Une robe pour Versailles (Historique t. 1444) (French Edition)

Both ventures are made easier by the extraordinary resemblance of the pair. This embroglio is smoothed out, and Amiles and Bellicent are happily united. The generous Amis however has not been able to avoid forswearing himself while playing the part of Amiles; and this sin is punished, according to a divine warning, by an attack of leprosy. His wife Lubias seizes the opportunity, procures a separation from him, and almost starves him, or would do so but for two faithful servants and his little son.

At last a means of cure is revealed to him. If Amiles and Bellicent will allow their two sons to be slain the blood will recover Amis of his leprosy. The stricken knight journeys painfully to his friend and tells him the hard condition. Amiles does not hesitate, and the following passage tells his deed: No sooner has the blood touched Amis than he is cured, and the knights solemnly visit the church where Bellicent and the people are assembled. The story is told and the mother, in despair, rushes to the chamber where her dead children are lying. But she finds them living and in full health, for a miracle has been wrought to reward the faithfulness of the friends now that suffering has purged them of their sin.

This story, touching in itself, is most touchingly told in the Chanson. No poem of the kind is more vivid in description, or fuller of details of the manners of the time, than Amis et Amiles. Bellicent and Lubias, the former passionate and impulsive but loving and faithful, the latter treacherous, revengeful, and cold-hearted, give perhaps the earliest finished portraits of feminine character to be found in French literature. Amis and Amiles themselves are presented to us under so many more aspects than Roland and Oliver that they dwell better in the memory.

Not even the immolation of Ganelon's hostages is so striking as the calm ferocity with which Charlemagne dooms his wife and son as well as his daughter to pay with their lives the penalty of Bellicent's fault; while the sudden lapse of Amis from his position of feudal lordship at Blaye to that of a miserable outcast, smitten and marked out for public scorn and ill-treatment by the visitation of God, is unusually dramatic.

Amis et Amiles bears to Roland something not at all unlike the relation of the Odyssey to the Iliad. Its continuation, Jourdains de Blaivies , adds the element of foreign travel and adventure; but that element is perhaps more characteristically represented, and the representation has certainly been more generally popular, in Huon de Bordeaux. Of the remaining Chansons, the following are the most remarkable. Aliscans twelfth century deals with the contest between William of Orange, the great Christian hero of the south of France, and the Saracens. This poem forms, according to custom, the centre of a whole group of Chansons dealing with the earlier and later adventures of the hero, his ancestors, and descendants.

The series formed by these and others 22 is among the most interesting of these groups. Le Chevalier au Cygne is a title applied directly to a somewhat late version of an old folk-tale, and more generally to a series of poems connected with the House of Bouillon and the Crusades. Antioche , the first of these, which describes the exploits of the Christian host, first in attacking and then in defending that city, is one of the finest of the Chansons, and is probably in its original form not much later than the events it describes, being written by an eye-witness.

The variety of its personages, the vivid picture of the alternations of fortune, the vigour of the verse, are all remarkable. This group is terminated by Baudouin de Sebourc 24 , a very late but very important Chanson, which falls in with the poetry of the fourteenth century, and the Bastart de Bouillon La Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche 26 is the oldest form in which the adventures of one of the most popular and romantic of Charlemagne's heroes are related.

Fierabras had also a very wide popularity, and contains some of the liveliest pictures of manners to be found in these poems, in its description of the rough horse-play of the knights and the unfilial behaviour of the converted Saracen princess. This poem is also of much interest philologically Garin le Loherain 28 is the centre of a remarkable group dealing not directly with Charlemagne, but with the provincial disputes and feuds of the nobility of Lorraine.

Raoul de Cambrai 29 is another of the Chansons which deal with 'minor houses,' as they are called, in contradistinction to the main Carlovingian cycle. Hugues Capet 31 , though very late, is attractive by reason of the glimpses it gives us of a new spirit supplanting that of chivalry proper. In it the heroic distinctly gives place to the burlesque.

Macaire 32 , besides being written in a singular dialect, in which French is mingled with Italian, supplies the original of the well-known dog of Montargis. Huon de Bordeaux 33 , already mentioned, was not only more than usually popular at the time of its appearance, but has supplied Shakespeare with some of the dramatis personae of A Midsummer Night's Dream , and Wieland and Weber with the plot of a well-known poem and opera. Jourdains de Blaivies , the sequel to Amis et Amiles , contains, besides much other interesting matter, the incident which forms the centre of the plot of Pericles.

Les Saisnes 35 deals with Charlemagne's wars with Witekind. Doon de Mayence 37 , though not early, includes a charming love-episode. In these numerous poems there is recognisable in the first place a distinct family likeness which is common to the earliest and latest, and in the second, the natural difference of manners which the lapse of three hundred years might be expected to occasion. There is a sameness which almost amounts to monotony in the plot of most Chansons de Gestes: The agents of this treachery are commonly of the blood of the arch-traitor Ganelon, and are almost invariably discomfited by the good knight or his friends and avengers.

The part 40 which Charlemagne plays in these poems is not usually dignified: In the earliest Chansons the part played by women is not so conspicuous as in the later, but in all except Roland it has considerable prominence. Sometimes the heroine is the wife, daughter, or niece of Charlemagne, sometimes a Saracen princess. But in either case she is apt to respond without much delay to the hero's advances, which, indeed, she sometimes anticipates. The conduct of knights to their ladies is also far from being what we now consider chivalrous. Blows are very common, and seem to be taken by the weaker sex as matters of course.

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The prevailing legal forms are simple and rather sanguinary. The judgment of God, as shown by ordeal of battle, settles all disputes; but battle is not permitted unless several nobles of weight and substance come forward as sponsors for each champion; and sponsors as well as principal risk their lives in case of the principal's defeat, unless they can tempt the king's cupidity.

