhaps the best of all such albums, and Voiture, the typical poet of the coterie, was certainly the best writer of vers de societg who is known to us . The poetical war which arose between the Uranistes, the followers of Voiture, and the Jobistes, those of Benserade, produced reams of sonnets, epigrams and similar verses . This habit of occasional versification continued long . It led as a less important consequence to the rhymed Gazettes of Jean Loret (d . 1665), which recount in octosyllabic verse of a light and lively kind the festivals and court events of the early years of Louis XIV . It led also to perhaps the most remarkable non-dramatic poetry of the century, the Contes and Fables of Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695) . No French writer is better known than la Fontaine, and there is no need to dilate on his merits . It has been Well said that he completes Moliere, and that the two together give something to French literature which no other literature possesses . Yet la Fontaine is after all only a writer of fabliaux, in the language and with the manners of his own century . All the writers we have mentioned belong more or less to the first half of the century, and so do Valentin See also:Conrart (1603-1675), Antoine Furetiere (1626-1688), Chapelle (Claude See also:Emmanuel) 1'Huillier (1626-1686), and others not worth special mention . The latter half of the century is far less productive, and the poetical quality of its production is even lower than the quantity . In it Boileau (1636-1711) is the chief poetical figure . Next to him can only be mentioned Madame See also:Deshoulieres (1638-1694), Guillaume de Brebeuf (1618-1661), the translator of See also:Lucan, Philippe See also:Quinault (1635-1688), the composer of opera libretti . Boileau's satire, where it has much merit, is usually borrowed direct from See also:Horace . He had a certain faculty as a critic of the slashing order, and might have profitably used it if he had written in prose . But of his poetry it must be said, not so much that it is bad, as that it is not, in strictness, poetry at all, and the same is generally true of all those who followed him . 17th-Century Drama.—We have already seen how the medieval theatre was formed, and how in the second half of the 16th century it met with a formidable rival in the classical drama of Jodelle and Garnier . In 1588 mysteries had been prohibited, and with the See also:prohibition of the mysteries the Confraternity of the Passion lost the principal part of its reason for existence . The other bodies and societies of amateur actors had already perished, and at length the Hotel de Bourgogne itself, the home of the con-fraternity, had been handed over to a regular See also:troop of actors, while companies of strollers, whose life has been vividly depicted in the Roman comique of Scarron and the Capitaine Fracasse of Theophile Gautier, wandered all about the provinces . The old farce was for a time maintained or revived by See also:Tabarin, a remark-able figure in dramatic history, of whom but little is known . The great dramatic author of the first quarter of the 17th century was See also:Alexandre See also:Hardy (1569-1631), who surpassed even See also:Heywood Hardy. in fecundity, and very nearly approached the por- tentous productiveness of Lope de See also:Vega . Seven hundred is put down as the modest total of Hardy's pieces, but not much more than a twentieth of these exist in See also:print . From these latter we can judge Hardy . They are hardly up to the level of the worst specimens of the contemporary Elizabethan theatre, to which, however, they bear a certain resemblance . See also:Marston's Insatiate Countess and the worst parts of See also:Chapman's See also:Bussy d'Ambois may give English readers some notion of them . Yet Hardy was not totally devoid of merit . He imitated and adapted Spanish literature, which was at this time to France what Italian was in the century before and English in the century after, in the most indiscriminate manner . But he had a consider-able command of grandiloquent and melodramatic expression, a sound theory if not a sound practice of tragic writing, and that peculiar knowledge of theatrical art and of the taste of the theatrical public which since his time has been the special possession of the French playwright . It is instructive to compare the influence of his irregular and faulty genius with that of the regular and precise Malherbe . 
From Hardy to Rotrou is, in point of literary interest, a great step, and from Rotrou to Corneille a greater . Yet the theory of Hardy only wanted the genius of Rotrou and Corneille to produce the latter . Jean de Rotrou (1610-165o) has been called the French See also:Marlowe, and there is a curious likeness and yet a curious contrast between Rotrou. the two poets . The best parts of Rotrou's two best plays, Venceslas and St Genest, are quite beyond comparison in respect of anything that preceded them, and the central speech of the last-named play will rank with anything in French dramatic poetry . Contemporary with Rotrou were other dramatic writers of considerable dramatic importance, most of them distinguished by the faults of the Spanish school, its declamatory See also:rodomontade, its conceits, and its occasionally preposterous action . Jean de See also:Schelandre (d . 1635) has left us a remarkable work in See also:Tyr et See also:Sidon, which exemplifies in practice, as its almost more remarkable See also:preface by Francois Ogier defends in principle, the English-Spanish model . Theophile de Viau in Pyrame et Thisbe and in Pasiphae produced a singular mixture of the classicism of Garnier and the extravagancies of Hardy . Scudery in L'Amour tyrannique and other plays achieved a considerable success . The Marianne of Tristan (1601-1655) and the Sophonisbe of Jean de See also:Mairet (1604-1686) are the chief pieces of their authors . Mairet resembles Marston in something more than his choice of subject . Another dramatic writer of some See also:eminence is Pierre du Ryer (1606-1648) . But the fertility of France at this moment in dramatic authors was immense; nearly too are enumerated in the first quarter Corneille . of the century . The early plays of Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) showed all the faults of his contemporaries combined with merits to which none of them except Rotrou, and Rotrou himself only in part, could lay claim . His first play was Melite, a comedy, and in Clitandre, a tragedy, he soon pro- duced what may perhaps be not inconveniently taken as the typical piece of the school of Hardy . A full account of Corneille xi . 