A Short History of French Literature

It is not very easy to illustrate the manner of the ancient French drama by citations within ordinary compass; but the following passages, the first from the Mystery of the Passion, the second from the original form of Pathelin, may serve the purpose: —

Ici deschargent Jesus de la croix.Simon. or avant donc, puis que ainsi va.je ferai vostre voulenté;mais il me poise en veritéde la honte que vous me faictes.o Jesus, de tous les prophettesle plus sainct et le plus begnin,vous venés a piteuse fin,veue vostre vie vertüeusequant vostre croix dure et honteusepour vostre mort fault que je porte.se c'est a tort, je m'en rapportea ceulx qui vous ont forjugé.Ici charge la croix a Simon.Nembroth. Messeigneurs, il est bien chargé;cheminons, depeschons la voie.Salmanazar. j'ai grant désir que je le voiefiché en ce hault tabernacle,a sçavoir s'il fera miracle,quant il sera cloué dessus.Jéroboam. seigneurs, hastés moi ce Jesuset ces deux larrons aux coustés.s'ilz ne vuellent, si les battezsi bien qu'il n'y ait que redire.Claquedent. a cela ne tiendra pas, sire.nos en ferons nostre povoir.Ici porte Simon une partie de la croix etJesus l'autre et le battent les sergens.Dieu le pere. Pitié doit tout cueur esmouvoiren lamenter piteusementle martyre et le gref tourmentque Jesus, mon chier filz, endure.il porte détresse tant dure,que, puis que le monde dura,homme si dure n'endura,laquelle ne peult plus durersans la mort honteuse endurer,et n'aura son sainct corps dureetant qu'il ait la mort enduree,il appert, car plus va durant,et plus est tourment endurant,sans quelque confort qui l'alege.si convient que la mort abregeet de l'exécuter s'apreste,pour satiffaire a la requestede dame Justice severe,qui pour requeste ne prïerene veult rien de ses drois quitter.Michel, allés donc conforteren ceste amere passïonmon filz, plain de dilectïon,qui veult dure mort en gré predreet va sa doulce chair estrandreou puissant arbre de la croix.Sainct Michel. pere du ciel et roi des rois,humblement a chere assimpliesera parfaicte et acomplievostre voulenté juste et bonne.Ici descendent les anges de paradis.* * * * * *Path. ce bergier ne peut nullementrespondre aux fais que l'on propose,s'il n'a du conseil; et il n'oseou il ne scet en demander.s'il vous plaisoit moy commanderque je fusse a luy, je y seroye.Juge. avecques luy? je cuideroyeque ce fust trestoute froidure:c'est peu d'acquest. Path. mais je vous jurequ'aussi n'en veuil rien avoir:pour dieu soit. or je voys sçavoirau pauvret qu'il voudra me dire,et s'il me sçaura point instruirepour respondre aux fais de partie.il auroit dure departiede ce, qui ne le secourroit.vien ça, mon amy. qui pourroittrouver? entens. Berg. bee. Path. quel bee, dea!par le sainct sang que dieu crëa,es tu fol? dy moy ton affaire.Berg. bee. Path. quel bee! oys tu tes brebis braire?c'est pour ton prouffit; entens y.Berg. bee. Path. et dy ouÿ ou nenny,c'est bien faict. dy tousjours, feras?Berg. bee. Path. plus haut, ou tu t'en trouverasen grans depens, ou je m'en doubte.Berg. bee. Path. or est plus fol cil qui boutetel fol naturel en procés.ha, sire, renvoyez l'en a sesbrebis; il est fol de nature.Drapp. est il fol? sainct sauveur d'Esture!il est plus saige que vous n'estes.Path. envoyez le garder ses bestes,sans jour que jamais ne retourne.que maudit soit il qui adjournetels folz que ne fault adjourner.Drapp. et l'en fera l'en retourneravant que je puisse estre ouÿ?Path. m'aist dieu, puis qu'il est foul, ouÿ.pour quoy ne fera? Drapp. he dea, sire,au moins laissez moy avant direet faire mes conclusïons.ce ne sont pas abusïonsque je vous dy ne mocqueries.Juge. ce sont toutes tribouilleriesque de plaider a folz ne a folles.escoutez, a moins de parollesla court n'en sera plus tenue.Drapp. s'en iront ilz sans retenuede plus revenir? Juge. et quoy doncques?Path. revenir? vous ne veistes oncquesplus fol ne en faict ne en response:et cil ne vault pas mieulx une once.tous deux sont folz et sans cervelle:par saincte Marie la belle,eux deux n'en ont pas un quarat130.