These common features are necessarily in the case of so large a number of poems mixed with much individual difference, nor are the Chansons by any means monotonous reading. Their versification is pleasing to the ear, and their language, considering its age, is of surprising strength, expressiveness, and even wealth. Though they lack the variety, the pathos, the romantic chivalry, and the mystical attractions of the Arthurian romances, there is little doubt that they paint, far more accurately than their successors, an actually existing state of society, that which prevailed in the palmy time of the feudal system, when war and religion were deemed the sole subjects worthy to occupy seriously men of station and birth.

In giving utterance to this warlike and religious sentiment, few periods and classes of literature have been more strikingly successful. Nowhere is the mere fury of battle better rendered than in Roland and Fierabras. Nowhere is the valiant indignation of the beaten warrior, and, at the same time, his humble submission to providence, better given than in Aliscans. Nowhere is the devout sentiment and belief of the same time more fully drawn than in Amis et Amiles. The method of composition and publication of these poems was peculiar. The poet was commonly a man of priestly or knightly rank, the performer who might be of either sex was probably of no particular station.

The Jongleur, or Jongleresse, wandered from castle to castle, reciting the poems, and interpolating in them recommendations of the quality of the wares, requests to the audience to be silent, and often appeals to their generosity. Some of the manuscripts which we now possess were originally used by Jongleurs, and it was only in this way that the early Chanson de Geste was intended to be read. The process of hawking about naturally interfered with the preservation of the poems in their original purity, and even with the preservation of the author's name.

In very few cases 41 is the latter known to us. The question whether the Chansons de Gestes were originally written in northern or southern French has often been hotly debated. The facts are these. Two of these 42 are admitted translations or imitations of Northern originals.

The third, Girartz de Rossilho , is undoubtedly original, but is written in the northernmost dialect of the Southern tongue. The inference appears to be clear that the Chanson de Geste is properly a product of northern France. Such a hypothesis is evidently unreasonable, and would probably never have been started had not some of the earliest students of Old French been committed by local feeling to the championship of the language of the Troubadours. On the other hand, almost all the dialects of Northern French are represented, Norman and Picard being perhaps the commonest The language of these poems, as the extracts given will partly show, is neither poor in vocabulary, nor lacking in harmony of sound.

It is indeed, more sonorous and stately than classical French language was from the seventeenth century to the days of Victor Hugo, and abounds in picturesque terms which have since dropped out of use. The massive castles of the baronage, with their ranges of marble steps leading up to the hall, where feasting is held by day and where the knights sleep at night, are often described. Dress is mentioned with peculiar lavishness.

Pelisses of ermine, ornaments of gold and silver, silken underclothing, seem to give the poets special pleasure in recording them. In no language are what have been called 'perpetual' epithets more usual, though the abundance of the recurring phrases prevents monotony. The 'clear countenances' of the ladies, the 'steely brands' of the knights, their 'marble palaces,' the 'flowing beard' of Charlemagne, the 'guileful tongue' of the traitors, are constant features of the verbal landscape. From so great a mass of poetry it would be vain in any space here available to attempt to arrange specimen 'jewels five words long.

Before quitting the subject of the Chansons de Gestes, it may be well to give briefly their subsequent literary history. They were at first frequently re-edited, the tendency always being to increase their length, so that in some cases the latest versions extant run to thirty or forty thousand lines. As soon as this limit was reached, they began to be turned into prose, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries being the special period of this change. The art of printing came in time to assist the spread of these prose versions, and for some centuries they were almost the only form in which the Chansons de Gestes, under the general title of romances of chivalry, were known.

The verse originals remained for the most part in manuscript, but the prose romances gained an enduring circulation among the peasantry in France. From the seventeenth century their vogue was mainly restricted to this class. His versions were executed entirely in the spirit of the day, and did not render any of the characteristic features of the old Epics.

But they drew attention to them, and by the end of the century, University Professors began to lecture on old French poetry. The exertions of M. Paulin Paris, of M. Francisque Michel, and of some German scholars first brought about the re-editing of the Chansons in their original form about half a century ago; and since that time they have received steady attention, and a large number have been published — a number to which additions are yearly being made.

Rather more than half the known total are now in print. Each of these is composed of many poems. Contrasted with these are the 'petites gestes,' which include only a few Chansons. Another, of much later date in point of writing but representing the same text, exists at Venice. Of later versions there are six manuscripts extant.

The Chanson de Roland has since its editio princeps been repeatedly re-edited, translated, and commented. The most exact edition is that of Prof. Stengel, Heilbronn, , who has given the Bodleian Manuscript both in print and in photographic facsimile. The most convenient edition is that of Kroeber and Servois, Paris, There is an English fourteenth-century version published by Mr.

Herrtage for the Early English Text Society, This is scarcely the fact, unless by 'later' we are to understand all except Roland. In Roland itself the presentment is by no means wholly complimentary. Paul Meyer has recently edited this latter poem under the title of Daurel et Beton Paris, To these should be added a fragment, Aigar et Maurin , which seems to rank with Girartz.

The Romance language, spoken in the country now called France, has two great divisions, the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil 44 , which stand to one another in hardly more intimate relationship than the first of them does to Spanish or Italian. Yet it is not possible to avoid giving some sketch of the literary developments of Southern France in any history of French literature, as well because of the connection which subsisted between the two branches, as because of the altogether mistaken views which have been not unfrequently held as to that connection.

We have already seen that this supposition as applied to Epic poetry is entirely false; we shall see hereafter that, except as regards some lyrical developments, and those not the most characteristic, it is equally ill-grounded as to other kinds of composition. But the literature of the South is quite interesting enough in itself without borrowing what does not belong to it, and it exhibits not a few characteristics which were afterwards blended with those of the literature of the kingdom at large.

