Part 1

# Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "French Literature" to "Frost, William": Volume 11, Slice 2 ### By Various

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Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's notes:

(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an underscore, like C_n.

(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.

(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective paragraphs.

(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not inserted.

(5) The following typographical errors have been corrected:

ARTICLE FRENCH LITERATURE: "Froissart had been followed as a chronicler by Enguerrand de Monstrelet (c. 1390-1453) and by the historiographers of the Burgundian court, Chastelain, already mentioned, whose interesting Chronique de Jacques de Lalaing is much the most attractive part of his work ..." 'whose' amended from 'whole'.

ARTICLE FRENCH LITERATURE: "... Mesmer, St Germain and others. In this connexion, too, may perhaps also be mentioned most appropriately Restif de la Bretonne, a remarkably original and voluminous writer ..." 'Restif' amended from 'Bestif'.

ARTICLE FRENCH LITERATURE: "The Anglomania which distinguished the time was nowhere more strongly shown than in the cast and direction of its philosophical speculations." 'strongly' amended from 'stongly'.

ARTICLE FRENCH LITERATURE: "All this literature is so far connected purely with the knightly and priestly orders, though it is largely composed and still more largely dealt in by classes of men ..." 'literature' amended from 'literaure'.

ARTICLE FRENCH REVOLUTION, THE: "The constitutional party in the legislature desired a toleration of the nonjuring clergy, the repeal of the laws against the relatives of the emigres, and some merciful discrimination toward the emigres themselves." 'constitutional' amended from 'contitutional'.

ARTICLE FRIAR: "See Fr. Cuthbert, The Friars and how they came to England, pp. 11-32 (1903); also F. A. Gasquet, English Monastic Life, pp. 234-249 (1904), where special information on all the English friars is conveniently brought together." 'conveniently' amended from 'coveniently'.

ARTICLE FRISIAN ISLANDS: "... fine sandy beaches being formed well suited for sea-bathing, which attract many visitors in summer." 'attract' amended from 'attracts'.

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XI, SLICE II

French Literature to Frost, William

ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:

FRENCH LITERATURE FRIEDRICHSHAFEN FRENCH POLISH FRIEDRICHSRUH FRENCH REVOLUTION, THE FRIENDLY SOCIETIES FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS FRIENDS, SOCIETY OF FRENCH WEST AFRICA FRIES, ELIAS MAGNUS FRENTANI FRIES, JAKOB FRIEDRICH FREPPEL, CHARLES EMILE FRIES, JOHN FRERE, SIR HENRY BARTLE EDWARD FRIESLAND FRERE, JOHN HOOKHAM FRIEZE FRERE, PIERRE EDOUARD FRIGATE FRERE-ORBAN, HUBERT WALTHER FRIGATE-BIRD FRERET, NICOLAS FRIGG FRERON, ELIE CATHERINE FRIGIDARIUM FRERON, LOUIS MARIE STANISLAS FRIIS, JOHAN FRESCO FRIMLEY FRESCOBALDI, GIROLAMO FRIMONT, JOHANN MARIA PHILIPP FRESENIUS, KARL REMIGIUS FRISCHES HAFF FRESHWATER FRISCHLIN, PHILIPP NIKODEMUS FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN JEAN FRISI, PAOLO FRESNILLO FRISIAN ISLANDS FRESNO FRISIANS FRESNOY, CHARLES ALPHONSE DU FRITH, JOHN FRET FRITH, WILLIAM POWELL FREUDENSTADT FRITILLARY FREUND, WILHELM FRITZLAR FREWEN, ACCEPTED FRIULI FREY FROBEN, JOANNES FREYBURG FROBISHER, SIR MARTIN FREYCINET, CHARLES DE SAULCES DE FROCK FREYCINET, LOUIS DESAULSES DE FROEBEL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM AUGUST FREYIA FROG FREYTAG, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH FROG-BIT FREYTAG, GUSTAV FROGMORE FRIAR FROHLICH, ABRAHAM EMANUEL FRIBOURG (Swiss Canton) FROHSCHAMMER, JAKOB FRIBOURG (Swiss town) FROISSART, JEAN FRICTION FROME FRIDAY FROMENTIN, EUGENE FRIEDBERG FROMMEL, GASTON FRIEDEL, CHARLES FRONDE, THE FRIEDLAND (town of Austria) FRONTENAC ET PALLUAU, LOUIS DE BUADE FRIEDLAND (towns in Germany) FRONTINUS, SEXTUS JULIUS FRIEDLAND (town of Prussia) FRONTISPIECE FRIEDMANN, MEIR FRONTO, MARCUS CORNELIUS FRIEDRICH, JOHANN FROSINONE FRIEDRICHRODA FROSSARD, CHARLES AUGUSTE FRIEDRICHSDORF FROST, WILLIAM EDWARD

FRENCH LITERATURE.

Early monuments.

Epic poetry.