CHAPTER XI

PROSE CHRONICLES

Beginning of Prose Chronicles.

Grandes Chroniques de France.

In all countries the use of prose for literature is chronologically later than the use of poetry, and France is no exception to the rule. The Chansons de Gestes were in their way historical poems, and they were, as we have seen, soon followed by directly historical poems in considerable numbers. It was not, however, till the prose Arthurian romances of Map and his followers had made prose popular as a vehicle for long narratives, that regular history began to be written in the vulgar tongue. The vogue of these prose romances dates from the latter portion of the twelfth century; the prose chronicle follows it closely, and dates from the beginning of the thirteenth. It was not at first original. The practice of chronicle writing in Latin had been frequent during the earlier centuries, and at last the monks of three monasteries, St. Benoit sur Loire, St. Germain des Prés, and St. Denis, began to keep a regular register of the events of their own time, connecting this with earlier chronicles of the past. The most famous and dignified of the three, St. Denis, became specially the home of history. The earliest French prose chronicles do not, however, come from this place. They are two in number; both date from the earliest years of the thirteenth century, and both are translations. One is a version of a Latin compilation of Merovingian history; the other of the famous chronicle of Turpin131. These two are composed in a southern dialect bordering on the Provençal, and the first was either written by or ascribed to a certain Nicholas of Senlis. The example was followed, but it was not till 1274 that a complete vernacular version of the history of France was executed by a monk of St. Denis – Primat – in French prose. This version, slightly modified, became the original of a compilation very famous in French literature and history, the Grandes Chroniques de France, which was regularly continued by members of the same community until the reign of Charles V, from official sources and under royal authority. The work, under the same title but written by laics, extends further to the reign of Louis XI. The necessity of translation ceased as soon as the example of writing in the vernacular had been set, though Latin chronicles continued to be produced as well as French.

Villehardouin.

Long, however, before history on the great scale had been thus attempted, and very soon after the first attempt of Nicholas of Senlis had shown that the vulgar tongue was capable of such use, original prose memoirs and chronicles of contemporary events had been produced, and, as happens more than once in French literature, the first, or one of the first, was also the best. The Conquête de Constantinoble132 of Geoffroy de Villehardouin was written in all probability during the first decade of the thirteenth century. Its author was born at Villehardouin, near Troyes, about 1160, and died, it would seem, in his Greek fief of Messinople in 1213. His book contains a history of the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in no action against the infidels, but in the establishment for the time of a Latin empire and in the partition of Greece among French barons. Villehardouin's memoirs are by universal consent among the most attractive works of the middle ages. Although no actually original manuscript exists, we possess a copy which to all appearance faithfully represents the original. To readers, who before approaching Villehardouin have well acquainted themselves with the characteristics of the Chansons de Gestes, the resemblance of the Conquête de Constantinoble to these latter is exceedingly striking. The form, putting the difference between prose and verse aside, is very similar, and the merits of vigorous and brightly coloured language, of simplicity and vividness of presentation, are identical. At the same time either his own genius or the form which he has adopted has saved Villehardouin from the crying defect of most mediaeval work, prolixity and monotony. He has much to say as well as a striking manner of saying it, and the interest of his work as a story yields in nothing to its picturesqueness as a piece of literary composition. His indirect as well as direct literary value is moreover very great, because he enables us to see that the picture of manners and thought given by the Chansons de Gestes is in the main strictly true to the actual habits of the time – the time, that is to say, of their composition, not of their nominal subjects. Villehardouin is the chief literary exponent of the first stage of chivalry, the stage in which adventure was an actual fact open to every one, and when Eastern Europe and Western Asia offered to the wandering knight opportunities quite as tempting as those which the romances asserted to have been open to the champions of Charlemagne and Arthur. But, as a faithful historian, he, while putting the poetical and attractive side of feudalism in the best light, does not in the least conceal its defects, especially the perpetual jarring and rivalry inevitable in armies where hundreds of petty kings sought each his own advantage.

