A History of French Literature Part 1

A History of French Literature.

by Edward Dowden.

PREFACE

French prose and French poetry had interested me during so many years that when Mr. Gosse invited me to write this book I knew that I was qualified in one particular--the love of my subject. Qualified in knowledge I was not, and could not be. No one can pretend to know the whole of a vast literature. He may have opened many books and turned many pages; he cannot have penetrated to the soul of all books from the _Song of Roland_ to _Toute la Lyre_. Without reaching its spirit, to read a book is little more than to amuse the eye with printed type.

An adequate history of a great literature can be written only by collaboration. Professor Pet.i.t de Julleville, in the excellent _Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Francaise_, at present in process of publication, has his well-instructed specialist for each chapter. In this small volume I too, while constantly exercising my own judgment, have had my collaborators--the ablest and most learned students of French literature--who have written each a part of my book, while somehow it seems that I have written the whole.

My collaborators are on my shelves. Without them I could not have accomplished my task; here I give them credit for their a.s.sistance.

Some have written general histories of French literature; some have written histories of periods--the Middle Ages, the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth centuries; some have studied special literary fields or forms--the novel, the drama, tragedy, comedy, lyrical poetry, history, philosophy; many have written monographs on great authors; many have written short critical studies of books or groups of books. I have accepted from each a gift. But my a.s.sistants needed to be controlled; they brought me twenty thousand pages, and that was too much. Some were accurate in statement of fact, but lacked ideas; some had ideas, but disregarded accuracy of statement; some unjustly depreciated the seventeenth century, some the eighteenth. For my purposes their work had to be rewritten; and so it happens that this book is mine as well as theirs.

The sketch of mediaeval literature follows the arrangement of matter in the two large volumes of M. Pet.i.t de Julleville and his fellow-labourers, to whom and to the writings of M. Gaston Paris I am on almost every page indebted. Many matters in dispute have here to be briefly stated in one way; there is no s.p.a.ce for discussion.

Provencal literature does not appear in this volume. It is omitted from the History of M. Pet.i.t de Julleville and from that of M. Lanson.

In truth, except as an influence, it forms no part of literature in the French language.

The reader who desires guidance in bibliography will find it at the close of each chapter of the History edited by M. Pet.i.t de Julleville, less fully in the notes to M. Lanson's History, and an excellent table of critical and biographical studies is appended to each volume of M. Lintilhac's _Histoire de la Litterature Francaise_. M. Lintilhac, however, omits many important English and German t.i.tles--among others, if I am not mistaken, those of Birsch-Hirschfeld's _Geschichte der Franzosichen Litteratur: die Zeit der Renaissance_, of Lotheissen's important _Geschichte der Franzosichen Litteratur im XVII. Jahrhundert_, and of Professor Flint's learned _Philosophy of History_ (1893).

M. Lanson's work has been of great service in guiding me in the arrangement of my subjects, and in giving me courage to omit many names of the second or third rank which might be expected to appear in a history of French literature. In a volume like the present, selection is important, and I have erred more by inclusion than by exclusion. The limitation of s.p.a.ce has made me desire to say no word that does not tend to bring out something essential or characteristic.

M. Lanson has ventured to trace French literature to the present moment. I have thought it wiser to close my survey with the decline of the romantic movement. With the rise of naturalism a new period opens. The literature of recent years is rather a subject for current criticism than for historical study.

I cannot say how often I have been indebted to the writings of M.

Brunetiere, M. f.a.guet, M. Larroumet, M. Paul Stapfer, and other living critics: to each of the volumes of _Les Grands ecrivains Francais_, and to many of the volumes of the _Cla.s.siques Populaires_. M.

Lintilhac's edition of Merlet's _etudes Litteraires_ has also often served me. But to name my aids to study would be to fill some pages.

While not unmindful of historical and social influences, I desire especially to fix my reader's attention on great individuals, their ideas, their feelings, and their art. The general history of ideas should, in the first instance, be discerned by the student of literature through his observation of individual minds.

That errors must occur where so many statements are made, I am aware from past experience; but I have taken no slight pains to attain accuracy. It must not be hastily a.s.sumed that dates here recorded are incorrect because they sometimes differ from those given in other books. For my errors I must myself bear the responsibility; but by the editorial care of Mr. Gosse, in reading the proof-sheets of this book, the number of such errors has been reduced.