The southern limit is formed by the Pyrenees, the Gulf of Lyons, and the Alps, while Catalonia is overlapped to the south-west just as Savoy is taken in on the north-east. This wide district gives room for not a few dialectic varieties with which we need not here busy ourselves. The general language is distinguished from northern French by the survival to a greater degree of the vowel character of Latin. The vocabulary is less dissolved and corroded by foreign influence, and the inflections remain more distinct. The result, as in Spanish and Italian, is a language more harmonious, softer, and more cunningly cadenced than northern French, but endowed with far less vigour, variety, and freshness.

The separate development of the two tongues must have begun at a very early period. A few early monuments, such as the Passion of Christ 46 and the Mystery of the Ten Virgins 47 , contain mixed dialects. It is arranged in laisses and assonanced. Of the eleventh century the principal monuments are a few charters, a translation of part of St. John's Gospel, and several religious pieces in prose and verse. Not till the extreme end of this century does the Troubadour begin to make himself heard. The most remarkable works of the first period have been already alluded to.

This period may possibly have produced original epics of the Chanson form, though, as has been pointed out, no indications of any such exist, except in the solitary instance of Girartz de Rossilho. It is thought to be the oldest vernacular poem on the subject, and is in a mixed dialect partaking of the forms both of north and south. A single prose monument remains in the shape of a fragmentary translation of the Gospel of St.

But by far the most important example of this period is the Boethius. The poem, as we have it, extends to decasyllabic verses arranged on the fashion of a Chanson de Geste, and dates from the eleventh century, or at latest from the beginning of the twelfth, but is thought to be a rehandling of another poem which may have been written nearly two centuries earlier. The narrative part of the work is a mere introduction, the bulk of it consisting of moral reflections taken from the De Consolatione.

The stimulus which brought it to perfection has been generally taken to be that of the crusades, aided by the great development of peaceful civilisation at home which Provence and Languedoc then saw. The spirit of chivalry rose and was diffused all over Europe at this time, and in some of its aspects it received a greater welcome in Provence than anywhere else. For the mystical, the adventurous, and other sides of the chivalrous character, we must look to the North, and especially to the Arthurian legends, and the Romans d'Aventures which they influenced.

Passion is indeed not the only motive of the Troubadours, but it is their favourite motive, and their most successful. The connection of this predominant instinct with the elaborate and unmatched attention to form which characterises them is a psychological question very interesting to discuss, but hardly suitable to these pages.

A Short History of French Literature / George Saintsbury

It is sufficient here to say that these various motives and influences produced the Troubadours and their literature. This literature was chiefly lyrical in form, but also included many other kinds, of which a short account may be given. In the third decade of the twelfth Guillem Bechada had written a poem on the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, which, however, has perished, though the northern cycle of the Chevalier au Cygne may represent it in part.

Guillem of Poitiers also wrote a historical poem on the Crusades with similar ill fate. This is the chronicle of the Albigensian War, written in Alexandrines by William of Tudela and an anonymous writer. We also possess a rhymed chronicle of the war of in Navarre, by Guillem Anelier. Blandin de Cornoalha is another existing romance, and so is the far more interesting Flamenca , a lively picture of manners dating from the middle of the thirteenth century.

A very few narrative poems of a sacred character are also found, and vestiges of drama may be traced. But, as we have said, the real importance of the period consists in its lyrical poetry, the poetry of the Troubadours. The names of separate poets are given, and pieces have come down to us without the names of their writers. The chief forms in which these poets exercised their ingenuity were as follows. The simplest and oldest was called simply vers ; it had few artificial rules, was written in octosyllabic lines, and arranged in stanzas.

Here the rhymes were interlaced, and the alternation of masculine and feminine by degrees observed. The length of the lines varied. Both these forms were consecrated to love verse; the Sirvente, on the other hand, is panegyrical or satirical, its meaning being literally 'Song of Service. The planh or Complaint was a dirge or funeral song written generally in decasyllabics. The tenson or debate is in dialogue form, and when there are more than two disputants is called torneijamens.

The retroensa is a longer refrain poem of later date, but in neither is the return of the same rhyme in each stanza necessarily observed, as in the French ballade. The alba is a leave-taking poem at morning, and the serena if it can be called a form, for scarcely more than a single example exists a poem of remembrance and longing at eventide.

The pastorela , which had numerous sub-divisions, explains itself. The descort is a poem something like the irregular ode, which varies the structure of its stanzas. Not merely the rhymes but the words which rhyme are repeated on a regular scheme. The breu-doble double-short is a curious little form on three rhymes, two of which are repeated twice in three four-lined stanzas, and given once in a concluding couplet, while the third finishes each quatrain.

Other forms are often mentioned and given, but they are not of much consequence. Its most considerable remains, besides religious works and a few scientific and grammatical treatises, are a prose version of the Chanson des Albigeois , and an interesting collection of contemporary lives of the Troubadours. This poet, like most of the other literary names of the period, belongs to the school of Toulouse, a somewhat artificial band of writers who flourished throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, held poetical tournaments on the first Sunday in May, invented or adopted the famous phrase gai saber for their pursuits, and received, if they were successful, the equally famous Golden Violet and minor trinkets of the same sort.

The brotherhood directed itself by an art of poetry in which the half-forgotten traditions of more spontaneous times were gathered up. To this period, and to its latter part, the Waldensian writings entitled La Nobla Leyczon , to which ignorance and sectarian enthusiasm had given a much earlier date, are now assigned. With a few words on these two points this chapter may be concluded. It may be regarded as not proven that any initial influence was exercised over northern French literature by the literature of the South, and more than this, it may be held to be unlikely that any such influence was exerted.