Minor Chroniclers between Villehardouin and Joinville.

The Fourth Crusade was fertile in chroniclers. Villehardouin's work was supplemented by the chronicle of Henri de Valenciennes, which is written in a somewhat similar style, but with still more resemblance to the manner and diction of the Chansons, so much so that it has been even supposed, though probably without foundation, to be a rhymed Chanson thrown into a prose form. This process is known to have been actually applied in some cases. Another historian of the expedition whose work has been preserved was Robert de Clari. Baldwin Count of Flanders, who also accompanied it, was not indeed the author but the instigator of a translation of Latin chronicles which, like the Grandes Chroniques de France, was continued by original work and attained, under the title of Chronique de Baudouin d'Avesnes, very considerable dimensions.

The thirteenth century also supplies a not inconsiderable number of works dealing with the general history of France. Guillaume de Nangis wrote in the latter part of the century several historical treatises, first in Latin and then in French. An important work, entitled La Chronique de Rains (Rheims), dates from the middle of the period, and, though less picturesque in subject and manner than Villehardouin, has considerable merits of style. Normandy, Flanders, and, the Crusades generally, each have groups of prose chronicles dealing with them, the most remarkable of the latter being a very early French translation of the work of William of Tyre, with additions133. Of the Flanders group, the already mentioned chronicle called of Baudouin d'Avesnes is the chief. It is worth mentioning again because in its case we see the way in which French was gaining ground. It exists both in Latin and in the vernacular. In other cases the Latin would be the original; but in this case it appears, though it is not positively certain, that the book was written in French, and translated for the benefit of those who might happen not to understand that language.

Joinville.

As Villehardouin is the representative writer of the twelfth century, so is Joinville134 of the thirteenth, as far as history is concerned. Jean de Joinville, Sénéchal of Champagne, was born in 1224 at the castle of Joinville on the Marne, which afterwards became the property of the Orleans family, and was destroyed during the Revolution. He died in 1319. He accompanied Saint Louis on his unfortunate crusade in 1248, but not in his final and fatal expedition to Tunis. Most of the few later events of his life known to us were connected with the canonisation of the king; but he is known to have taken part in active service when past his ninetieth year. His historical work, a biography of St. Louis, deals chiefly with the crusade, and is one of the most circumstantial records we have of mediaeval life and thought. It is of much greater bulk than Villehardouin's Conquête, and is composed upon a different principle, the author being somewhat addicted to gossip and apt to digress from the main course of his narrative. It has, however, to be remembered that Joinville's first object was not, like Villehardouin's, to give an account of a single and definite enterprise, but to display the character of his hero, to which end a certain amount of desultoriness was necessary and desirable. His style has less vigour than that of his countryman and predecessor, but it has more grace. It is evident that Joinville occasionally set himself with deliberate purpose to describe things in a literary fashion, and his interspersed reflections on manners and political subjects considerably increase the material value of his work. It is unfortunate that nothing like a contemporary manuscript has come down to us, the earliest in existence being one of the late fourteenth century, when considerable changes had passed over the language. With the aid of some contemporary documents on matters of business which Joinville seems to have dictated, M. de Wailly has effected an exceedingly ingenious conjectural restoration of the text of the book, but the interest of this is in strictness diminished by the fact that it is undoubtedly conjectural. The period of composition of Joinville's book was somewhat late in his life, apparently in the first years of the fourteenth century, and about 1310 he presented it to Louis le Hutin, though it does not appear what became of the manuscript.

The period between Joinville and Froissart is peculiarly barren in chronicles. Besides the serial publications already noticed, the Chroniques de France and the Chroniques de Flandre, there are perhaps only two which are worth mentioning. The first is a Chronique des Quatre Premiers Valois, written with exactness and careful attention to authentic sources of information. The other is the Chronique of Jean Lebel, canon of Liège. This is not only a work of considerable merit in itself, but still more remarkable because it was the model, and something more, of Froissart. That historian began by almost paraphrasing the work of Lebel; and though by degrees he worked the early parts of his book into more and more original forms according to the information which he picked up, these parts remained to the last indebted to the author from whom they had been originally compiled.