EDWARD DOWDEN.

DUBLIN, _June_ 1897.

BOOK THE FIRST

_THE MIDDLE AGES_

CHAPTER I

NARRATIVE RELIGIOUS POETRY--THE NATIONAL EPIC--THE EPIC OF ANTIQUITY--ROMANCES OF LOVE AND COURTESY

The literature of the Middle Ages is an expression of the spirit of feudalism and of the genius of the Church. From the union of feudalism and Christianity arose the chivalric ideals, the new courtesy, the homage to woman. Abstract ideas, ethical, theological, and those of amorous metaphysics, were rendered through allegory into art.

Against these high conceptions, and the overstrained sentiment connected with them, the positive intellect and the mocking temper of France reacted; a literature of satire arose. By degrees the bourgeois spirit encroached upon and overpowered the chivalric ideals. At length the mediaeval conceptions were exhausted.

Literature dwindled as its sources were impoverished; ingenuities and technical formalities replaced imagination. The minds of men were prepared to accept the new influences of the Renaissance and the Reformation.

I NARRATIVE RELIGIOUS POETRY

The oldest monument of the French language is found in the Strasburg Oaths (842); the oldest French poem possessing literary merit is the _Vie de Saint Alexis_, of which a redaction belonging to the middle of the eleventh century survives. The pa.s.sion of piety and the pa.s.sion of combat, the religious and the warrior motives, found early expression in literature; from the first arose the Lives of Saints and other devout writings, from the second arose the _chansons de geste_. They grew side by side, and had a like manner of development.

If one takes precedence of the other, it is only because by the chances of time _Saint Alexis_ remains to us, and the forerunners of the _Chanson de Roland_ are lost. With each species of poetry _cantilenes_--short lyrico-epic poems--preceded the narrative form.

Both the profane and what may be called the religious _chanson de geste_ were sung or recited by the same jongleurs--men of a cla.s.s superior to the vulgar purveyors of amus.e.m.e.nt. Gradually the poems of both kinds expanded in length, and finally prose narrative took the place of verse.

The Lives of Saints are in the main founded on Latin originals; the names of their authors are commonly unknown. _Saint Alexis_, a tale of Syriac origin, possibly the work of Tedbalt, a canon of Vernon, consists of 125 stanzas, each of five lines which are bound together by a single a.s.sonant rhyme. It tells of the chast.i.ty and poverty of the saint, who flies from his virgin bride, lives among beggars, returns unrecognised to his father's house, endures the insults of the servants, and, dying at Rome, receives high posthumous honours; finally, he is rejoined by his wife--the poet here adding to the legend--in the presence of G.o.d, among the company of the angels. Some of the sacred poems are derived from the Bible, rhymed versions of which were part of the jongleur's equipment; some from the apocryphal gospels, or legends of Judas, of Pilate, of the Cross, or, again, from the life of the Blessed Virgin. The literary value of these is inferior to that of the versified Lives of the Saints. About the tenth century the marvels of Eastern hagiography became known in France, and gave a powerful stimulus to the devout imagination. A certain rivalry existed between the claims of profane and religious literature, and a popular audience for narrative poems designed for edification was secured by their recital in churches. Wholly fabulous some of these are--as the legend of St. Margaret--but they were not on this account the less welcome or the less esteemed. In certain instances the tale is dramatically placed in the mouth of a narrator, and thus the way was in a measure prepared for the future mystery-plays.

More than fifty of these Lives of Saints are known, composed generally in octosyllabic verse, and varying in length from some hundreds of lines to ten thousand. In the group which treats of the national saints of France, an element of history obscured by errors, extravagances, and anachronisms may be found. The purely legendary matter occupies a larger s.p.a.ce in those derived from the East, in which the religious ideal is that of the hermit life. The celebrated _Barlaam et Joasaph_, in which Joasaph, son of a king of India, escaping from his father's restraints, fulfils his allotted life as a Christian ascetic, is traceable to a Buddhist source. The narratives of Celtic origin--such as those of the Purgatory of St. Patrick and the voyages of St.

