A History of the French Novel Volume I Part 37

[429] It has been said that Pigault spent some time in England, and he shows more knowledge of English things and books than was common with Frenchmen before, and for a long time after, his day. Nor does he, even during the Great War, exhibit any signs of acute Anglophobia.

[430] Pigault's adoration for Voltaire reaches the ludicrous, though we can seldom laugh _with_ him. It led him once to compose one of the very dullest books in literature, _Le Citateur_, a string of anti-Christian gibes and arguments from his idol and others.

[431] Yet sometimes--when, for instance, one thinks of the rottenness-to-the-core of Dean Farrar's _Eric_, or the _spiritus vulgaritatis fortissimus_ of Mark Twain's _A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur_--one feels a little ashamed of abusing Pigault.

[432] There was, of course, a milder and perhaps more effective possibility--to make the young turn to the young, and leave Madame de Francheville no solace for her sin. But for this also Pigault would have lacked audacity.

[433] For the story "species" of _Gil Blas_ was not new, was of foreign origin, and was open to some objection; while the other two books just named derived their attraction, in the one case to a very small extent, in the other to hardly any at all, from the story itself.

[434] Not that Jacob and Marianne are unnatural--quite the contrary--but that their situations are conventionalised.

[435] _Corps d'Extraits de Romans de Chevalerie._ 4 vols. Paris, 1782.

[436] The link between the two suggested at p. 458, _note_, is as follows. That Victor Hugo should, as he does in the Preface to _Han d'Islande_ and elsewhere, sneer at Pigault, is not very wonderful: for, besides the difference between _canaille_ and _caballeria_, the author of _M. Botte_ was the most popular novelist of Hugo's youth. But why he has, in Part IV. Book VII. of _Les Miserables_ selected Restif as "undermining the ma.s.ses in the most unwholesome way of all" is not nearly so clear, especially as he opposes this way to the "wholesomeness" of, among others--Diderot!

APPENDICES

CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS OF FRENCH FICTION NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME

11TH CENTURY

_Vie de Saint Alexis_ (probably).

_Roland_ and one or two other _Chansons_ (possibly).

12TH CENTURY

Most of the older _Chansons_.

_Arthurian Legend_ (in some of its forms).

_Roman de Troie_, _Romans d'Alexandre_ (older forms).

13TH CENTURY

Rest of the more genuine _Chansons_.

Rest of ditto Arthuriad and "Matter of Rome."

_Romans d'Aventures_ (many).

Early Fabliaux (probably).

_Roman de la Rose_ and _Roman de Renart_ (older parts).

Prose Stories (_Auca.s.sin et Nicolette_), etc.

14TH CENTURY

Rehandlings, and younger examples, of all kinds above mentioned.

15TH CENTURY

Ditto, but only latest forms of all but Prose Stories, and many of the others rendered into prose.

_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles._ First _edition_, 1480, but written much earlier.

_Pet.i.t Jehan de Saintre_, about 1459, or earlier.

_Jehan de Paris._ Uncertain, but before 1500.

16TH CENTURY

Rabelais. First Book of _Pantagruel_ Second of the whole, 1533; _Gargantua_, 1535; rest of _Pantagruel_ at intervals, to the (posthumous) Fifth Book in 1564.

Marguerite de Navarre. _Heptameron._ Written before (probably some time before) Marguerite's death in 1549. Imperfectly published as _Les Amants Fortunes_, etc., in 1558; completely, under its permanent t.i.tle, next year.

Bonaventure Desperiers. _Cymbalum Mundi_, 1537; _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, 1558, but written at least fourteen years earlier, as the author died in 1544.

Helisenne de Crenne. _Les Angoisses_, etc., 1538.

_Amadis_ Romances. Date of Spanish or Portuguese originals uncertain.

Herberay published the first part of his French translation of _Amadis_ itself in 1540.

Many of the small pastoral and adventurous stories noticed at the beginning of Chapter VIII. appeared in the last fifteen years of the sixteenth century, the remainder in the first quarter of the seventeenth. But of the Greek and Spanish compositions, which had so great an influence on them and on the subsequent "Heroic" School, the work of Heliodorus had been translated as early as 1546, and the _Diana_ of Montemayor in 1578.

17TH CENTURY

Honore d'Urfe. _L'Astree_, 1607-19. (First three parts in Urfe's lifetime, fourth and fifth after his death in 1625.)

"Heroic" Romance, 1622-60, as regards its princ.i.p.al examples, the exact dates of which are given in a note to p. 176. Madame de Villedieu wrote almost up to her death in 1683.

Fairy Tales, etc. The common idea that Perrault not only produced the masterpieces but set the fashion of the kind is inexact. Madame d'Aulnoy's _Contes des Fees_ appeared in 1682, whereas Perrault's _Contes de ma Mere L'Oye_ did not come till fifteen years later, in 1697. The precise dates of the writing of Hamilton's Tales are not, I think, known. They must, for the most part, have been between the appearance of Galland's _Arabian Nights_, 1704, and the author's death in 1720. As for the _Cabinet_ and its later const.i.tuents, see below on the eighteenth century.

Sorel, Ch. _Francion_, 1622; _Le Berger Extravagant_, 1627.