With regard to lyric poetry the case is rather different. The earliest existing lyrics of the North are somewhat later than the earliest songs of the Troubadours, and no great lyrical variety or elegance is reached until the Troubadours' work had, by means of Thibaut de Champagne and others, had an opportunity of penetrating into northern France.

On the other hand, the forms which finished lyric adopted in the North are by no means identical with those of the Troubadours. The scientific and melodious figures of the Ballade, the Rondeau, the Chant-royal, the Rondel, and the Villanelle, cannot by any ingenuity be deduced from Canso or Balada, Retroensa or Breu-Doble.

The Alba and the Pastorela agree in subject with the Aubade and the Pastourelle, but have no necessary or obvious connection of form. The Troubadours undoubtedly preceded their Northern brethren in scrupulous attention to poetical form, and in elaborate devices for ensuring such attention. They preceded them too in recognising that quality in poetry for which there is perhaps no other word than elegance. There can be little doubt that they sacrificed to these two divinities, elegance and the formal limitation of verse, matters almost equally if not more important. The motives of their poems are few, and the treatment of those motives monotonous.

Love, war, and personal enmity, with a certain amount of more or less frigid didactics, almost complete the list. In dealing with the first and the most fruitful, they fell into the deadly error of stereotyping their manner of expression. The objection would hardly be fatal, if this eternity did not extend to a great many things besides hawthorn and nightingales.

In the later Troubadours especially, the fault which has been urged against French dramatic literature just before the Romantic movement was conspicuously anticipated. Every mood, every situation of passion, was catalogued and analysed, and the proper method of treatment, with similes and metaphors complete, was assigned. There was no freshness and no variety, and in the absence of variety and freshness, that of vigour was necessarily implied.

It may even be doubted whether the influence of this hot-house verse on the more natural literature of the North was not injurious rather than beneficial. In this chapter the information given is based on a smaller acquaintance at first hand with the subject than is the case in the chapters on French proper. Herr Karl Bartsch has been the guide chiefly followed. The passion for narrative poetry, which at first contented itself with stories drawn from the history or tradition of France, took before very long a wider range.

The origin of the Legend of King Arthur, of the Round Table, of the Holy Graal, and of all the adventures and traditions connected with these centres, is one of the most intricate questions in the history of mediaeval literature. It would be beyond the scope of this book to attempt to deal with it at length.

It is sufficient for our purpose, in the first place, to point out that the question of the actual existence and acts of Arthur has very little to do with the question of the origin of the Arthurian cycle. The history of mediaeval literature, as distinguished from the history of the Middle Ages, need not concern itself with any conflict between the invaders and the older inhabitants of England.

The question which is of historical literary interest is, whether the traditions which Geoffrey of Monmouth, Walter Map, Chrestien de Troyes, and their followers, wrought into a fabric of such astounding extent and complexity, are due to Breton originals, or whether their authority is nothing but the ingenuity of Geoffrey working upon the meagre data of Nennius As far as this question concerns French literature, the chief champions of these rival opinions were till lately M.

In no instance was the former able to produce Breton or Celtic originals of early date. On the other hand, M. Paris showed that Nennius is sufficient to account for Geoffrey, and that Geoffrey is sufficient to account for the purely Arthurian part of subsequent romances and chronicles. The religious element of the cycle has a different origin, and may possibly not be Celtic at all. It must, however, still be admitted that the extraordinary rapidity with which so vast a growth of literature was produced, apparently from the slenderest stock, is one of the most surprising things in literary history.

Before the middle of the twelfth century little or nothing is heard of Arthur. Before that century closed at least a dozen poems and romances in prose, many of them of great length, had elaborated the whole legend as it was thenceforward received, and as we have it condensed and Englished in Malory's well-known book two centuries and a half later. The probable genesis of the Arthurian legend, in so far as it concerns French literature, appears to be as follows. First in order of composition, and also in order of thought, comes the Legend of Joseph of Arimathea, sometimes called the 'Little St.

There is nothing in this work which is directly connected with Arthur. By some it has been attributed to a Latin, but not now producible, 'Book of the Graal,' by others to Byzantine originals. Anyhow it fell into the hands of the well-known Walter Map 53 , and his exhaustless energy and invention at once seized upon it. He produced the 'Great St.

Graal,' a very much extended version of the early history of the sacred vase, still keeping clear of definite connection with Arthur, though tending in that direction. From this, in its turn, sprang the original form of Percevale , which represents a quest for the vessel by a knight who has not originally anything to do with the Round Table.

The link of connection between the two stories is to be found in the Merlin , attributed also to Robert de Borron, wherein the Welsh legends begin to have more definite influence. This, in its turn, leads to Artus , which gives the early history of the great king. Then comes the most famous, most extensive, and finest of all the romances, that of Lancelot du Lac , which is pretty certainly in part, and perhaps in great part, the work of Map; as is also the mystical and melancholy but highly poetical Quest of the Saint Graal , a quest of which Galahad and Lancelot, not, as in the earlier legends, Percival, are the heroes.

To this succeeds the Mort Artus , which forms the conclusion of the whole, properly speaking. This, however, does not entirely complete the cycle. Other legends were worked up into the omnium gatherum of Giron le Courtois , and with this the cycle proper ceases. But not the slightest testimony can be adduced to show that any such persons ever had existence These prose romances form for the most part the original literature of the Arthurian story. As is the case with most of these early writers, little or nothing is known of Chrestien de Troyes but his name. He lived in the last half of the twelfth century, he was attached to the courts of Flanders, Hainault, and Champagne, and he wrote most of his works for the lords of these fiefs.

Besides his Arthurian work he translated Ovid, and wrote some short poems. Chrestien de Troyes deserves a higher place in literature than has sometimes been given to him. But Percevale and the Chevalier au Lyon are very charming poems, deeply imbued with the peculiar characteristics of the cycle — religious mysticism, passionate gallantry, and refined courtesy of manners. Chrestien de Troyes undoubtedly contributed not a little to the popularity of the Arthurian legends.

