Initiation into Literature Part 3

_CHANSONS DE GESTE_.--The literature of the Middle Ages freed itself from Latin about the tenth century. This was the moment when the great epopees which are called _chansons de geste_ began to be heard. The most celebrated is the one ent.i.tled _The Song of Roland_. It is the story of the last struggle in which Roland engaged on returning from Spain at the pa.s.s of Roncevaux and of his death. The form of this poem is rather dry and a little monotonous; but there are admirable pa.s.sages such as the benediction of the dying by the Bishop Turpin, the farewell of Roland to Oliver, Roland holding out his glove to his Lord G.o.d at the moment of death, etc. The _chansons de geste_ were numerous. Some commemorated Charlemagne and his comrades, others Arthur, King of Britain, and his knights, others, as a rule less interesting, were about the heroes of antiquity, Troy, Alexander, not well known but not forgotten. The _chansons de geste_ permeated the whole of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

JOINVILLE; VILLEHARDOUIN.--In the thirteenth century appeared an historian, Joinville, friend of St. Louis, who described the crusade in which he took part with his master. He possessed _navete_, grace, naturalness, and picturesqueness. Villehardouin, who described the fourth crusade, in which he played his part, was a realist--exact, precise, luminous--in whom the strangeness and grandeur of the things he had witnessed sometimes inspired a true n.o.bility, simple enough but singularly impressive.

THE TROUBADOURS.--Lyric poetry barely existed during these centuries except south of the Loire, in the Latin country, among the poets called troubadours; nevertheless, in the north, the n.o.ble Count Thibaut of Champagne, to cite only one, wrote songs possessing amiable inspiration and happily turned. Beside him must be instanced the highly remarkable Ruteboeuf, narrator, elegiast, lyric orator, admirably gifted, who, to be a great poet, only needed to live in a more favourable period and to have at his disposition a more flexible language, one more abundant and more widely elaborated.

_THE ROMANCES OF RENARD_.--In the fourteenth century, the _Romances of Renard_ enjoyed remarkably wide popularity and multiplied in abundance. Each was like a fable by La Fontaine expanded to the proportions of an epic poem. Under the names of animals they were human types in action and concerned in multifarious adventures: the lion was the king; the bear, called Bruin, was the seigneurial lord of the soil; the fox was the artful, circ.u.mspect citizen; the c.o.c.k, called Chanticleer, was the hero of warfare, and so on. Some of the _Romances of Renard_ are insipid; others possess a satiric and parodying spirit that is extremely diverting.

THE FABLES.--Contemporaneously the _Fables_ amused our ancestors.

They were anecdotes, tales in verse for the most part dealing with adventures of citizens, a.n.a.logous to the tales of La Fontaine. The majority were jeering, bantering, and satirical; some few were affecting and refined. They were certainly the most living and characteristic portion of old French literature.

THE BIBLES.--The Middle Ages, after the manner of the ancients, delighted in gathering into one volume all the knowledge current. These didactic books were called bibles. Some were celebrated: the _Bible_ of Guyot of Provence, the _Bible_ of Hugo of Berzi. As a rule, whilst learned as far as the resources of the times permitted, they were also satiric, precisely as almost the whole of the literature of the Middle Ages is satiric.

_THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE_.--The _Romance of the Rose_, which was by two authors writing with almost half a century of interval between them, was in the first portion, of which the author is William of Lorris, an art of love in the form of a romance in verse; and the second part, written by John de Meung, formed in some measure a continuation of the first, but above all was a work of erudition and instruction, in which the poet put all that he knew as well as his philosophical conceptions, often of a remarkable and highly unexpected boldness. Aptly John de Meung has been compared with Rabelais, and it is not astonishing that the popularity of this poem should have lasted more than two centuries nor that it should have charmed or irritated our ancestors according to the tendency of their minds.