_Origins._--The history of French literature in the proper sense of the term can hardly be said to extend farther back than the 11th century. The actual manuscripts which we possess are seldom of older date than the century subsequent to this. But there is no doubt that by the end at least of the 11th century the French language, as a completely organized medium of literary expression, was in full, varied and constant use. For many centuries previous to this, literature had been composed in France, or by natives of that country, using the term France in its full modern acceptation; but until the 9th century, if not later, the written language of France, so far as we know, was Latin; and despite the practice of not a few literary historians, it does not seem reasonable to notice Latin writings in a history of French literature. Such a history properly busies itself only with the monuments of French itself from the time when the so-called Lingua Romana Rustica assumed a sufficiently independent form to deserve to be called a new language. This time it is indeed impossible exactly to determine, and the period at which literary compositions, as distinguished from mere conversation, began to employ the new tongue is entirely unknown. As early as the 7th century the Lingua Romana, as distinguished from Latin and from Teutonic dialects, is mentioned, and this Lingua Romana would be of necessity used for purposes of clerical admonition, especially in the country districts, though we need not suppose that such addresses had a very literary character. On the other hand, the mention, at early dates, of certain _cantilenae_ or songs composed in the vulgar language has served for basis to a superstructure of much ingenious argument with regard to the highly interesting problem of the origin of the _Chansons de Geste_, the earliest and one of the greatest literary developments of northern French. It is sufficient in this article, where speculation would be out of place, to mention that only two such _cantilenae_ actually exist, and that neither is French. One of the 9th century, the "Lay of Saucourt," is in a Teutonic dialect; the other, the "Song of St Faron," is of the 7th century, but exists only in Latin prose, the construction and style of which present traces of translation from a poetical and vernacular original. As far as facts go, the most ancient monuments of the written French language consist of a few documents of very various character, ranging in date from the 9th to the 11th century. The oldest gives us the oaths interchanged at Strassburg in 842 between Charles the Bald and Louis the German. The next probably in date and the first in literary merit is a short song celebrating the martyrdom of St Eulalia, which may be as old as the end of the 9th century, and is certainly not younger than the beginning of the 10th. Another, the _Life of St Leger_, in 240 octosyllabic lines, is dated by conjecture about 975. The discussion indeed of these short and fragmentary pieces is of more philological than literary interest, and belongs rather to the head of French language. They are, however, evidence of the progress which, continuing for at least four centuries, built up a literary instrument out of the decomposed and reconstructed Latin of the Roman conquerors, blended with a certain limited amount of contributions from the Celtic and Iberian dialects of the original inhabitants, the Teutonic speech of the Franks, and the Oriental tongue of the Moors who pressed upwards from Spain. But all these foreign elements bear a very small proportion to the element of Latin; and as Latin furnished the greater part of the vocabulary and the grammar, so did it also furnish the principal models and helps to literary composition. The earliest French versification is evidently inherited from that of the Latin hymns of the church, and for a certain time Latin originals were followed in the choice of literary forms. But by the 11th century it is tolerably certain that dramatic attempts were already being made in the vernacular, that lyric poetry was largely cultivated, that laws, charters, and such-like documents were written, and that commentators and translators busied themselves with religious subjects and texts. The most important of the extant documents, outside of the epics presently to be noticed, has of late been held to be the _Life of Saint Alexis_, a poem of 625 decasyllabic lines, arranged in five-line stanzas, each of one assonance or vowel-rhyme, which may be as early as 1050. But the most important development of the 11th century, and the one of which we are most certain, is that of which we have evidence remaining in the famous _Chanson de Roland_, discovered in a manuscript at Oxford and first published in 1837. This poem represents the first and greatest development of French literature, the chansons de geste (this form is now preferred to that with the plural _gestes_). The origin of these poems has been hotly debated, and it is only recently that the importance which they really possess has been accorded to them,--a fact the less remarkable in that, until about 1820, the epics of ancient France were unknown, or known only through late and disfigured prose versions. Whether they originated in the north or the south is a question on which there have been more than one or two revolutions of opinion, and will probably be others still, but which need not be dealt with here. We possess in round numbers a hundred of these chansons. Three only of them are in Provencal. Two of these, _Ferabras_ and _Betonnet d'Hanstonne_, are obviously adaptations of French originals. The third, _Girartz de Rossilho_ (Gerard de Roussillon), is undoubtedly Provencal, and is a work of great merit and originality, but its dialect is strongly tinged with the characteristics of the Langue d'Oil, and its author seems to have been a native of the debatable land between the two districts. To suppose under these circumstances that the Provencal originals of the hundred others have perished seems gratuitous. It is sufficient to say that the chanson de geste, as it is now extant, is the almost exclusive property of northern France. Nor is there much authority for a supposition that the early French poets merely versified with amplifications the stories of chroniclers. On the contrary, chroniclers draw largely from the chansons, and the question of priority between _Roland_ and the pseudo-Turpin, though a hard one to determine, seems to resolve itself in favour of the former. At most we may suppose, with much probability, that personal and family tradition gave a nucleus for at least the earliest.

Chansons de Geste.