Although, by a singular chance, which has not yet been fully explained, the originals appear to have been for the most part in prose, the times were by no means ripe for the general enjoyment of work in such a form. The reciter was still the general if not the only publisher, and recitation almost of necessity implied poetical form. Chrestien did not throw the whole of the work of his contemporaries into verse, but he did so throw a considerable portion of it. Percevale is, perhaps, the best example of Chrestien's fashion of composition.

The work of Borron is very short, amounting in all to some ninety pages in the reprint.

The Percevale le Gallois of Chrestien and his continuators, on the other hand, contains, as has been said, more than forty-five thousand verses. This amplification is produced partly by the importation of incidents and episodes from other works, but still more by indulging in constant diffuseness and what we must perhaps call commonplaces. From a literary point of view the prose romances rank far higher, especially those in which Map is known or suspected to have had a hand.

The peculiarity of what may be called their atmosphere is marked. An elaborate and romantic system of mystical religious sentiment, finding vent in imaginative and allegorical narrative, a remarkable refinement of manners, and a combination of delight in battle with devotion to ladies, distinguish them.

This is, in short, the romantic spirit, or, as it is sometimes called, the spirit of chivalry; and it cannot be too positively asserted that the Arthurian romances communicate it to literature for the first time, and that nothing like it is found in the classics. In the work of Map and his contemporaries it is clearly perceivable. The most important element in this — courtesy — is, as we have already noticed, almost entirely absent from the Chansons de Gestes, and where it is present at all it is between persons who are connected by some natural or artificial relation of comradeship or kin.

Nor are there many traces of it in such fragments and indications as we possess of the Celtic originals, which may have helped in the production of the Arthurian romances. No Carlovingian knight would have felt the horror of Sir Bors when the Lady of Hungerford exercises her undoubted right by flinging the body of her captive enemy on the camp of his uncle. Even the chiefs who are presented in the Chanson d'Antioche as joking over the cannibal banquet of the Roi des Tafurs, and permitting the dead bodies of Saracens to be torn from the cemeteries and flung into the beleaguered city, would have very much applauded the deed.

Gallantry, again, is as much absent from the Chansons as clemency and courtesy. The scene in Lancelot , where Galahault first introduces the Queen and Lancelot to one another, contrasts in the strongest manner with the downright courtship by which the Bellicents and Nicolettes of the Carlovingian cycle are won. No doubt Map represents to a great extent the sentiments of the polished court of England.

But he deserves the credit of having been the first, or almost the first, to express such manners and sentiments, perhaps also of having being among the first to conceive them. These originals are not all equally represented in Malory's English compilation. Of Robert de Borron's work little survives except by allusion.

Lancelot du Lac itself, the most popular of all the romances, is very disproportionately drawn upon. Of the youth of Lancelot, of the winning of Dolorous Gard, of the war with the Saxons, and of the very curious episode of the false Guinevere, there is nothing; while the most charming story of Lancelot's relations with Galahault of Sorelois disappears, except in a few passing allusions to the 'haughty prince.

It seems also probable that considerable portions of the original form of the Arthurian legends are as yet unknown, and have altogether perished. The very interesting discovery in the Brussels Library, of a prose Percevale not impossibly older than Chrestien, and quite different from that of Borron, is an indication of this fact. So also is the discovery by Dr. Jonckbloet in the Flemish Lancelot , which he has edited, of passages not to be found in the existing and recognised French originals.

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The truth would appear to be that the fascination of the subject, the unusual genius of those who first treated it, and the tendency of the middle ages to favour imitation, produced in a very short space of time the last quarter or half of the twelfth century an immense amount of original handling of Geoffrey's theme. To this original period succeeded one of greater length, in which the legends were developed not merely by French followers and imitators of Chrestien, but by his great German adapters, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strasburg, Hartmann von der Aue, and by other imitators at home and abroad.

Lastly, as we shall see in a future chapter, come Romans d'Aventures, connecting themselves by links more or less immediate with the Round Table cycle, but independent and often quite separate in their main incidents and catastrophes. The great number, length, and diversity of the Arthurian romances make it impossible in the space at our command to abstract all of them, and useless to select any one, inasmuch as no single poem is as in the case of the Chansons typical of the group. Atant sont venu li chevalier jusqu'au pont: Et Lanceloz lor demande porquoi il plorent et font tel duel?

Et il dient que c'est por l'amor de lui, que trop est perillox li ponz. Et il lor dit: This becomes in the poem a passage more than lines long, of which the beginning and end may be given: Of the earliest French poem on this subject only a few fragments exist.

The Chanson d'Alixandre is, however, in all probability a much more important work than Alberic's. It is in form a regular Chanson de Geste, written in twelve-syllabled verse, of such strength and grace that the term Alexandrine has cleaved ever since to the metre. Its length, as we have it 56 , is 22, verses, and it is assigned to two authors, Lambert the Short 57 and Alexander of Bernay, though doubt has been expressed whether any of the present poem is due to Lambert; if we have any of his work, it is not later than the ninth decade of the twelfth century.

Lambert, Alexander, and perhaps others, are thought to have known not Alberic, but a later ten-syllabled version into Northern French by Simon of Poitiers. The remoter sources are various. Foremost among them may undoubtedly be placed the Pseudo-Callisthenes, an unknown Alexandrian writer translated into Latin about the fourth century by Julius Valerius, who fathered upon the philosopher a collection of stories partly gathered from Plutarch, Quintus Curtius, and a hundred other authorities, partly elaborated according to the fashion of Greek romancers.