FROISSART.--The representative of history in the fourteenth century was Froissart, a picturesque chronicler, very vital, always full of interest, although it is indisputable that he was lacking in historical criticism; and among the orators, polemists, and controversialists of the times must at least be cited the impa.s.sioned and virtuous Gerson, who expended his life in incessant struggles on behalf of his Christian faith.

To him, without decisive proof, has often been attributed the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_, which, in any case, whoever wrote it, must be emphasised as one of the purest products of the religious spirit of the Middle Ages.

CHARLES OF ORLEANS; VILLON.--The fifteenth century, otherwise somewhat sterile, introduced one distinguished poet, Charles of Orleans, graceful and pleasing; and one who at moments rose to the height of being almost a great poet: this was Francis Villon, the celebrated author of _The Ballade of Dames of Ancient Times_, of which the yet more famous refrain was, "Where are the snows of last year?"

MYSTERIES AND MIRACLES.--To deal with the theatre of the Middle Ages it is necessary to go further back. Without considering as drama those pious performances which the clergy organised or tolerated even in the churches from the tenth century and probably earlier, there was already a popular drama in the twelfth century outside the church whereat were performed veritable dramas drawn from holy writ or legends of saints. This developed in the thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth it was prolific in immense dramatic poems which needed several days for their performance. These were _Mysteries_, as they were termed, or _Miracles_, wherein comedy and tragedy were interwoven and a great deed in religious history or sometimes in national history commemorated, such as the _Mystery of the Siege of Orleans_, by Greban.

FARCES; FOLLIES; MORALITIES.--The comic theatre also existed. It provided _farces_, which were really little comedies (the most famous was the _Farce of the Lawyer Patelin_); _follies_, which are farcical but good-humoured caricatures of students and clerks; and _moralities_, which are small serious dramas, interspersed with comedy, having real personages mingled with allegorical ones. The drama of the Middle Ages was very living and highly original, coming from the soil and exactly adapted to the sentiments, pa.s.sions, and ideas of the people for whom and, a little later, by whom it was written.

CHAPTER VI

THE MIDDLE AGES: ENGLAND

Literature in Latin, in Anglo-Saxon, and in French. The Ancestor of English Literature: Chaucer.

THE THREE LITERATURES.--In England, prior to the Norman invasion, that is before 1066, England possessed Saxon bards who sang of the prowess of forbears or contemporaries, and monks who wrote in Latin the lives of saints or even lay histories.

From 1066 must be distinguished in England three parallel literatures: the Latin literature of the cloister, the Anglo-Saxon literature, and the French literature of the conquerors.

Latin literature, so far as prose is regarded, was devoted exclusively to philosophy and history; in verse the subjects are more diversified, satire more especially flourished.

The poets of the French tongue wrote more particularly _chansons de geste_, and those of such songs which form what is termed the _Cycle of Artus_ are for the most part the work of poets born in England.

Finally, in the different popular dialects, Saxon, Western English, etc., epic poems were written in verse, or romances, discourses, homilies, different religious work in prose. The Normans, ardent, energetic, and practical, had founded universities whence issued, endowed and equipped, those who by patriotic sentiment or taste were destined to write in Anglo-Saxon or in English.

CHAUCER; GOWER.--The greatest name of the period and the one which radiates most brilliantly is that of Chaucer in the fourteenth century, author of _The Canterbury Tales_ and a crowd of other works. He possessed very varied imagination, sometimes vigorous, sometimes humorous, an extraordinary sense of reality, much spirit, and a fertility of mind which made him the ancestor and precursor of Shakespeare. To his ill.u.s.trious name must be added that of his friend and pupil Gower, who is curious because he is representative of the three literatures still in use in his day, having written his _Speculum Meditatus_ in French, his _Vox Clamantis_ in Latin, and his _Confessio Amantis_ in English. So far as I am aware this phenomenon was never repeated.

CHAPTER VII

THE MIDDLE AGES: GERMANY

Epic Poems: _Nibelungen_. Popular Poems. Very numerous Lyric Poems.

