French literature, one of the world's most brilliant, has
been for centuries an impressive facet of French civilization, an object of
national pride, and a principal focus for feelings of national identity.
Because the French are a literate people, passionately interested in questions
of language and in the exploration of ideas, the influence of French
intellectuals on the course of French history during the last three centuries
has been great, and remains so today. A high proportion of European literary trends
have originated in France. The continuing prestige of literature in France is
evidenced today by the innumerable private societies devoted to individual
authors and by the large number of literary prizes awarded each year. A
knowledge of French literature, in short, is the key to an understanding of the
French people.
THE MIDDLE AGES
French literature began when writers started using the
dialects that had evolved from the Latin spoken in the parts of the Roman
Empire that would become France. Eventually, the dialect in popular use around
Paris gained supremacy over the others and by the 10th century was vying with
Latin for prestige. The 11th century witnessed the emergence of a literature in
the French language in the form of numerous epic poems, called CHANSONS DE
GESTE. These poems told of the heroic deeds of the knights fighting with or
against Charlemagne. Of the more than 80 chansons remaining, the masterpiece is
the CHANSON DE ROLAND (12th century), which narrates the death of Charlemagne's
nephew, Roland, in a rearguard action against the Saracens at Roncesvallés in
the Pyrénées. Exhibiting great skill in the differentiation of characters, this
poem contributed to the awakening of a French national consciousness.
The chansons were followed in the second half of the 12th
century by the "romans courtois", or tales of courtly love, which
were written in verse in the Romance tongue and were intended to be read aloud
before aristocratic audiences. Celebrating the heroism of knights fighting in
honor of their ladies, many of these poems are set at King Arthur's court and
are steeped in the Celtic mythology of Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales. Of
particular importance was the Tristan and Iseult cycle, which, in its powerful,
semimystical evocation of a love as strong as death, inspired poets in every
part of Europe. Eventually, it served as the basis for Richard Wagner's great
opera Tristan und Isolde (1865). The greatest poet in this tradition was Chrétien
de Troyes, author of Erec, Lancelot, and Perceval. The lais were very short
romans courtois, a genre to which Marie de France contributed many
delightful examples. The single most significant medieval poem was the ROMAN DE
LA ROSE, whose first 4,000 lines were written about 1230 by Guillaume de
Lorris in the courtly tradition; about 40 years later, Jean de Meung added
18,000 lines in a realistic, satirical vein. The allegorical quest of the Rose
(the Lady) was to remain influential until the 17th century.
Outside aristocratic circles a very different type of literature
flourished. The FABLIAUX were short narratives in verse, simple, earthy, and
bantering in tone, sparing no one, least of all women or clergy. FABLES,
allegorical stories in which animals were used to satirize human
characteristics or to point to a moral, were equally popular, the most
celebrated of this type being REYNARD THE FOX.
The greatest French poet of the late medieval period was
François Villon -- thief, murderer, and prison inmate -- whose
alternately bitter, amusing, and deeply moving Testament (1461; Eng. trans.,
1924) sounds a strangely modern note. In it are many examples of the BALLADE
and the Rondeau, forms in which Villon demonstrated his mastery.
The Middle Ages also saw the development of history as a
prose genre. Geoffroi de Villehardouin, in his Conquest of
Constantinople (c.1207; Eng. trans., 1829), gave an eyewitness account of the
sacking of the Byzantine capital in 1204 by western crusaders en route to the
Holy Land. Jean Sire de JOINVILLE acted as memorialist of Louis IX's disastrous
crusade (1248-52) in Egypt, completing his entertaining Histoire de Saint Louis
in 1309 (Eng. trans., 1807). Jean Froissart's Chronicles (Eng. trans.,
1523-25) vividly evoke the barbarities of the Hundred Years' War as it was
fought between 1325 and 1400. The Memoirs (1489-90, 1497-98; Eng. trans., 1596)
of Philippe de Commynes, dealing with the reigns of Louis XI and Charles VIII,
reveal a truer historian, one more concerned with the hidden causes of events
than with mere chronicling.
Sources: http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Literature/DF_literature.shtml
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