Some oriental traditions of Alexander were also in the possession of western Europe. Out of all these, and with a considerable admixture of the floating fables of the time, Lambert and Alexander wove their work. There is, of course, not the slightest attempt at antiquity of colour.

Alexander has twelve peers, he learns the favourite studies of the middle ages, he is dubbed knight, and so forth.

Jeanne Albrent

Many interesting legends, such as that of the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, make their first appearance in the poem, and it is altogether one of extraordinary merit. A specimen laisse may be given: While the figure of Alexander served as centre to one group of fictions, most of which were composed in Chanson form, the octosyllabic metre, which had made the Arthurian romances its own, was used for the versification of another numerous class, most of which dealt with the tale of Troy divine.

Here also the poems were neither entirely fictitious, nor on the other hand based upon the best authorities. Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, with some epitomes of Homer, were the chief sources of information. This work 58 , which extends to more than thirty thousand verses, has the redundancy and the long-windedness which characterise many, if not most, early French poems written in its metre. But it has one merit which ought to conciliate English readers to Benoist. It contains the undoubted original of Shakespeare's Cressida. Nor is this episode the only one of merit in Benoist.

His verse is always fluent and facile, and not seldom picturesque, as the following extract Andromache's remonstrance with Hector will show: The poems of the Cycle of Antiquity have hitherto been less diligently studied and reprinted than those of the other two. Few of them, with the exception of Alixandre and Troie , are to be read even in fragments, save in manuscript. To these must be added Athis et Prophilias Porphyrias , or the Siege of Athens, a work which has been assigned to many authors, and the origin of which is not clear, though it enjoyed great popularity in the middle ages.

The Protesilaus of Hugues de Rotelande is the only other poem of this series worth the mentioning. Neither of these two classes of poems possesses the value of the Chansons as documents for social history. The picture of manners in them is much more artificial. But the Arthurian romances disclose partially and at intervals a state of society decidedly more advanced than that of the Chansons.

The bourgeois , the country gentleman who is not of full baronial rank, and other novel personages appear. Note to Third Edition. Gaston Paris has sketched in Romania and summarised in his Manuel , but has not developed in book form, a view of the Arthurian romances different from his father's and from that given in the text. The 'Celtic' view has also been maintained in a book of much learning and value, Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail London, , by Mr. I have not attempted to incorporate or to combat these views in the text for two reasons, partly because they will most probably be superseded by others, and partly because the evidence does not seem to me sufficient to establish any of them certainly.

And I may add that as a whole it seems to me quite the greatest literary creation of the Middle Ages, except the Divina Commedia , though of course it has the necessary inferiority of a collection by a great number of different hands to a work of individual genius. Geoffrey of Monmouth, circa , produced a Historia Britonum , avowedly based on a book brought from Britanny by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. No trace of this book, unless it be Nennius, can be found. See note at end of chapter. He lived in the last three quarters of the twelfth century.

To take them chronologically, M. Hucher has published Robert de Borron's Little Saint Graal in prose, his Percevale , and the Great Saint Graal , with full and valuable if not incontestable notes, 3 vols. The verse form of the Little Saint Graal was published by M. An edition of Artus was promised by M. Paulin Paris, but interrupted or prevented by his death. The great works of Map, Lancelot and the Quest , as well as the Mort Artus , have never been critically edited in full; and the sixteenth-century editions being rare and exceedingly costly, as well as uncritical, they are not easily accessible, except in M.

Tristan was published partially forty years ago by M. Merlin was edited in by M. A complete edition of Chrestien de Troyes has been undertaken by Dr. This under its second title of Le Chevalier au Lyon has also been edited by Dr. Holland third edition Besides this there is the great Romance of Percevale continued by others, especially a certain Manessier , of which M.

Potvin has given an excellent edition, 6 vols.

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This piecemeal condition of the texts, and the practical inaccessibility of many of them, make independent judgment in the matter very difficult. What is wanted first of all is a book on the plan of M. The statements made above represent the opinions which appear most probable to the writer, not merely from the comparison of authorities on the subject, but from the actual study of the texts as far as they are open to him.

See note at end of Chapter. Singular as the statement may appear, no one of the branches of literature hitherto discussed represents what may be called a specially French spirit. Despite the astonishing popularity and extent of the Chansons de Gestes, they are, as is admitted by the most patriotic French students, Teutonic in origin probably, and certainly in genius. The Arthurian legends have at least a tinge both of Celtic and Oriental character; while the greater number of them were probably written by Englishmen, and their distinguishing spirit is pretty clearly Anglo-Norman rather than French.

All these divisions, moreover, have this of artificial about them, that they are obviously class literature — the literature of courtly and knightly society, not that of the nation at large. It is far otherwise with the division of literature which we are now about to handle. The Fabliaux 60 , or short verse tales of old France, take in the whole of its society from king to peasant with all the intervening classes, and represent for the most part the view taken of those classes by each other. Perhaps the bourgeois standpoint is most prominent in them, but it is by no means the only one.

Their tone too is of the kind which has ever since been specially associated with the French genius. What is called by French authors the esprit gaulois — a spirit of mischievous and free-spoken jocularity — does not make its appearance at once, or in all kinds of work. In most of the early departments of French literature there is a remarkable deficiency of the comic element, or rather that element is very much kept under. More comic, but still farcical in its comedy, is the curious running fire of exaggerated expressions of poltroonery which the Red Lion keeps up in Antioche , while the names and virtues of the Christian leaders are being catalogued to Corbaran.

In the Arthurian Romances also the comic element is scantily represented, and still takes the same form of exaggeration and horse-play. At the same time it is proper to say that both these classes of compositions are distinguished, at least in their earlier examples, by a very strict and remarkable decency of language. In the Fabliaux the state of things is quite different. The attitude is always a mocking one, not often going the length of serious satire or moral indignation, but contenting itself with the peculiar ludicrous presentation of life and humanity of which the French have ever since been the masters.