Froissart.

Froissart was born in 1337 and did not die till after 1409, the precise date of his death being unknown. There are few problems of literary criticism which are more difficult than that of arranging a definitive edition of his famous Chroniques135. In most cases the task of the critic is to decide which of several manuscripts, all long posterior to the author's death, deserves most confidence, or how to supply and correct the faults of a single document. In Froissart's case there is, on the contrary, an embarrassing number of seemingly authentic texts. During the whole of his long life, Froissart seems to have been constantly occupied in altering, improving, and rectifying his work, and copies of it in all its states are plentiful. The early printed editions represent merely a single one of these; Buchon's is somewhat more complete. But it is only within the last few years that the labours of M. Kervyn de Lettenhove and M. Siméon Luce have made it possible (and not yet entirely possible) to see the work in all its conditions. M. Kervyn de Lettenhove's edition is complete and excellent as far as it goes. That of M. Luce is still far from finished. The editor, however, has succeeded in presenting three distinct versions of the first book. This is the most interesting in substance, the least in manner and style. It deals with a period most of which lay outside of Froissart's own knowledge, and in treating which he was at first content to paraphrase Jean Lebel, though afterwards he made this part of the book much more his own. It never, however, attained to the gossiping picturesqueness of the later books (there are four in all), in which the historian relies entirely on his own collections. Although Cressy, Poitiers, and Najara may be of more importance than the fruitless chevauchée of Buckingham through France, the gossip of the Count de Foix' court, and the kite-and-crow battles of the Duke de Berri and his officers with Aymerigot Marcel and Geoffrey Tête-Noire, they are much less characteristic of Froissart. The literary instinct of Scott enabled him (in a speech of Claverhouse136) exactly to appreciate our author. Some of his admirers have striven to make out that traces of political wisdom are to be found in the later books. If it be so, they are very deeply hidden. A sentence which must have been written when Froissart was more than fifty years old puts his point of view very clearly. Geoffrey Tête-Noire, the Breton brigand, 'held a knight's life, or a squire's, of no more account than a villain's,' and this is said as if it summed up the demerits of the free companion. Beyond knights and ladies, tourneys and festivals, Froissart sees nothing at all. But his admirable power of description enables him to put what he did see as well as any writer has ever put it. Vast as his work is, the narrative and picturesque charm never fails; and in a thousand different lights the same subject, the singular afterglow of chivalry, which the influence of certain English and French princes kept up in the fourteenth century, is presented with a mastery rare in any but the best literature. He is so completely indifferent to anything but this, that he does not take the slightest trouble to hide the misery and the misgovernment which the practical carrying out of his idea caused. Never, perhaps, was there a better instance of a man of one idea, and certainly there never was any man by whom his one idea was more attractively represented. To this day it is difficult even with the clearest knowledge of the facts to rise from a perusal of Froissart without an impression that the earlier period of the Hundred Years' War was a sort of golden age in which all the virtues flourished, except for occasional ugly outbreaks of the evil principle in the Jacquerie, the Wat Tyler insurrection, and so forth. As a historian Froissart is, as we should expect, not critical, and he carries the French habit of disfiguring proper names and ignoring geographical and other trifles to a most bewildering extent. But there is little doubt that he was diligent in collecting and careful in recording his facts, and his extreme minuteness often supplies gaps in less prolix chroniclers.

Fifteenth-Century Chroniclers.

The last century of the period which is included in this chapter is extremely fertile in historians. These range themselves naturally in two classes; those who undertake more or less of a general history of the country during their time, and those who devote themselves to special persons as biographers, or to the recital of the events which more particularly concern a single city or district. The first class, moreover, is more conveniently subdivided according to the side which the chroniclers took on the great political duel of their period, the struggle between Burgundy and France.