5may be found elsewhere . It is sufficient to say here that his importance in French literature is quite as great in the way of influence and example as in the way of intellectual excellence . The See also:Cid and the Menteur are respectively the first examples of French tragedy and comedy which can be called modern . But this influence and example did not at first find many imitators . Corneille was a member of Richelieu's band of five poets . Of the other four Rotrou alone deserves the title; the remaining three, the prolific See also:abbe de See also:Boisrobert, Guillaume Colletet (whose most valuable work, a MS . Lives of Poets, was never printed, and burnt by the Communards in 1871), and Claude de Lestoile (1597-1651), are as dramatists worthy of no notice, nor were they soon followed by others more worthy . Yet before many years had passed the examples which Corneille had set in tragedy and in comedy were followed up by unquestionably the greatest comic writer, and by one who long held the position of the greatest tragic writer of France . Beginning with mere farces of the Italian type, and passing from these to comedies still of an Italian character, it was in Les Precieuses ridicules, acted in 1659, that Moliere (1622-1673), in the words of a spectator, hit at last on " la bonne comedie." The next fifteen years ~Eo. era. comprise the whole of his best known work, the finest expression beyond doubt of a certain class of comedy that any literature has produced . The tragic masterpieces of Racine (1639-1699) were not far from coinciding with the Racine. comic masterpieces of Moliere, for, with the exception of the remarkable aftergrowth of See also:Esther and Athalie, they were produced chiefly between 1667 and 1677 . Both Racine and Moliere fall into the class of writers who require separate mention . Here we can only remark that both to a certain extent committed and encouraged a fault which distinguished much subsequent French dramatic literature . This was the too great individualizing of one point in a character, and the making the man or woman nothing but a blunderer, a lover, a coxcomb, a See also:tyrant and the like . The very titles of French plays show this influence—they are Le Grondeur, Le Joueur, &c . The complexity of human character is ignored . This fault distinguishes both Moliere and Racine from writers of the very highest order; and in especial it distinguishes the comedy of Moliere and the tragedy of Racine from the comedy and tragedy of Shakespeare . In all probability this and other defects of the French drama (which are not wholly apparent in the work of Moliere and Corneille, are shown in their most favourable light in those of Racine, and appear in all their deformity in the successors of the latter) arise from the rigid See also:adoption of the Aristotelian theory of the drama with its unities and other restrictions, especially as transmitted by Horace through Boileau . This adoption was very much due to the influence of the French Academy, which was founded unofficially by Conrart in 1629, which received See also:official standing six years later, and which continued the tradition of Malherbe in attempting constantly to school and correct, as the The Academy . phrase went, the somewhat disorderly instincts of the early French stage .
Even the Cid was formally censured for irregularity by it
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But it is fair to say that Francois Hedelin, abbe d'See also:Aubignac (1604-1676), whose Pratique du theatre is the most wooden of the critical treatises of the time, was not an academician
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It is difficult to say whether the subordination of all other classes of composition to the drama, which has ever since been characteristic of French literature, was or was not due to the predilection of Richelieu, the main See also:protector if not exactly the founder of the Academy, for the theatre
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Among the immediate successors and later contemporaries of the three great dramatists we do not find any who deserve high rank as tragedians, though there are some whose comedies are more than respectable
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It is at least significant that the restrictions imposed by the See also:academic theory on the comic drama were far less severe than those which tragedy had to undergo
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The latter was practically confined, in respect of sources of attraction, to the dexterous manipulation of the unities; the interest of a See also:plot attenuated as much as possible, and intended to produce, instead of pity a mild sympathy, and instead of terror a mild alarm (for the purists decided against Corneille that "admiration was not
II
a tragic passion ") ; and lastly the composition of long tirades to moralizings and theological discussions on Jansenist principles, while Pierre See also:Camus, bishop of See also:Belley (1582–1652), in Palombe and others, approached still nearer to the strictly religious story
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In the latter part of the century, the example of La Fontaine, though he himself wrote in poetry, helped to recall the tale-tellers of France to an occupation more worthy of them, more suitable to the genius of the literature, and more likely to last
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The reaction against the Clelie school produced first Madame de Villedieu (See also:Catherine Desjardins) (1632–1692), a fluent and facile novelist, who enjoyed great but not enduring popularity
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The form which the prose tale took at this period was that of the See also:fairy story
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See also:Perrault (1628–1703) and Madame d'See also:Aulnoy (d
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1705) composed specimens of this kind which have never ceased to be popular since
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See also: There is yet a third class of prose writing which deserves to be mentioned . It also may probably be traced to Spanish influence, that is to say, to the See also:picaresque romances which the 16th and 17th centuries produced in Spain in large numbers . The most remarkable example of this is the Roman comique of the burlesque writer Scarron . The Roman bourgeois of Antoine Furetiere (1619–1688) also deserves mention as a collection of pictures of the life of the time, arranged in the most desultory manner, but drawn with great vividness, observation and skill . A remarkable writer who had great influence on Moliere has also to be mentioned in this connexion rafher than in any other . This is Cyrano de See also:Bergerac (1619–1655), who, besides composing doubtful comedies and t |