A Short History of French Literature Part 11

Until quite recently it was not unusual to apply the term Roman d'Aventures with less strictness, and to make it include the Romances of the Round Table. There can, however, be no doubt that it is far better to adopt Jean Bodel's three cla.s.ses as distinguis.h.i.+ng into separate groups the epic poetry of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and to restrict the t.i.tle Romans d'Aventures to the later narrative developments of the thirteenth and fourteenth. For the second distinguis.h.i.+ng mark which we have just indicated is striking and of more or less universal application. In these later poems the ambition of the writer to cla.s.s his work under and with some precedent work is almost entirely absent. He allows himself complete freedom, though he may sometimes, in order to give his characters greater interest, connect them nominally with some famous personage or event of the earlier cycles. This tendency to shake off the shackles of cyclicism is early apparent. There are episodes even in the Chansons de Gestes which have little or no reference to Charlemagne or his peers: the Arthurian Romances in prose and verse contain long digressions, holding but very loosely to the Table Round, such as the adventures of Tristram and Percivale, and still more the singular episode of Grimaud in the _Saint Graal_. As for the third cla.s.s, the Trouveres almost from the beginning a.s.sumed the greatest licence in their handling of the cla.s.sical legends.

These accordingly were less affected than any others by the change. It is possible to divide the Romans d'Aventures themselves under the three headings. It is further possible to indicate a large cla.s.s of Chansons de Gestes over which the influence of the Roman d'Aventures has pa.s.sed.

But the Chanson having a special formal peculiarity--the a.s.sonanced or rhymed tirade--survived the new influence better than the other two, and keeps its name, and to some extent its character, while the Romances of Arthur and antiquity are simply lost in the general body of tales of adventure. These tales are for the most part written in octosyllabic couplets on the model of Chrestien, but a very few, such as _Brun de la Montaigne_, imitate the exterior characteristics of the Chanson.

It is further to be noticed that while the earlier poems are mostly anonymous, the Romans d'Aventures are generally, though not always, signed, and bear characteristics of particular authors.h.i.+p. In some cases, notably in those of Adenes le Roi and Raoul de Houdenc, we have a body of work signed or otherwise identified, which enables us to attribute a definite literary character and position to its authors.

This, as we have noted, is impossible in the case of the national epics, and not too easy in that of the Arthurian Romances. Until quite recently however the Roman d'Aventures has had less of the attention of editors than its forerunners, and the works which compose the cla.s.s are still to some extent unpublished.

[Sidenote: Adenes le Roi.]

Adenes or Adans le Roi perhaps derived his surname from the function of king of the minstrels, if he performed it, at the court of Henry III, duke of Brabant. He was, most likely, born in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, and the last probable allusion to him which we have occurs in the year 1297. The events of his life are only known from his own poems, and consist chiefly of travels in company with different princesses and princes of Flanders and Brabant. His literary work is however of great importance. It consists partly of refas.h.i.+onings of three Chansons de Gestes, _Les enfances Ogier_, _Berte aus grans Pies_, and _Bueves de Commarchis_[91]. In these three poems Adenes works up the old epics into the form fas.h.i.+onable in his time, and as we possess the older versions of the first and last, the comparison of the two forms affords a literary study of the highest interest. His last, longest, and most important work is the Roman d'Aventures of _Cleomades_[92], a poem extending to 20,000 verses, and not less valuable for its intrinsic merit than as a type of its cla.s.s. Its popularity in the middle ages was immense. Froissart gives it the place occupied in the _Inferno_ by _Lancelot_ in his description of his declaration of love to his mistress, and allusions to it under its second t.i.tle of _Le Cheval de Fust_[93] are frequent. The most prominent feature in the story is the introduction of a wooden horse, like that known to everybody in the Arabian Nights, which, started and guided by means of pegs, transports its rider whithersoever he will. Its great length allows of a very long series of adventures, all of which are told in spirited and flowing verse, though with considerable prolixity and a certain abuse of stock descriptions. These two faults characterise all the Romans d'Aventures and the Chansons which were remodelled in their style. The merits of _Cleomades_ are not so universally found, but its extreme length is not common. Few other Romans d'Aventures exceed 10,000 lines. An extract from this poem will well ill.u.s.trate the manner of this important cla.s.s of composition:--

Cleomades vit un chastel encoste un plain, tres fort et bel, ou il ot mainte bele tour.

bos et rivieres vit entour, vignes et praieries grans.

mult fu li chastiaus bien seans.

la facon dou castel desse, mais je dout mult que ne messe trop longement au deviser: pour ce m'en voel briement pa.s.ser.