Brendan--are coloured by a tender mysticism, and sometimes charm us with a strangeness of adventure, in which a feeling for external nature, at least in its aspects of wonder, appears. The Celtic saints are not hermits of the desert, but travellers or pilgrims. Among the lives of contemporary saints, by far the most remarkable is that of our English Becket by Garnier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence. Garnier had himself known the archbishop; he obtained the testimony of witnesses in England; he visited the places a.s.sociated with the events of Becket's life; his work has high value as an historical doc.u.ment; it possesses a personal accent, rare in such writings; a genuine dramatic vigour; and great skill and harmonious power in its stanzas of five rhyming lines.

A body of short poems, inspired by religious feeling, and often telling of miracles obtained by the intercession of the Virgin or the saints, is known as _Contes pieux_. Many of these were the work of Gautier de Coinci (1177-1236), a Benedictine monk; he translates from Latin sources, but with freedom, adding matter of his own, and in the course of his pious narratives gives an image, far from flattering, of the life and manners of his own time. It is he who tells of the robber who, being accustomed to commend himself in his adventures to our Lady, was supported on the gibbet for three days by her white hands, and received his pardon; and of the illiterate monk who suffered shame because he knew no more than his _Ave Maria_, but who, when dead, was proved a holy man by the five roses that came from his mouth in honour of the five letters of Maria's name; and of the nun who quitted her convent to lead a life of disorder, yet still addressed a daily prayer to the Virgin, and who, returning after long years, found that the Blessed Mary had filled her place, and that her absence was unknown. The collection known as _Vies des Peres_ exhibits the same navete of pious feeling and imagination. Man is weak and sinful; but by supernatural aid the humble are exalted, sinners are redeemed, and the suffering innocent are avenged. Even Theophile, the priest who sold his soul to the devil, on repentance receives back from the Queen of Heaven the very doc.u.ment by which he had put his salvation in p.a.w.n. The sinner (_Chevalier au barillet_) who endeavours for a year to fill the hermit's little cask at running streams, and endeavours in vain, finds it br.i.m.m.i.n.g the moment one tear of true penitence falls into the vessel. Most exquisite in its feeling is the tale of the _Tombeur de Notre-Dame_--a poor acrobat--a jongleur turned monk--who knows not even the _Pater noster_ or the _Credo_, and can only offer before our Lady's altar his tumbler's feats; he is observed, and as he sinks worn-out and faint before the shrine, the Virgin is seen to descend, with her angelic attendants, and to wipe away the sweat from her poor servant's forehead. If there be no other piety in such a tale as this, there is at least the piety of human pity.

II THE NATIONAL EPIC

Great events and persons, a religious and national spirit, and a genius for heroic narrative being given, epic literature arises, as it were, inevitably. Short poems, partly narrative, partly lyrical, celebrate victories or defeats, the achievements of conquerors or defenders, and are sung to relieve or to sustain the pa.s.sion of the time. The French epopee had its origin in the national songs of the Germanic invaders of Gaul, adopted from their conquerors by the Gallo-Romans. With the baptism of Clovis at Reims, and the acceptance of Christianity by the Franks (496), a national consciousness began to exist--a national and religious ideal arose. Epic heroes--Clovis, Clotaire, Dagobert, Charles Martel--became centres for the popular imagination; an echo of the Dagobert songs is found in _Floovent_, a poem of the twelfth century; eight Latin lines, given in the _Vie de Saint Faron_ by Helgaire, Bishop of Meaux, preserve, in their ninth-century rendering, a fragment of the songs which celebrated Clotaire II. Doubtless more and more in these lost _cantilenes_ the German element yielded to the French, and finally the two streams of literature--French and German--separated; gradually, also, the lyrical element yielded to the epic, and the _chanson de geste_ was developed from these songs.

In Charlemagne, champion of Christendom against Islam, a great epic figure appeared; on his person converged the epic interest; he may be said to have absorbed into himself, for the imagination of the singers and the people, the persons of his predecessors, and even, at a later time, of his successors; their deeds became his deeds, their fame was merged in his; he stood forth as the representative of France. We may perhaps regard the ninth century as the period of the transformation of the _cantilenes_ into the _chansons de geste_; in the fragment of Latin prose of the tenth century--reduced to prose from hexameters, but not completely reduced--discovered at La Haye (and named after the place of its discovery), is found an epic episode of Carlovingian war, probably derived from a _chanson de geste_ of the preceding century. In each _chanson_ the _gesta_,[1] the deeds or achievements of a heroic person, are glorified, and large as may be the element of invention in these poems, a certain historical basis or historical germ may be found, with few exceptions, in each. Roland was an actual person, and a battle was fought at Roncevaux in 778.