The Burgundian side was particularly rich in annalists. The study and practice of historical writing had, as a consequence of the Chronicle of Baudouin, and the success of Lebel and Froissart, taken deep root in the cities of Flanders which were subject to the Duke of Burgundy, while the magnificence and opulence of the ducal court and establishments naturally attracted men of letters. Froissart's immediate successor, Enguerrand de Monstrelet, belongs to this party. Monstrelet137, who wrote a chronicle covering the years 1400-1444, is not remarkable for elegance or picturesqueness of style, but takes particular pains to copy exactly official reports of speeches, treaties, letters, etc. Another important chronicle of the same side is that of George Chastellain138, a busy man of letters, who was historiographer to the Duke of Burgundy, and wrote a history of the years 1419-1470. Chastellain was a man of learning and talent, but was somewhat imbued with the heavy and pedantic style which both in poetry and prose was becoming fashionable. The memoirs of Olivier de la Marche extend from 1435 to 1489, and are also somewhat heavy, but less pedantic than those of Chastellain. Dealing with the same period, and also written in the Burgundian interest, are the memoirs of Jacques du Clerq, 1448-1467, and of Lefèvre de Saint Rémy, 1407-1436; as also the Chronicle of Jehan de Wavrin, beginning at the earliest times and coming down to 1472. Wavrin's subject is nominally England, but the later part of his work of necessity concerns France also.

The writers on the royalist side are of less importance and less numerous, though individually perhaps of equal value. The chief of them are Mathieu de Coucy, who continued the work of Monstrelet in a different political spirit from 1444 to 1461; Pierre de Fenin, who wrote a history of part of the reign of Charles VI; and Jean Juvenal des Ursins139, a statesman and ecclesiastic, who has dealt more at length with the whole of the same reign. Of these Juvenal des Ursins takes the first rank, and is one of the best authorities for his period; but from a literary point of view he cannot be very highly spoken of, though there is a certain simplicity about his manner which is superior to the elaborate pedantry of not a few of his contemporaries and immediate successors.

The second class has the longest list of names, and perhaps the most interesting constituents. First may be mentioned Le Livre des Faits et bonnes Mœurs du sage roi Charles V. This is an elaborate panegyric by the poetess Christine de Pisan, full of learning, good sense, and sound morality, but somewhat injured by the classical phrases, the foreign idioms, and the miscellaneous erudition, which characterise the school to which Christine belonged. Far more interesting is the Livre des Faits du Maréchal de Bouciqualt140, a book which is a not unworthy companion and commentary to Froissart, exhibiting the kind of errant chivalry which characterised the fourteenth century, and in part the fifteenth, and which so greatly assisted the English in their conflicts with the French. Joan of Arc was made, as might have been expected, the subject of numerous chronicles and memoirs which have come down to us under the names of Cousinot, Cochon, and Berry. The Constable of Richemont, who had the credit of overthrowing the last remnant of English domination at the battle of Formigny, found a biographer in Guillaume Gruel.

Lastly have to be mentioned three curious works of great value and interest bearing on this time. These are the journals of a citizen of Paris141 (or two such), which extend from 1409 to 1422, and from 1424 to 1440, and the so-called Chronique scandaleuse of Jean de Troyes covering the reign of Louis XI. These, with the already-mentioned chronicle of Juvenal des Ursins, are filled with the minutest information on all kinds of points. The prices of articles of merchandise, the ravages of wolves, etc., are recorded, so that in them almost as much light is thrown on the social life of the period as by a file of modern newspapers. The chronicle of Jean Chartier, brother of Alain, that of Molinet in continuance of Chastellain, and the short memoirs of Villeneuve, complete the list of works of this class that deserve mention.

Examples of the three great French historians of the middle ages follow: —

Villehardouin

La velle de la saint Martin vindrent devant Gadres en Esclavonie, si virent la cité fermee de halz murs et de haltes torz, et pour noiant demandissiés plus bele ne plus fort ne plus riche. et quant li pelerin la virent, il se merveillerent mult et distrent li uns a l'autre 'coment porroit estre prise tel vile par force, se diex meïsmes nel fait?' Les premieres nés vindrent devant la vile et aëncrerent et atendirent les autres et al matin fist mult bel jor et mult cler, et vinrent les galies totes et li huissier et les autres nés qui estoient arrieres, et pristrent le port par force et rompirent la chaaine qui mult ere forz et bien atornee, et descendirent a terre, si que li porz fu entr'aus et la vile. lor veïssiez maint chevalier et maint serjant issir des nés et maint bon destrier traire des huissiers et maint riche tref et maint pavellon.