FRANCE 



that with Villehardouin's Conquete 

 de Constantinople it began to dis- 

 place Latin in the writing of his- 

 tory. Of the many other chroni- 

 clers of the Middle Ages three are 

 particularly noteworthy : Join- 

 ville with his Histoire de St. 

 Louis, written 1305-9; Froissart 

 with his Chroniques, written c. 

 1373-1400; and Commines with 

 his Memoires, written c. 1488- 

 1500. Prose was also employed 

 for fiction, as by Antoine de la 

 Salle. The exquisite chantefable, 

 Aucassin et Nicolette, of the later 

 12th century, is an interesting con- 

 necting link between the verse and 

 the prose roman. 



Renaissance Influence 



In the IGth century French lit- 

 erature, thus far thoroughly medie- 

 val in character, was transformed 

 by all the liberalising influences of 

 the Renaissance and especially by 

 the revived study of the literatures 

 of Greco-Roman antiquity, to 

 which the new writers turned for 

 their inspiration and models. In 

 poetry the transition is marked by 

 Marot, and soon after his death 

 the revolution was completed by a 

 group of writers, collectively called 

 La Pleiade, whose leading spirit 

 was Ronsard. The manifesto of 

 this brotherhood is contained in 

 La Deffense et Illustration de la 

 Langue Fran9oyse (1549), the 

 author of which, Du Bellay, ad- 

 vocates the enrichment of French 

 by the free importation of words 

 and idioms from various sources 

 and particularly from the classic 

 tongues. In regard to literature, 

 he insists that the poet should 

 abandon entirely all the older 

 native forms of verse and devote 

 himself to the production of ec- 

 logues, epics, elegies, dramas, etc., 

 in the classic style. 



Ronsard himself attempted to 

 naturalise some of the " great 

 types " of ancient poetry in his 

 Odes, 1550-53, and his unfinished 

 epic, La Franciade ; and Pleiade 

 principles were also adopted by an 

 outsider, the protestant Du Bartas, 

 in his Biblical epics, Judith (1573) 

 and La Semaine (1578). The dra- 

 matic part of the Pleiade pro- 

 gramme was carried out by Ron- 

 sard's young disciple, Etienne Jo- 

 delle. His comedy, Eugene, 1552, 

 has little historical importance ; 

 but in his two tragedies, Cleo- 

 patre captive and Didon se sacri- 

 fiant, he laid the foundations of 

 that Senecan or classic type of 

 tragedy which was to flourish in 

 France for nearly 300 years. His 

 lead was followed by other writers, 

 notably Gamier, while Larivey, 

 influenced by his Kalian models, 

 made a significant innovation by 

 the substitution of prose for verse. 



3302 



Meanwhile prose literature, 

 hitherto little more than experi- 

 mental, developed rapidly in many 

 directions. Calvin's Institution de 

 la Religion Chretienne (1st French 

 ed. 1541), though in subject- 

 matter interesting only to the theo- 

 logical student, and Amyot's ver- 

 sion of Plutarch (1559), though a 

 mere translation, deserve mention 

 among the monuments of the new 

 prose. This was now freely used for 

 biography and history (e.g. Blaise 

 de Montluc's Commentaires, writ- 

 ten 1570-77), and for political pur- 

 poses (e.g. La Boetie's Discours 

 de la Servitude Volontaire, first 

 printed 1576, and the Menippee sa- 

 tire, 1594, by Pithou, Passer at, and 

 others). But in general literature 

 the two outstanding names are 

 those of Rabelais and Montaigne, 

 both of whom, despite their funda- 

 mental differences, are representa- 

 tive exponents of the emancipated 

 spirit of the Renaissance. 



With the 17th century we pass 

 into what French historians call 

 le grand siecle, during which the 

 consolidation of the power of the 

 crown, begun by Richelieu, was 

 completed by Mazarin and abso- 

 lute monarchy finally established 

 by Louis XIV. In literature the 

 triumph of classicism was the con- 

 comitant and in large measure the 

 result of this culmination in politics 

 of the principles of centralization 

 and autocracy. 