William of Orange actually encountered the Saracens at Villedaigne in 793. Renaud de Montauban lived and fought, not indeed against Charlemagne, but against Charles Martel. Ogier, Girard de Roussillon, Raoul de Cambrai, were not mere creatures of the fancy. Even when the narrative records no historical series of events, it may express their general significance, and condense into itself something of the spirit of an epoch. In the course of time, however, fantasy made a conquest of the historical domain; a way for the triumph of fantasy had been opened by the incorporation of legend into the narrative, with all its wild exaggerations, its reckless departures from truth, its conventional types of character, its endlessly-repeated incidents of romance--the child nourished by wild beasts, the combat of unrecognised father and son, the hero vulnerable only in one point, the vindication of the calumniated wife or maiden; and by the over-labour of fantasy, removed far from nature and reality, the epic material was at length exhausted.

[Footnote 1: _Gestes_ meant (1) deeds, (2) their history, (3) the heroic family.]

The oldest surviving _chanson de geste_ is the SONG OF ROLAND, and it is also the best. The disaster of Roncevaux, probably first sung in _cantilenes_, gave rise to other chansons, two of which, of earlier date than the surviving poem, can in a measure be reconstructed from the Chronicle of Turpin and from a Latin _Carmen de proditione Guenonis_. These, however, do not detract from the originality of the n.o.ble work in our possession, some of the most striking episodes of which are not elsewhere found. The oldest ma.n.u.script is at Oxford, and the last line has been supposed to give the author's name--Touroude (Latinised "Turoldus")--but this may have been the name of the jongleur who sang, or the transcriber who copied. The date of the poem lies between that of the battle of Hastings, 1066, where the minstrel Taillefer sang in other words the deeds of Roland, and the year 1099. The poet was probably a Norman, and he may have been one of the Norman William's followers in the invasion of England.

More than any other poem, the _Chanson de Roland_ deserves to be named the Iliad of the Middle Ages. On August 15, 778, the rearguard of Charlemagne's army, returning from a successful expedition to the north of Spain, was surprised and destroyed by Basque mountaineers in the valley of Roncevaux. Among those who fell was Hrodland (Roland), Count of the march of Brittany. For Basques, the singers subst.i.tuted a host of Saracens, who, after promise of peace, treacherously attack the Franks, with the complicity of Roland's enemy, the traitor Ganelon.

By Roland's side is placed his companion-in-arms, Olivier, brave but prudent, brother of Roland's betrothed, _la belle Aude_, who learns her lover's death, and drops dead at the feet of Charlemagne. In fact but thirty-six years of age, Charlemagne is here a majestic old man, _a la barbe fleurie_, still full of heroic vigour. Around him are his great lords--Duke Naime, the Nestor of this Iliad; Archbishop Turpin, the warrior prelate; Oger the Dane; the traitor Ganelon. And overhead is G.o.d, who will send his angels to bear heavenwards the soul of the gallant Roland. The idea of the poem is at once national and religious--the struggle between France, as champion of Christendom, and the enemies of France and of G.o.d. Its spirit is that of the feudal aristocracy of the eleventh century. The characters are in some degree representative of general types, but that of Roland is clearly individualised; the excess of soldierly pride which will not permit him, until too late, to sound his horn and recall Charlemagne to his aid, is a glorious fault. When all his comrades have fallen, he still continues the strife; and when he dies, it is with his face to the retreating foe. His fall is not unavenged on the Saracens and on the traitor. The poem is written in decasyllabic verse--in all 4000 lines--divided into sections or _laisses_ of varying length, the lines of each _laisse_ being held together by a single a.s.sonance.[2] And such is the form in which the best _chansons de geste_ are written. The decasyllabic line, derived originally from popular Latin verse, rhythmical rather than metrical, such as the Roman legionaries sang, is the favourite verse of the older chansons.

The alexandrine,[3] first seen in the _Pelerinage de Jerusalem_ of the early years of the twelfth century, in general indicates later and inferior work. The _laisse_, bound in one by its identical a.s.sonance, might contain five lines or five hundred. In chansons of late date the full rhyme often replaces a.s.sonance; but inducing, as it did in unskilled hands, artificial and feeble expansions of the sense, rhyme was a cause which co-operated with other causes in the decline of this form of narrative poetry.