Du chastel vous dirai le non: miols seant ne vit aine nus hom, lors l'apieloit on Chastel-n.o.ble.

n'ot tel dusque en Constantin.o.ble, ne de la dusque en Osterice n'ot plus bel, plus fort ne plus rice.

carmans a cel point i estoit que Cleomades vint la droit.

forment li sambloit li chastiaus de toutes pars riches et biaus.

Cleomades lors s'avisa que viers le chastel se trera.

bien pensoit qu'en tel liu manoient gent qui de grant afaire estoient.

che fu si qu'apries l'ajournee mult faisoit bele matinee, car mais estoit nouviaus entres: c'est uns tans ki mult est ames et de toutes gens conjos; pour cou a non mais li jolis.

une tres grant tour haute et forte avoit ases pries de la porte, ki estoit couverte de plon, plate deseure, car adon les faisoit on ensi couvrir pour engins et pour a.s.sallir.

Cleomades a avisee la tour ki estoit haute et lee; lors pense qu'il s'arestera sor cele tour tant qu'il savra, se il puet, la certainite quel pas c'est la verite.

lors a son cheval adrechie viers la tour de marbre entaillie.

les chevilletes si tourna que droit sour la tour aresta.

si coiement s'est avales que sour aighe coie vait nes.

[Sidenote: Raoul de Houdenc.]

Raoul de Houdenc is an earlier poet than Adenes, and represents the Roman d'Aventures in its infancy, when it still found it necessary to attach itself to the great cycle of the Round Table. His works, besides some shorter poems[94], consist of the _Roman des Eles_ (Ailes), a semi-allegorical composition, describing the wings and feathers of chivalry, that is to say, the great chivalrous virtues, among which Raoul, like a herald as he was, gives Largesse the first place; of _Meraugis de Portlesguez_, an important composition, possessing some marked peculiarities of style; and possibly also of the _Vengeance de Raguidel_, in which the author works out one of the innumerable unfinished episodes of the great epic of _Percevale_. Thus Raoul de Houdenc occupies no mean place in French literature, inasmuch as he indicates the starting-point of two great branches, the Roman d'Aventures and the allegorical poem, and this at a very early date.

This date is not known exactly; but it was certainly before 1228, when the Trouvere Huon de Mery alludes to him, and cla.s.ses him with Chrestien as a master of French verse. He has in truth some very noteworthy peculiarities. The chief of these, which must soon strike any reader of _Meraugis_, is his tendency to _enjambement_ or overlapping of couplets.

It is a curious feature in the history of French verse that the isolation of the couplet has constantly recurred in its history, and that as constantly reformers have striven to break up the monotony so produced by this process of _enjambement_. Perhaps Raoul is the earliest who thus, as an indignant critic put it at the first representation of _Hernani_, 'broke up verses, and threw them out of window.' Besides this metrical characteristic, the thing most noteworthy in his poems (as might indeed have been expected from his composition of the _Roman des Eles_) is a tendency to allegorising, and to scholastic disquisitions on points of amatory casuistry. The whole plot of _Meraugis_ indeed turns on the enquiry whether physical or metaphysical love is the sincerest, and on the quarrel which a difference on this point brings on between the hero and Gorvein Cadrus his friend and his rival in the love of the fair Lidoine.

[Sidenote: Chief Romans d'Aventures.]