In the Fabliaux begins that long course of scoffing at the weaknesses of the feminine sex which has never been interrupted since. In the Fabliaux is to be found for the first time satirical delineation of the frailties of churchmen instead of adoring celebration of the mysteries of the Church.

All classes come in by turns for ridicule — knights, burghers, peasants. Unfortunately this freedom in choice of subject is accompanied by a still greater freedom in the choice of language. The coarseness of expression in many of the Fabliaux equals, if it does not exceed, that to be found in any other branch of Western literature.

The interest of the Fabliaux as a literary study is increased by the precision with which they can be defined, and the well-marked period of their composition. Of such Fabliaux, properly so called, we possess perhaps two hundred. They are of the most various length, sometimes not extending to more than a score or so of lines, sometimes containing several hundreds.

Their period of composition seems to have extended from the latter half of the twelfth century to the latter half of the fourteenth, no manuscript that we have of them being earlier than the beginning of the thirteenth century, and none later than the beginning of the fifteenth. If, however, their popularity in their original form ceased at the latter period, their course was by no means run. They had passed early from France into Italy as indeed all the oldest French literature did , and the stock-in-trade of all the Italian Novellieri from Boccaccio downwards was supplied by them.

In England they found an illustrious copyist in Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales are perfect Fabliaux, informed by greater art and more poetical spirit than were possessed by their original authors. In France itself the Fabliaux simply became farces or prose tales, as the wandering reciter of verse gave way to the actor and the bookseller. They appear again sometimes after a roundabout journey through Italian versions in the pages of the French tale-tellers of the Renaissance, and finally, as far as collected appearance is concerned, receive their last but not their least brilliant transformation in the Contes of La Fontaine.

In these the cycle is curiously concluded by a return to the form of the original. Barbazan and his followers printed as Fabliaux almost everything that they found in verse which was tolerably short. This interferes with a comprehension of the remarkably characteristic and clearly marked peculiarities of the Fabliau indicated in the definition given above.

As according to this the Fabliau is a short comic verse tale of ordinary life, it will be evident that the attempts which have been made to classify Fabliaux according to their subjects were not very happy. It is of course possible to take such headings as Priests, Women, Villeins, Knights, etc. But it is not obvious what is gained thereby. A better notion of the genre may perhaps be obtained from a short view of the subjects of some of the principal of those Fabliaux whose subjects are capable of description. Les deux Bordeors Ribaux is a dispute between two Jongleurs who boast their skill.

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It is remarkable for a very curious list of Chansons de Gestes which the clumsy reciter quotes all wrong, and for a great number of the sly hits at chivalry and the chivalrous romances which are characteristic of all this literature. Le Vair Palefroi contains the story of a lover who carries off his beloved on a palfrey grey from an aged wooer.

La Housse Partie , a great favourite, which appears in more than one form, tells the tale of an unnatural son who turns his father out of doors, but is brought to a better mind by his own child, who innocently gives him warning that he in turn will copy his example. Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse is one of the innumerable stories of rough correction of scolding wives. Brunain la Vache au Prestre recounts a trick played on a covetous priest. In Le Dit des Perdrix , a greedy wife eats a brace of partridges which her husband has destined for his own dinner, and escapes his wrath by one of the endless stratagems which these tales delight in assigning to womankind.

Le sot Chevalier , though extremely indecorous, deserves notice for the Chaucerian breadth of its farce, at which it is impossible to help laughing. The two Englishmen and the Lamb is perhaps the earliest example of English-French, and turns upon the mistake which results in an ass's foal being bought instead of the required animal. Le Vilain qui conquist Paradis par Plaist is characteristic of the curious irreverence which accompanied mediaeval devotion. A villein comes to heaven's gate, is refused admission, and successively silences St.

Paul, by very pointed references to their earthly weaknesses. As a last specimen may be mentioned the curiously simple word-play of Estula. Such are a very few, selected as well as may be for their typical character, of these stories. It is not unimportant to consider briefly the question of their origin. Many of them belong no doubt to that strange common fund of fiction which all nations of the earth indiscriminately possess. A considerable number seem to be of purely original and indigenous growth: The classics supplied some part of them, the Scriptures and the lives of the saints another part; while not a little was due to the importation of Eastern collections of stories resulting from the Crusades.

The chief of these collections were the fables of Bidpai or Pilpai, in the form known as the romance of 'Calila and Dimna,' and the story of Sendabar in its Greek form Syntipas. This was immensely popular in France under the verse form of Dolopathos , and the prose form of Les sept Sages de Rome. The remarkable collection of stories called the Gesta Romanorum is apparently of later date than most of the Fabliaux; but the tales of which it was composed no doubt floated for some time in the mouths of Jongleurs before the unknown and probably English author put them together in Latin.

Closely connected with the Fabliaux is one of the most singular works of mediaeval imagination, the Roman du Renart This is no place to examine the origin or antiquity of the custom of making animals the mouthpieces of moral and satirical utterance on human affairs. It is sufficient that the practice is an ancient one, and that the middle ages were early acquainted with Aesop and his followers, as well as with Oriental examples of the same sort. The original author, whoever he was, of the epic for it is no less of 'Reynard the Fox,' had therefore examples of a certain sort before his eyes.

But these examples contented themselves for the most part with work of small dimension, and had not attempted connected or continuous story. A fierce battle has been fought as to the nationality of Reynard. The oldest form of the story now extant is in Latin. It is succeeded at no very great interval by German, Flemish, and French versions.

