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 Normandy 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.