Drama.

FIRST LITERARY WORK.--The most ancient monument of German literature is the _Song of Hildebrand_, which goes back to an unknown antiquity, perhaps to the ninth century, and a very beautiful fragment of which has been preserved by a happy chance. We are entirely ignorant of works written in German between the _Song of Hildebrand_ and the _Nibelungen_, except for some religious poems such as the _Heliand_ in low German and the _Book of the Gospels_ in high German.

THE NIBELUNGEN,--The _Nibelungen_ form a vast poem, written probably in the thirteenth century (or, at that epoch, formed by juxtaposition of more ancient popular songs). It is a great national monument wherein are collected the legendary exploits of all the ancestors of the Germans, Huns, Goths, Burgundians and Franks especially. Portions possess admirable dramatic qualities. The a.n.a.logy with the _Iliad_ is remarkable, and the comparison may be made even from the literary point of view.

VARIOUS PRODUCTIONS.--Then come productions less national in type, imitations of French poems. _Song of Roland_, _Alexander_, songs of the _Cycle of Arthur_ or of the _Round Table_, imitations of Latin poems: for instance, the _Aeneid_, etc. Here, too, was spread the _Story of Renard_, as in France, and even now the question is unsettled whether the first poem of _Renard_ is French or German.

Religious and satiric poems were abundant in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but what is highly characteristic is the large number of lyrical poets (Dietmar of Ast, Kurenberg, Frederic of Hausen, the Emperor Henry VI, etc.) produced by the Middle Ages in Germany. This poetry was generally amorous and melancholy, sometimes full of the warlike ardour which is found among our own troubadours. The poets who, as in France, wandered through Germany, from court to court and from castle to castle, called themselves minnesingers (singers of love). The one who has remained most famous is Tannhauser. A fantastic and touching legend has formed about his name.

Germany, like France, possessed a popular drama, less prolific possibly, but very similar. Among the most ancient popular tragedies now known may be cited _The Prophets of Christ_ and the _Game of Antichrist_, which are curious because of the juxtaposition of biblical acts and contemporaneous events. Later came _The Miracles of the Virgin_, _The Wise and Foolish Virgins_, dramas more varied, with more numerous characters, more elaborate mounting, and with the interest relatively more concentrated.

COMEDY.--Comedy, as a rule very gross in character, enjoyed wide esteem, especially in the fourteenth century. What were performed under the t.i.tle of _Carnival Games_ were generally nothing but _fables_ in dialogue, domestic scenes, incidents in the market, interludes at the cross-roads. Here was the vulgar plebeian joy allowing itself full licence. The literary activity of Germany in the Middle Ages was at least equal to that of the three literary western nations.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MIDDLE AGES: ITALY

Troubadours of Southern Italy. Neapolitan and Sicilian Poets. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio.

THE TROUBADOURS.--The Italian literature of the Middle Ages is intimately a.s.sociated with the literature of the Troubadours in the south of France.

To express the case more definitely, the literature styled "Provencal,"

apart from mere differences of dialect, extended from the Limousine to the Roman campagna, and French literature existed only in the northern and central provinces of France, the rest being Provencal-Italian literature. The Italian Troubadours, by which I mean those born in Italy, who must at least be cited, are Malaspina, Lanfranc Cicala, Bartolomeo Ziorgi (of Venice), Bordello (of Mantua), etc.

NAPLES AND SICILY.--Naples and Sicily, where were founded large universities, were the seat of a purely Italian literature in the thirteenth century, thanks to the impetus of the Emperor Frederick II. At this seat were Peter of Vignes (_Petrus de Vineis_), who pa.s.ses as inventor of the sonnet; Ciullo of Alcamo, author of the first known Italian _canzone_, etc. The influence of Sicily on all Italy was such that for long in Italy all writing in verse was termed Sicilian.

