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The Interdependence of Literature
French Literature
by Curtis, Georgina Pell
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It is in the first ages of national existence that the
foundations of national character and poetry are laid; and the
farther back that history is studied, the more closely do we find
the different peoples of the world united in their literature.
Its first history in France is undoubtedly that of the
Troubadours. Provence, where it originated, early became an
independent kingdom, while in the north the literature of the
Trouveres became the foundation of the national literature of
France. Latin was the language of the country after its conquest
by Julius Caesar; then came the Northern hordes, when language
became corrupted, until, in the time of Charlemagne, German was
the Court language, Latin the written language, and the Romance
dialect, still in its barbaric state, was the speech of the
people. The Gauls in the North, who used the Romance, were also
called the Roman-Wallons; they were distinguished from
Charlemagne's German subjects, while in the South the natives
were called the Romans-Provencaux.
In the tenth century the Normans invaded France, and infused
another element in the language, which gradually became Norman-
French; and from the twelfth century the two dialects were known
as Provencal and French. The Provencal dialect, although much
changed, is still spoken in Provence, Languedoc, Catalonia,
Valencia, Majorca, and Minorca, while the French was brought, by
gradual polish, to its present perfection.
The Troubadours who flourished for three centuries, from 950 to
1250, used the Romance language in their poems. The brilliance of
this period of literature, its sudden rise, and as sudden
disappearance, is not unlike the rise and fall of the Arabian
literature.
Among the thousands of poets who flourished during this time,
none ever wrote anything of any special note. The love, romance
and imagination of these poems breathes that chivalry toward
women, amounting almost to veneration, which was a feature of
this class of poetry. It is therefore to be regretted that as
actual tales, shorn of the poetical and chivalric setting, there
was something left to be desired. The immorality of the
incidents, and the coarseness of the language, makes this "Gay
Science," as the Troubadours called it, unfit to be classed with
the best literature. In 1092 the crown of Provence passing to the
Count of Barcelona brought a more refined taste into the
Provencal poetry; the arts and the sciences of the Arabians
obtained a foothold in the country; rhyme--the method used in
Arabian poetry, was adopted by the Troubadours, and from them has
been handed down to the nations of modern Europe.
This period has been described as "one that shone out at once
over Provence and all the south of Europe, like an electric flash
in the midst of profound darkness, illuminating all things with
the splendor of its flame."
During the Crusades many of the Troubadours departed for the Holy
Land. In the history of the world there is no event that fired
the poetry and imagination of the people like these holy wars,
and religious enthusiasm began to influence the poetry of the
time. When the Plantagenet kings of England assumed by right the
sovereignty over Languedoc (as Provence was called), a new
impetus was given to the Provencal poetry, as well as a wider
scope, when it was introduced into England. Chaucer, the father
of English literature, found in the Provencal literature all his
first models.
With the decline of the Troubadours occurred the rise of the
Trouveres in northern France.
In the tenth century Normany was invaded by Rollo the Dane, who
incorporated himself and his followers with the Normans. They
adopted the Norman-French; but gave it a power and scope it had
hitherto lacked. While the Romance-Provencal in the South was a
language of sweetness and beauty, the Northern language after the
advent of Rollo, was strong and warlike. Its poetry, which
differed from the love chansons of the South, was the song of
brave warriors, recounting the heroic deeds of their ancestors.
The Langue d'oui, as this Northern speech was called, became, in
the twelfth century, the universal medium of literature. The
poets and story writers called themselves Trouveres, and they
invented the fabliaux, the dramatic mysteries and romances of
ancient chivalry. The first great literary work of this class is
a marvellous history of the early kings of England, commencing
with Brutus, a grandson of Aeneas, who, sailing among many
enchanted Isles, at length settles in England, where he meets
Arthur of the Round Table, and the old wizard, Merlin, one of the
most popular creations of the Middle Ages. Born of this legend
were some of the best known of modern romances. The word romance,
which in the early history of France was used to distinguish the
common dialect from the Latin, was later applied to all
imaginative and inventive tales. Of this class was "Tristam de
Leonois," written in 1190; the "San Graal," and "Lancelot." In
the same century appeared "Alexander," a poem which became so
celebrated that poetry, written in the same measure, is to this
day called Alexandrine verse.
A poetess known as Marie of France, wrote twelve lays to
celebrate the glories of the Round Table. She addresses herself
to a king supposed to be Henry VI, and has made extensive use of
early British legends. Chaucer and other English poets, have
drawn many inspirations from her poems.
The Trouveres not only originated the romances of chivalry; but
they also invented allegorical poems. The most celebrated is the
"Romance of the Rose," written in the thirteenth century. It
consisted of 20,000 verses, and although tedious, because of its
length, it was universally admired, and became the foundation of
all subsequent allegory among the different nations. The poetry
of the Trouveres was unlike anything in antiquity, and unlike,
too, to what came after it. It dealt with high-minded love and
honor, the devotion of the strong to the weak, and the
supernatural in fiction. All this, which formed part of its
composition, has been attributed to both the Arabians and the
Germans; but it was in truth a peculiar production of the
Normans, the most active and enterprising people in Europe, a
nation who pushed into Russia, Constantinople, England, France,
Sicily and Syria. A treasury of a later date, from which the
Trouveres drew their fabliaux in the thirteenth century, was a
collection of Indian tales that had been translated into Latin in
the tenth century. These fabliaux show that inventiveness,
gaiety, and simple, yet delightful esprit, which is found nowhere
but among the French. The Arabian tales, which had found their
way into France, were also turned into verse, while the anecdotes
that were picked up in the castles and towns of France, furnished
other material for the fabliaux. These tales were the common
property of the country at large, and are the source from which
Boccaccio, La Fontaine, and others drew their inspiration. Some
of them became famous and have been passed down from one age to
another.