Of these the German as it stands is apparently the oldest, the Latin version being probably of the second half of the twelfth century, and the German a little later. But and this is a capital point the names of the more important beasts are in all the versions French. From this and some minute local indications, it seems likely that the original language of the epic is French, but French of the Walloon or Picard dialect, and that it was written somewhere in the district between the Seine and the Rhine.

This, however, is a matter of the very smallest literary importance. What is of great literary importance is the fact that it is in France that the story receives its principal development, and that it makes its home. The Latin, Flemish, and German Reynards, though they all cover nearly the same ground, do not together amount to more than five-and-twenty thousand lines.

The French in its successive developments amounts to more than ninety thousand in the texts already published or abstracted; and this does not include the variants in the Vienna manuscript of Renart le Contrefait , or the different developments of the Ancien Renart , recently published by M.

The order and history of the building up of this vast composition are as follows. The oldest known 'branches,' as the separate portions of the story are called, date from the beginning of the thirteenth century. These are due to a named author, Pierre de Saint Cloud. Initially popular, he too came to be widely detested by the s.

He was married to an Austrian archduchess, Marie Antoinette. French intervention in the American War of Independence was also very expensive. With the country deeply in debt, Louis XVI permitted the radical reforms of Turgot and Malesherbes , but noble disaffection led to Turgot's dismissal and Malesherbes' resignation in They were replaced by Jacques Necker. Necker had resigned in to be replaced by Calonne and Brienne , before being restored in A harsh winter that year led to widespread food shortages, and by then France was a powder keg ready to explode.

On September 3, , the absolute monarchy which had governed France for years was forced to limit its power and become a provisional constitutional monarchy. However, this too would not last very long and on September 21, the French monarchy was effectively abolished by the proclamation of the French First Republic. The role of the King in France in a Revolution gone berserk, was finally ended with the "guillotined" execution of Louis XVI on Monday, January 21, , followed by the " Reign of Terror ", mass executions and the provisional " Directory " form of republican government , and the eventual beginnings of twenty-five years of reform, upheaval, dictatorship, wars and renewal, with the various Napoleonic Wars.

However the deposed Emperor Napoleon I returned triumphantly to Paris from his exile in Elba and ruled France for a short period known as the Hundred Days. His reign was characterized by disagreements between the Doctrinaires , liberal thinkers who supported the Charter and rising bourgeoisie , and the Ultra-royalists , aristocrats and clergymen who totally refused the Revolution's heritage.

However, the peace was granted by and statesmen like Talleyrand and the Duke of Richelieu , as well as King's moderation and prudent intervention. Charles X was a strong reactionary who supported ultra-royalists and Catholic Church. However, there were also the intervention in the Greek Revolution and the first phase of the conquest of Algeria.

The absolutist tendencies of the King were disliked by Doctrinaire majority in the Chamber of Deputies , that in 18 March sent and cordial address to the King, remembering to him his vote on the Charter. However, Charles X received this address as a veiled threat, and in 25 July of the same year, he emanated the St.

Cloud Ordinances , a plot to reduce Parliament powers and re-establish absolute rule. The Bourbon white flag was substituted with the French tricolour , [30] and a new Charter was introduced in August However, despite the initial reforms, Louis Philippe was little different from his predecessors.

The old nobility was replaced by urban bourgeoisie, and the working class was excluded from voting. The July Monarchy was beset by corruption scandals and financial crisis. The opposition of the King was composed of Legitimists , supporting the Count of Chambord , Bourbon claimant to the Throne, and of Bonapartists and Republicans who fought against royalty and supported the principles of democracy. The King tried to suppress the opposition with censorship, but when the Campagne des banquets "Banquets' Campaign" was repressed in February , [34] riots and seditions erupted in Paris and later all France, resulting in the February Revolution.

The National Guard refused to repress the rebellion, resulting in Louis Philippe abdicating and fleeing to England. On 24 February , the monarchy was abolished and the Second Republic was proclaimed. Before the 13th century, only a small part of what is now France was under control of the Frankish king; in the north there were Viking incursions leading to the formation of the Duchy of Normandy ; in the west, the counts of Anjou established themselves as powerful rivals of the king, by the late 11th century ruling over the " Angevin Empire ", which included the kingdom of England.

It was only with Philip II of France that the bulk of the territory of Western Francia came under the rule of the Frankish kings, and Philip was consequently the first king to call himself "king of France" The division of France between the Angevin Plantagenet kings of England and the Capetian kings of France would lead to the Hundred Years' War , and France would regain control over these territories only by the mid 15th century. What is now eastern France Lorraine, Arelat was not part of Western Francia to begin with and was only incorporated into the kingdom during the early modern period.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Flag of France before Huguenot Wars at 16th century, Bottom: Flag after Huguenot Wars. Coat of Arms — Versailles — Paris —; — Latin , French official Breton , Basque , Alsatian. Feudal monarchy — Absolute monarchy — Constitutional monarchy —; — Estates General — Legislative Assembly — Parliament — France in the Middle Ages and Capetian dynasty.

French Wars of Religion. Louis XIV of France. Territorial evolution of France. Kingdom of France portal. Part of a series on the. Direct Capetians — Valois — A Concise History of France. Kings of France, — Daily life during the Black Death. Holt, The French wars of religion, — A History of the Thirty Years' War Orientalism in Early Modern France: Martin Press, New York p. France in the Middle Ages — Historical Dictionary of Paris pp, an abridged translation of his Histoire et dictionnaire de Paris , pp Goubert, Pierre.

The Course of French History , standard French textbook excerpt and text search ; also complete text online Goubert, Pierre. The History of France , pp. Renaissance and Reformation France: Biography of a City , pp; comprehensive history by a leading British scholar excerpt and text search Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. A History of France, — Historical Dictionary of France 2nd ed. France in the Enlightenment , wide-ranging history — excerpt and text search Wolf, John B. Louis XIV , the standard scholarly biography online edition.



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