BOLOGNA; FLORENCE.--The literary centre then pa.s.sed, that is in the thirteenth century, to Bologna and Florence. Among the celebrated Tuscans of this epoch was Guittone of Arezzo, mentioned by Dante and Petrarch with more or less consideration; Jacopone of Todi, at once both mystic and buffoon, in whom it has been sought, in a manner somewhat flattering to him, to trace a predecessor of Dante; Brunetto Latini, the authentic master of Dante, who was encyclopaedic, after a fashion, and who published, first in French, whilst he was in Paris, _The Treasure_, a compilation of the knowledge of his time, then, in Italian, _Tesoretto_, a collection of maxims drawn from his previous work, besides some poetry and translations from Latin.

The fourteenth century, which for the French, Germans, and English was the last or even the last century but one of the Middle Ages, was for the Italians the first of the Renaissance. Two great names dominate this century: Dante and Petrarch.

DANTE: _THE DIVINE COMEDY_.--Dante, highly erudite, theologian, philosopher, profound Latin scholar, not ignorant of Greek, much involved in the agitations of his age, exiled from his home, Florence, in the tumult of political discords, proscribed and a wanderer, coming as far as France, studied at the University of Paris, wrote "songs," that is to say, lyrical poetry gathered into the volume ent.i.tled _The Canzoniere_, the _Vita Nuova_, which is also a collection of lyric efforts, though more philosophical, and finally _The Divine Comedy_, which is a theological epic poem. _The Divine Comedy_ is composed of three parts: h.e.l.l, purgatory, and heaven. h.e.l.l is composed of nine circles which contract as they approach the centre of the earth.

There Dante placed the famous culprits of history and his own particular enemies. The most popular episodes of h.e.l.l are Ugolino in the tower of hunger devouring his dead children, Francesca of Rimini relating her guilty pa.s.sions and their disastrous consequence, the meeting with Sordello, the great Lord of Mantua, ever invincibly proud, looking "like the lion when he reposes." Purgatory is a cone of nine circles which contract as they rise to heaven. Heaven, finally, is composed of nine globes superimposed on one another; over each of the first seven presides a planet, the eighth is the home of the fixed stars, and the last is pure infinity, home of the Trinity and of the elect. The power of general imagination and of varied invention always renewed in style, and the warmth of pa.s.sion which throws life and heat into each part, have a.s.sured Dante universal admiration. The community of literature pre-eminently admires the h.e.l.l; the eclectic have been compelled to a.s.sert and therefore to believe that the paradise is infinitely superior.

PETRARCH.--Petrarch, a Florentine born in exile, brought up at Avignon, Carpentras, and Montpellier, during four fifths of his life thought only of being a great scholar, of writing in Latin, and of obtaining the repute of an excellent humanist. Hence his innumerable works in Latin.

But when twenty-three he was deeply affected by love for a maiden of Avignon, and he sang of her living and dead and still triumphant in glory and eternity, and hence his poems in Italian, the _Rhymes_ and _Triumphs_. The sensitiveness of Petrarch was admirable; never did pure love, growing mystical and mingling with divine love, find accents alike more profound and n.o.ble than came from this Platonist refined with Italian subtlety. Petrarchism became a fashion among the mediocre and a school among these above the common. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there were innumerable imitators of Petrarch in Italy, and later still in France. It is impossible not to instance Lamartine as the last in date.

BOCCACCIO: _THE DECAMERON_.--Immediately after these two great men came Boccaccio, born in Paris but of Italian parentage, who resided at Naples at the court of King Robert. He was a great admirer of Dante and Petrarch, and himself wrote several estimable poems, but, in despair no doubt of attaining the height of his models and also to please the taste of Mary, daughter of King Robert, he wrote the libertine tales which are gathered in the collection ent.i.tled _The Decameron_ and which established his fame. He is one of the purest authors, as stylist, of all Italian literature, and may be regarded as the principle creator of prose in his own land.