Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

The "Clerks of the Revels," an incorporated society at Paris, whose duty it was to regulate the public festivities, resolved to amuse the people with dramatic representations themselves, but as the Fraternity of the Passion had obtained a royal license to represent the mysteries, they were compelled to abstain from that kind of exhibition. They therefore invented a new one, to which they gave the name of "Moralities," and which differed little from the mysteries, except in name. They were borrowed from the Parables, or the historical parts of the Bible, or they were purely allegorical. To the Clerks of the Revels we also owe the invention of modern comedy. They mingled their moralities with farces, the sole object of which was to excite laughter, and in which all the gayety and vivacity of the French character were displayed. Some of these plays still retain their place upon the French stage. At the commencement of the fifteenth century another comic company was established, who introduced personal and even political satire upon the stage. Thus every species of dramatic representation was revived by the French. This was the result of the talent for imitation so peculiar to the French people, and of that pliancy of thought and correctness of intellect which enables them to conceive new characters. All these inventions, which led to the establishment of the Romantic drama in other countries, were known in France more than a century before the rise of the Spanish or Italian theatre, and even before the classical authors were first studied and imitated. At the end of the sixteenth century, these new pursuits acquired a more immediate influence over the literature of France, and wrought a change in its spirit and rules, without, however, altering the national character and taste which had been manifested in the earliest productions of the trouvères.

3. FRENCH LITERATURE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.—French had as yet been merely a popular language; it varied from province to province, and from author to author, because no masterpiece had inaugurated any one of its numerous dialects. It was disdained by the more serious writers, who continued to employ the Latin. In the fifteenth century literature assumed a somewhat wider range, and the language began to take precision and force. But with much general improvement and literary industry there was still nothing great or original, nothing to mark an epoch in the history of letters. The only poets worthy of notice were Charles, Duke of Orleans (1391-1465), and Villon, a low ruffian of Paris (1431-1500). Charles was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and carried to England, where he was detained for twenty-five years, and where he wrote a volume of poems in which he imitated the allegorical style of the Romance of the Rose. The verses of Villon were inspired by the events of his not very creditable life. Again and again he suffered imprisonment for petty larcenies, and at the age of twenty-five was condemned to be hanged. His language is not that of the court, but of the people; and his poetry marks the first sensible progress after the Romance of the Rose.

It has been well said that literature begins with poetry; but it is established by prose, which fixes the language. The earliest work in French prose is the chronicle of Ville-Hardouin (1150-1213), written in the thirteenth century. It is a personal narrative and relates with graphic particularity the conquest of Constantinople by the knights of Christendom. This ancient chronicle traces out for us some of the realities, of which the mediaeval romances were the ideal, and enables us to judge in a measure how far these romances embody substantial truth.

A great improvement in style is apparent in Joinville (1223-1317), the amiable and light-hearted ecclesiastic who wrote the Life of St. Louis, whom he had accompanied to the Holy Land, and whose pious adventures he affectionately records. Notwithstanding the anarchy which prevailed in France during the fourteenth century, some social progress was made; but while public events were hostile to poetry, they gave inspiration to the historic muse, and Froissart arose to impart vivacity of coloring to historic narrative.

Froissart (1337-1410) was an ecclesiastic of the day, but little in his life or writings bespeaks the sacred calling. Having little taste for the duties of his profession, he was employed by the Lord of Montfort to compose a chronicle of the wars of the time; but there were no books to tell him of the past, no regular communication between nations to inform him of the present; so he followed the fashion of knights errant, and set out on horseback, not to seek adventures, but, as an itinerant historian, to find materials for his chronicle. He wandered from town to town, and from castle to castle, to see the places of which he would write, and to learn events on the spot where they occurred. His first journey was to England; here he was employed by Queen Philippa of Hainault to accompany the Duke of Clarence to Milan, where he met Boccaccio and Chaucer. He afterwards passed into the service of several of the princes of Europe, to whom he acted as secretary and poet, always gleaning material for historic record. His book is an almost universal history of the different states of Europe, from 1322 to the end of the fourteenth century. He troubles himself with no explanations or theories of cause and effect, nor with the philosophy of state policy; he is simply a graphic story-teller. Sir Walter Scott called Froissart his master.

Philippe de Commines (1445-1509) was a man of his age, but in advance of it, combining the simplicity of the fifteenth century with the sagacity of a later period. An annalist, like Froissart, he was also a statesman, and a political philosopher; embracing, like Machiavelli and Montesquieu, the remoter consequences which flowed from the events he narrated and the principles he unfolded. He was an unscrupulous diplomat in the service of Louis XI., and his description of the last years of that monarch is a striking piece of history, whence poets and novelists have borrowed themes in later times. But neither the romance of Sir Walter Scott nor the song of Béranger does justice to the reality, as presented by the faithful Commines.

PERIOD SECOND.

THE RENAISSANCE AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH LITERATURE (1500-1700).

1. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION.—During the preceding ages, erudition and civilization had not gone hand-in-hand. On the one side there was the bold, chivalric mind of young Europe, speaking with the tongues of yesterday, while on the other was the ecclesiastical mind, expressing itself in degenerate Latin. The one was a life of gayety and rude disorder—the life of court and castle as depicted in the literature just scanned; the other, that of men separated from the world, who had been studying the literary remains of antiquity, and transcribing and treasuring them for future generations. Hitherto these two sections had held their courses apart; now they were to meet and blend in harmony. The vernacular poets, on the one hand, borrowing thought and expression from the classics, and the clergy, on the other, becoming purveyors of light literature to the court circles.

The fifteenth century, though somewhat barren, had prepared for the fecundity of succeeding ages. The revival of the study of ancient literature, which was promoted by the downfall of Constantinople, the invention of printing, the discovery of the new world, the decline of feudalism, and the consequent elevation of the middle classes,—all concurred to promote a rapid improvement of the human intellect.