The Parnassians: Banville, 304; Leconte de Lisle, 309; De Heredia, MODERN FRENCH LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. MIDDLE AGE AND RENASCENCE. The Books began to be written in French somewhat later than in English or German, because Latin survived longer in Gaul as the language of the cultured. English and the Germans had no classical past to check and discourage efforts in what might seem a degraded dialect; and so, long after Charlemagne had made his collection of heroic Teutonic ballads, long after English hearts had thrilled to the story of Beowulf, French was still an unwritten language, in which the first stammerings of literary expression had yet to be heard, though even in the middle of the seventh century we read that a bishop of Noyon was chosen "because he understood both Teutonic and Romance," which would show that many that spoke either tongue understood no other. Romance is the indefinite designation of many dialects. What survived in literature is essentially Low Latin with greatly maimed inflections, much confusion of vowels and elision of consonants. A few words recall the Celtic that the Latin had almost wholly displaced in the first century of our era; many more words were retained from their own mother tongue by the conquering Franks. The first to put this new growth to literary use were, naturally, the clergy. The cloisters furnished the leisure; the needs of the missionaries and devotees, the motive. Already in the tenth century there were legends of the saints and bits of Bible story that have much simple beauty; and when once this fountain-head had been opened, it poured a rich and constant stream that has not ceased to flow for eight centuries. There are no such dreary wastes in French literature as those that separate Chaucer from Spenser, or Luther from Lessing. There is hardly a generation since the "Chanson de Roland" that has not had some work of real excellence to show; and all this literature, even the oldest, has been readily and easily intelligible. No educated Frenchman has ever needed a long preparation to assimilate the literary content of the "Song of Roland," and so early French literature has had more direct influence on the culture of the nineteenth century than early English has had. Surely no predecessor of Shakspere is so present in the minds of modern writers as Rabelais or Montaigne. To indicate as briefly as possible the relation of these early centuries to our own, is my purpose in this chapter. The first popular literature was metrical, both for the convenience of the reciter who had to memorize it, and also to admit of a musical accompaniment. And since the minstrel depended on the interest he could evoke, he naturally chose the themes that attracted those who had most to give, and were likely to be most lavish in the giving. These were the knights and nobles; and the deeds of their chivalrous ancestors were the subjects that most effectually touched their pride and loosed their purse-strings. When he was the guest of a cloister, the singer might recount the Passion of our Lord, of Saint Eulalie, or of Saint Alexis, but in the castle his welcome depended on the local character of his repertory. Hence the groups of "Chansons de geste" (Family Songs) that, when compiled and joined. to one another with more or less skill, made up the greater part of the literature of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and continued to be re-edited and further extended in the thirteenth. Such" Chansons" naturally served as a model for those who had recent history to record; and some of these rhymed chronicles - Wace's "Roman de Rou," for instance have a sort of literary interest. About a hundred of these epic songs have survived the rack of time. The most famous of them all is the story of Roland's death at Roncesvalles (August 15, 778), which indeed no other chanson resembles or approaches in naïve realism and rugged beauty.1 All of them are written in couplets of careful structure, united by assonance or vowel rhyme. The hero is usually, as in Roland's case, connected with Charlemagne, and with the struggles of Christians and infidels; but there is always fighting of some kind, and women play a very subordinate part. Love is overlaid by the stronger emotions of faith and patriotism in the "Song of Roland," and by the mere love of brawling in some of the inferior" Chansons," which differ greatly in this from the freer inventions that were gradually developed from them as literature and culture progressed. Legends of the British King Arthur had attracted the Normans in England, and were by them brought to France, where most of them had been versified before the end of the twelfth cen 1 Cp. Lanson, Littérature française, p. 26. Cited hereafter as Lanson. |