The Renard of Goethe, and the Zaire of Voltaire were taken from
the old fabliaux. In the fourteenth century the coming of the
Popes and the Roman Court to Avignon introduced an Italian
element, and the language of Tuscany took the place of the
Provencal among the upper classes.
La Fontaine, called the "Prince of Fablists," appeared in the
seventeenth century. Many of his fables were borrowed from
ancient sources; but clothed in a new dress. He has been closely
imitated by his Confreres and by the fablists of other nations;
but has easily remained the most renowned of them all.
The philosophy of Descartes in the sixteenth century prepared the
way for Locke, Newton and Leibnitz; and his system, although now
little used, was really the foundation of what followed. He is
said to have given new and fresher impulse to mathematical and
philosophical study than any other student, either ancient or
modern.
Pascal, a contemporary of Descartes, is renowned for his
Provencal Letters, a book that has become a classic in France. It
is full of wit, and of exquisite beauty of language; but its
teaching is pure sophistry. Pascal first set the example of
writing about religion in a tone of mock levity, especially when
by so doing, he could abuse the Jesuits. In the end this weapon
of keen and delicate satire was turned against Christianity
itself, when Voltaire in the eighteenth century recognized its
possibilities, and made use of it.
The older French literature in the sixteenth century had become
so neglected, and was so lacking in cultivation; so little
adapted to poetry, that the nation seemed in danger of losing all
its earlier traditions. For a hundred years France was given over
to profane and light literature. Montaigne, Charyon, Ronsard and
de Balzac are some of the names of this period. The death of a
cat or dog was made the subject of a poem that was no real
poetry. It is due to the women of France--to Madame de
Rambouillet and her confreres, and to the literary coteries that
arose in the middle of the seventeenth century--that French
literature acquired a deeper and more serious tone. This period
was followed by the founding of the French Academy, of which
Cardinal Richelieu was the chief patron. The tragic dramatists,
Corneille and Racine, now appeared on the literary horizon.
Racine's language and versification was said to be far superior
to either Milton in English or Virgil in Latin.
In tragedy the French stand pre-eminent; but it is matter for
regret that their subjects are never taken from their own
nation--they rarely represent French heroes; and it is a weakness
of their literature that they make no direct appeal to the
national feeling. There is a close connection between the
classical dramas of Racine and Corneille, and such works as
Pope's Iliad, Addison's Cato and Dryden's Alexander's Feast,
showing the general interest in Greek and Roman subjects during
their time.
The older poetry of the chivalric period was entirely discarded,
though it would have been possible to unite the old chivalric
spirit, the freedom and romance of mediaeval times, with the
later renaissance, as was done by other nations. The French
literature is more closely formed on the model of the earlier
refined nations of antiquity, as the Roman was on the Greek.
The later French poetry of the seventeenth century came into
opposition with the teaching of Rousseau, this gave birth to a
taste for English poetry and the classic poetry of France was a
copy of the descriptive poetry of England. In the eighteenth
century prose writings superseded verse. At this time the English
had taken the lead in literature, and modern French philosophy
was built on that of Bacon and Locke. It was no part of the plan
of the English philosophers, however, to inculcate such ideas as
the French philosophers drew from their writings. Bacon, who was
profoundly Christian, believed that man alone was the type of
God, and nature the work of God's hands; but the French leaders
in philosophy went beyond this, they deified nature, and threw
aside as mysticism whatever could not be proved by sense.
Voltaire made use of all the wonderful greatness of science, as
revealed by Bacon and Newton, not to exalt the Creator; but to
lower man to the level of the brute. Like the old Greek sophists,
who defended first one side of a question, and then the one
diametrically opposed to it, Voltaire would write one book in
favor of God, and another to deny Him; but it is not difficult to
see which is his real belief. This perverted philosophy of
Voltaire in turn reacted on the English mind, and particularly on
history. We see its workings in both Gibbon and Hume. The "little
philosophy" which "inclineth a man's mind to atheism," led the
eighteenth century philosophers to fancy that Newton's
discoveries meant that everything could be attained without
religion, and that the only true and wide vision could be reached
by the senses alone. They taught a pure materialism, to their own
undoing; for it is not possible to thus lightly throw aside our
great links with the past, in which both Christian and heathen,
knowingly and unknowingly, in mediaeval poetry, in heroic ballad,
and in Egyptian prose, testified to the existence of God.
The nineteenth century in France has been rich in dramatists,
novelists, historians and poets, as well as in science and
learning of all kinds; but it has had no especial power, or aim,
and its opinions are constantly changing. The early novelists
were strongly directed by the writings of Sir Walter Scott, while
later ones have sought to imitate Victor Hugo and George Sand.
The literature of this period has had no effect outside of
France. Poetry has not risen any higher than Alfred de Musset;
and any further greatness in French poetry must come from a
revival of their own ancient poems and legends.
Poetry that deals only with the present becomes local, and in the
end is influenced by the constant caprice and change of fashion
instead of by the deep, heart-stirring beliefs of a strong and
united people.
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