THE MIDDLE AGES: FRANCE
_Chansons de Geste: Song of Roland_ and Lyric Poetry. Popular
Epopee: _Romances of Renard_. Popular Short Stories: Fables.
Historians. The Allegorical Poem: _Romance of the Rose_. Drama.
_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 entitled _The Song of Roland_. It is the story
of the last struggle in which Roland engaged on returning from Spain at
the pass of Roncevaux and of his death. The form of this poem is rather
dry and a little monotonous; but there are admirable passages 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 God 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 _naïvéte_, 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 nobility, 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 noble 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, circumspect citizen; the cock, 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, analogous 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 impassioned 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, passions, and ideas of the
people for whom and, a little later, by whom it was written.