Many other Romans d'Aventures deserve mention, both for their intrinsic merits and for the immense popularity they once enjoyed. Foremost among these must be mentioned _Partenopex de Blois_[95] and _Flore et Blanchefleur_[96]. The former (formerly ascribed to Denis Pyramus and now denied to him, but said to date from the twelfth century) is a kind of modernised _Cupid and Psyche_, except that Cupid's place is taken by the fairy Melior, and Psyche's by the knight Parthenopeus or Parthenopex. This poem has great elegance and freshness of style, and though the author is inclined to moralise (as a near forerunner of the _Roman de la Rose_ was bound to do), his moralisings are gracefully and naively put. _Flore et Blanchefleur_ is perhaps even superior. Its theme is the love of a young Christian prince for a Saracen girl-slave, who has been brought up with him. She is sold into a fresh captivity to remove her from him, but he follows her and rescues her unharmed from the harem of the Emir of Babylon. The delicacy of the handling is very remarkable in this poem, and it has some links of connection with _Auca.s.sin et Nicolette_. _Le Roman de Dolopathos_[97] has a literary history of great interest which we need not touch upon here. Its versification has more vigour than that of almost any other Roman d'Aventures. _Blancandin et l'Orguilleuse d'Amour_[98] is more promising at the beginning than in the sequel. A young knight, hearing of the pride and coyness of a lady, accosts and kisses her as she rides past with a great following of knights. Her coldness is of course changed to love at first sight, and the audacious suitor afterwards delivers her from her enemies; but the working out of the story is rather dully managed. _Brun de la Montaigne_[99], as has been already mentioned, is written in Chanson form, and deals with the famous Forest of Broceliande in Britanny. _Guillaume de Palerne_[100] is a still more interesting work. It introduces the favourite mediaeval idea of lycanthropy, the hero being throughout helped and protected by a friendly were-wolf, who is before the end of the poem freed from the enchantment to which he is subjected. This Romance was early translated into English. Of the same cla.s.s is the _Roman de l'Escouffle_, where a hawk carries away the heroine's ring, as in a well-known story of the Arabian Nights. _Amadas et Idoine_[101] is one of the numerous histories of the success of a squire of low degree, but is distinguished from most of them by the originality of its conception and the vigour of its style. The scenes where the hero is recovered of his madness by his beloved, and where, keeping guard over her tomb, he fights with ghostly enemies, after a time of trial of his fidelity, and rescues her from death, are unusually brilliant. _Le Bel Inconnu_[102], which (from a curious misunderstanding of its older form _Li Biaus Desconnus_) occurs in English form as _Lybius Diasconus_, tells the story of a son of Gawain and the fairy with the white hands, and thus is one of the numerous secondary Romances of the Round Table. So also is the long and interesting _Roman du Chevalier as Deux Espees_[103]; this extends to more than 12,000 lines, and, though the adventures recorded are of the ordinary Round Table pattern, there is noticeable in it a better faculty of maintaining the interest and a completer mastery over episodes than usual. A still longer poem (also belonging to what may be called the outer Arthurian cycle) is _Durmart le Gallois_[104], which contains almost 16,000 verses. The loves of the hero and Fenise, the Queen of Ireland, are somewhat lengthily handled; but there are pa.s.sages of merit, especially one most striking episode in which the hero, riding through a forest by night, comes to a tree covered from top to bottom with burning torches, while a s.h.i.+ning naked child is enthroned on the summit. These touches of mystical religion are rarer in the later Romans d'Aventures than in the Arthurian Romances proper, but with them one of the most remarkable elements of romance disappears. Philippe de Remy, Seigneur de Beaumanoir (who has other claims to literary distinction) is held to be author of two Romans d'Aventures[105], _La Manekine_ (the story of the King of Hungary's daughter, who cut off her hand to save herself from her father's incestuous pa.s.sion) and _Blonde d'Oxford_, where a young French squire carries off an English heiress. _Joufrois de Poitiers_[106], which has not come down to us complete, is chiefly remarkable for the liveliness of style with which adventures, in themselves tolerably hackneyed, are handled. Other Romans d'Aventures, which are either as yet in ma.n.u.script or of less importance, are _Ille et Galeron_ and _Eracle_, both by Gautier d'Arras, _Cristal et Larie_, _La Dame a la Licorne_, _Guy de Warwike_, _Gerard de Nevers_ or _La Violette_[107], _Guillaume de Dole_, _Eledus et Serena_, _Florimont_.

[Sidenote: General Character.]

Like most kinds of mediaeval poetry, these Romans d'Aventures have a very considerable likeness the one to the other. It may indeed be said that they possess a 'common form' of certain incidents and situations, which reappear with slight changes and omissions in all or most of them.