The Classic Period 



Under the influence first of the 

 salons and then of the Academy, 

 founded in 1635, and the court, 

 literature, too, was reduced to law 

 and order ; the individualistic ten- 

 dencies of the 16th century were 

 checked, and general standards of 

 judgement and taste were pre- 

 scribed ; with the result that, 

 while an artificial unity and great 

 brilliancy and polish were at- 

 tained, they were attained only at 

 the cost of originality and inde- 

 pendence. In poetry the classical 

 movement was initiated by Mal- 

 herbe, who set out to clear the lan- 

 guage of the archaisms of the 

 Pleiade and the conceits which had 

 more recently been introduced 

 from Italy, and to regulate versifi- 

 cation by the severest rules of 

 technique. 



But while Malherbe thus laid 

 down the lines which poetry was to 

 follow for the next 200 years, the 

 eal master of the classic school was 

 Boileau, whose L'Art Poetique 

 (1674) was long accepted as its 

 authoritative text-book. Only a 

 few writers, one the satirist 

 Regnier, were bold enough to re- 

 sist the new tendencies. But one 

 great poet of the century, the 

 inimitable fabulist La Fontaine, 



FRANCE 



though claimed by the classicists, 

 occupies a place apart. While 

 under the dictatorship of Malherbe 

 and Boileau pure poetry declined, 

 the drama, on the other hand, 

 flourished in great splendour. 

 After Jodelle and Gamier little 

 progress had been made in tragedy, 

 though the prolific Alexandre 

 Hardy had done something to 

 popularise it ; but the classic type 

 now reached perfection in Corneille 

 and Racine, with whom we may 

 also mention the minor writers, 

 Rotrou, Thomas Corneille, and 

 Quinault. At the same time the 

 comedy of manners and social 

 satire, which had slowly been 

 emerging out of the popular farce, 

 assumed its most brilliant form in 

 the work of the greatest comic 

 playwright of the modern world, 

 Moliere, among whose numerous 

 followers two Regnard and Dan- 

 court have substantial claims to 

 distinction. 



In the general prose of the cen- 

 tury the foremost names are those 

 of the moralists, La Rochefou- 

 cauld, Pascal, and La Bruyere ; 

 and of the preachers and religious 

 writers, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Mas- 

 sillon, and Fenelon. But letter- 

 writing and memoir-writing were 

 also cultivated with great success ; 

 the former in particular by the 

 incomparable epistolaire, Mme. de 

 Sevigne : the latter, e.g., by the 

 two famous chroniclers, De Retz 

 and Saint-Simon. 



To the 17th century also belong 

 the beginnings of the novel. For its 

 first 75 years indeed prose fiction 

 was mainly represented by the pro- 

 lix and hopelessly unreal pastoral 

 romance, typified in L'Astree. 1(510, 

 of Honore d'Urfe, and by such 

 romans precieux as Gomberville's 

 Polexandre, 1638-41 : La Calpre- 

 nede's Cleopatre, 1647, and Mile, de 

 Scudery's Grand Cyrus, 1649-53. 

 But a bourgeois reaction against 

 these fantastic products of the 

 aristocratic salons soon appeared 

 in Charles S Orel's burlesque, Le 

 Berger Extravagant, 1627 ; and 

 in the same writer's earlier Fran- 

 cion, 1622 ; in Scarron's Roman 

 Comique, 1651-57 ; in Furetiere's 

 Roman Bourgeois, 1666 ; and in a 

 different way in Mme. de la 

 Fayette's Princesse de Cleves, 

 1678, we mark the emergence of 

 the novel in its modern form. 

 The Eighteenth Century 



While not altogether unchal- 

 lenged, the classic ideal held sway 

 until the death of Louis XIV in 

 1715. In the period of gro wing 

 political and intellectual unrest 

 which followed, though the estab- 

 lished theories were maintained, 

 the fundamental character of 

 French literature underwent an 