[Footnote 2: _a.s.sonance_, _i.e._ vowel-rhyme, without an agreement of consonants.]

[Footnote 3: Verse of twelve syllables, with cesura after the sixth accented syllable. In the decasyllabic line the cesura generally followed the fourth, but sometimes the sixth, tonic syllable.]

Naturally the chansons which celebrated the achievements of one epic personage or one heroic family fell into a group, and the idea of cycles of songs having arisen, the later poets forced many independent subjects to enter into the so-called cycle of the king (Charlemagne), or that of William of Orange, or that of Doon of Mayence. The second of these had, indeed, a genuine cyclic character: it told of the resistance of the south of France to the Mussulmans. The last cycle to develop was that of the Crusades. Certain poems or groups of poems may be distinguished as _gestes_ of the provinces, including the _Geste des Lorrains_, that of the North (_Raoul de Cambrai_), that of Burgundy, and others.[4] Among these may be placed the beautiful tale of _Amis et Amiles_, a glorification of friendship between man and man, which endures all trials and self-sacrifices. Other poems, again, are unconnected with any of these cycles; and, indeed, the cyclic division is more a convenience of cla.s.sification than a fact in the spontaneous development of this form of art. The entire period of the evolution of epic song extends from the tenth or eleventh to the fifteenth century, or, we might say, from the _Chanson de Roland_ to the _Chronique de Bertrand Duguesclin_. The eleventh century produced the most admirable work; in the twelfth century the chansons are more numerous, but nothing was written of equal merit with the Song of Roland; after the death of Louis VII. (1180) the old epic material was rehandled and beaten thin--the decadence was already in progress.

[Footnote 4: The epopee composed in Provencal, sung but not transcribed, is wholly lost. The development of lyric poetry in the South probably checked the development of the epic.]

The style in which the _chansons de geste_ are written is something traditional, something common to the people and to the time, rather than characteristic of the individual authors. They show little of the art of arranging or composing the matter so as to produce an unity of effect: the narrative straggles or condenses itself as if by accident; skill in transitions is unknown. The study of character is rude and elementary: a man is either heroic or dastard, loyal or a traitor; wholly n.o.ble, or absolutely base. Yet certain types of manhood and womanhood are presented with power and beauty. The feeling for external nature, save in some traditional formulae, hardly appears.

The pa.s.sion for the marvellous is everywhere present: St. Maurice, St. George, and a shining company, mounted on white steeds, will of a sudden bear down the hordes of the infidel; an angel stands glorious behind the throne of Charlemagne; or in narrative of Celtic origin angels may be mingled with fays. G.o.d, the great suzerain, to whom even kings owe homage, rules over all; Jesus and Mary are watchful of the soldiers of the cross; Paradise receives the souls of the faithful. As for earth, there is no land so gay or so dear as _la douce France_. The Emperor is above all the servant and protector of the Church. As the influence of the great feudal lords increased, they are magnified often at the expense of the monarchy; yet even when in high rebellion, they secretly feel the duty of loyalty. The recurring poetic epithet and phrase of formula found in the _chansons de geste_ often indicate rather than veil a defect of imagination.

Episodes and adventures are endlessly repeated from poem to poem with varying circ.u.mstances--the siege, the a.s.sault, the capture, the duel of Christian hero and Saracen giant, the Paynim princess amorous of a fair French prisoner, the marriage, the ma.s.sacre, and a score of other favourite incidents.

The popularity of the French epopee extended beyond France. Every country of Europe translated or imitated the _chansons de geste_.

Germany made the fortunate choice of _Roland_ and _Aliscans_. In England two of the worst examples, _Fierabras_ and _Otinel_, were special favourites. In Norway the chansons were applied to the purpose of religious propaganda. Italy made the tales of Roland, Ogier, Renaud, her own. Meanwhile the national epopee declined in France; a breath of scepticism touched and withered the leaf.a.ge and blossom of imagination; it even became possible to parody--as in _Audigier_--the heroic manner. The employment of rhyme in place of a.s.sonance, and of the alexandrine in place of the decasyllabic line, encouraged what may be called poetical padding. The influence of the Breton romances diverted the _chansons de geste_ into ways of fantasy; "We shall never know," writes M. Leon Gautier, "the harm which the Round Table has done us." Finally, verse became a weariness, and was replaced by prose.

The decline had progressed to a fall.