Their besetting sins are diffuseness and the recurrence of stock descriptions and images. On the other hand, they have their peculiar merits. The harmony of their versification is often very considerable; their language is supple, picturesque, and varied, and the moral atmosphere which they breathe is one of agreeable refinement and civilisation. In them perhaps is seen most clearly the fanciful and graceful side of the state of things which we call chivalry. Its mystical and transcendental sides are less vividly and touchingly exhibited than in the older Arthurian Romances; and its higher pa.s.sions are also less dealt with. The Romans d'Aventures supply once more, according to the Aristotelian definition, an Odyssey to the Arthurian Iliad; they are complex and deal with manners. Nor ought it to be omitted that, though they constantly handle questions of gallantry, and though their uniform theme is love, the language employed on these subjects is almost invariably delicate, and such as would not fail to satisfy even modern standards of propriety. The courtesy which was held to be so great a knightly virtue, if it was not sufficient to ensure a high standard of morality in conduct, at any rate secured such a standard in matter of expression. In this respect the Court literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries stands in very remarkable contrast to that which was tolerated, if not preferred, from the time of Louis the Eleventh until the reign of his successor fourteenth of the name.

[Sidenote: Last Chansons. Baudouin de Sebourc.]

Reference has already been made to the influence which these poems had on the Chansons de Gestes. Few of the later developments of these are worth much attention, but what may be called the last original Chanson deserves some notice. _Baudouin de Sebourc_[108] and its sequel the _b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Bouillon_[109] worthily close this great division of literature, and, setting as they do a finish to the sub-cycle of the _Chevalier au Cygne_, hardly lose except in simplicity by comparison with its magnificent opening in the _Chanson d'Antioche_. They contain together some 33,000 verses, and the scene changes freely. It is sometimes in Syria, where the Crusaders fight against the infidel, sometimes in France and Flanders, where Baudouin has adventures of all kinds, comic and chivalrous, sometimes on the sea, where among other things the favourite mediaeval legend of St. Brandan's Isle is brought in. Not a little of its earlier part shows the sarcastic spirit common at the date of its composition, the beginning of the fourteenth century.

The length of the two poems is enormous, as has been said; but, putting two or three masterpieces aside, no poem of mediaeval times has a more varied and livelier interest than _Baudouin de Sebourc_, and few breathe the genuine Chanson spirit of pugnacious piety better than _Le Bastart de Bouillon_.

FOOTNOTES:

[91] Ed. Scheler. Brussels, v. d.

[92] Ed. van Ha.s.selt. Brussels, 1866.

[93] _The wooden horse._

[94] The _Songe d'Enfer_ and the _Voie de Paradis_, published by Jubinal, as the _Roman des Eles_ has been by Scheler, _Meraugis_ by Michelant, and the _Vengeance de Raguidel_ by Hippeau.

[95] Ed. c.r.a.pelet. Paris, 1834.

[96] Ed. Du Meril. Paris, 1856.

[97] Ed. Brunet et Montaiglon. Paris, 1856.

[98] Ed. Michelant. Paris, 1867.

[99] Ed. Meyer. Paris, 1875.

[100] Ed. Michelant. Paris, 1876.

[101] Ed. Hippeau. Paris, 1863.

[102] Ed. Hippeau. Paris, 1860.

[103] Ed. Forster. Halle, 1877.

[104] Ed. Stengel. Tubingen, 1873.

[105] Both edited in extract by Bordier. Paris, 1869. Complete edition begun by Suchier. Paris, 1884.

[106] Ed. Hofmann and Muncker. Halle, 1880.

[107] Ed. Michel.

[108] Ed. Boca. 2 vols. Valenciennes, 1841.

[109] Ed. Scheler. Brussels, 1877.

CHAPTER IX.

LATER SONGS AND POEMS.

[Sidenote: The Artificial Forms of Northern France.]

Not the least important division of early French literature, in point of bulk and peculiarity, though not always the most important in point of literary excellence, consists of the later lyrical and miscellaneous poems of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. By the end of the thirteenth century the chief original developments had lost their first vigour, while, on the other hand, the influence of the regular forms of Provencal poetry had had time to make itself fully felt. There arose in consequence, in northern France, a number of artificial forms, the origin and date of which is somewhat obscure, but which rapidly attained great popularity, and which continued for fully two centuries almost to monopolise the attention of poets who did not devote themselves to narrative. These forms, the Ballade, the Rondeau, the Virelai, etc., have already been alluded to as making their appearance among the later growths of early lyrical poetry. They must now be treated in the abundant development which they received at the hands of a series of poets from Lescurel to Charles d'Orleans.