_Chansons de Geste._--Early French narrative poetry was divided by one of its own writers, Jean Bodel, under three heads--poems relating to French history, poems relating to ancient history, and poems of the Arthurian cycle (_Matieres de France, de Bretagne, et de Rome_). To the first only is the term chansons de geste in strictness applicable. The definition of it goes partly by form and partly by matter. A chanson de geste must be written in verses either of ten or twelve syllables, the former being the earlier. These verses have a regular caesura, which, like the end of a line, carries with it the licence of a mute e. The lines are arranged, not in couplets or in stanzas of equal length, but in _laisses_ or _tirades_, consisting of any number of lines from half a dozen to some hundreds. These are, in the earlier examples assonanced,--that is to say, the vowel sound of the last syllables is identical, but the consonants need not agree. Thus, for instance, the final words of a tirade of _Amis et Amiles_ (Il. 199-206) are _erbe_, _nouvelle_, _selles_, _nouvelles_, _traversent_, _arrestent_, _guerre_, _cortege_. Sometimes the tirade is completed by a shorter line, and the later chansons are regularly rhymed. As to the subject, a chanson de geste must be concerned with some event which is, or is supposed to be, historical and French. The tendency of the trouveres was constantly to affiliate their heroes on a particular _geste_ or family. The three chief _gestes_ are those of Charlemagne himself, of Doon de Mayence, and of Garin de Monglane; but there are not a few chansons, notably those concerning the Lorrainers, and the remarkable series sometimes called the _Chevalier au Cygne_, and dealing with the crusades, which lie outside these groups. By this joint definition of form and subject the chansons de geste are separated from the romances of antiquity, from the romances of the Round Table, which are written in octosyllabic couplets, and from the _romans d'aventures_ or later fictitious tales, some of which, such as _Brun de la Montaigne_, are written in pure chanson form.

Volume and changes of early epics.

Not the least remarkable point about the chansons de geste is their vast extent. Their number, according to the strictest definition, exceeds 100, and the length of each chanson varies from 1000 lines, or thereabouts, to 20,000 or even 30,000. The entire mass, including, it may be supposed, the various versions and extensions of each chanson, is said to amount to between two and three million lines; and when, under the second empire, the publication of the whole Carolingian cycle was projected, it was estimated, taking the earliest versions alone, at over 300,000. The successive developments of the chansons de geste may be illustrated by the fortunes of _Huon de Bordeaux_, one of the most lively, varied and romantic of the older epics, and one which is interesting from the use made of it by Shakespeare, Wieland and Weber. In the oldest form now extant, though even this is probably not the original, _Huon_ consists of over 10,000 lines. A subsequent version contains 4000 more; and lastly, in the 14th century, a later poet has amplified the legend to the extent of 30,000 lines. When this point had been reached, _Huon_ began to be turned into prose, was with many of his fellows published and republished during the 15th and subsequent centuries, and retains, in the form of a roughly printed chap-book, the favour of the country districts of France to the present day. It is not, however, in the later versions that the special characteristics of the chansons de geste are to be looked for. Of those which we possess, one and one only, the _Chanson de Roland_, belongs in its present form to the 11th century. Their date of production extends, speaking roughly, from the 11th to the 14th century, their palmy days were the 11th and the 12th. After this latter period the Arthurian romances, with more complex attractions, became their rivals, and induced their authors to make great changes in their style and subject. But for a time they reigned supreme, and no better instance of their popularity can be given than the fact that manuscripts of them exist, not merely in every French dialect, but in many cases in a strange macaronic jargon of mingled French and Italian. Two classes of persons were concerned in them. There was the _trouvere_ who composed them, and the _jongleur_ who carried them about in manuscript or in his memory from castle to castle and sang them, intermixing frequent appeals to his auditory for silence, declarations of the novelty and the strict copyright character of the chanson, revilings of rival minstrels, and frequently requests for money in plain words. Not a few of the manuscripts which we now possess appear to have been actually used by the jongleur. But the names of the authors, the trouveres who actually composed them, are in very few cases known, those of copyists, continuators, and mere possessors of manuscripts having been often mistaken for them.

The moral and poetical peculiarities of the older and more authentic of these chansons are strongly marked, though perhaps not quite so strongly as some of their encomiasts have contended, and as may appear to a reader of the most famous of them, the _Chanson de Roland_, alone. In that poem, indeed, war and religion are the sole motives employed, and its motto might be two lines from another of the finest chansons (_Aliscans_, 161-162):--

"Dist a Bertran: 'N'avons mais nul losir, Tant ke vivons alons paiens ferir.'"

In Roland there is no love-making whatever, and the hero's betrothed "la belle Aude" appears only in a casual gibe of her brother Oliver, and in the incident of her sudden death at the news of Roland's fall. M. Leon Gautier and others have drawn the conclusion that this stern and masculine character was a feature of all the older chansons, and that imitation of the Arthurian romance is the cause of its disappearance. This seems rather a hasty inference. In _Amis et Amiles_, admittedly a poem of old date, the parts of Bellicent and Lubias are prominent, and the former is demonstrative enough. In _Aliscans_ the part of the Countess Guibourc is both prominent and heroic, and is seconded by that of Queen Blancheflor and her daughter Aelis. We might also mention Oriabel in _Jourdans de Blaivies_ and others. But it may be admitted that the sex which fights and counsels plays the principal part, that love adventures are not introduced at any great length, and that the lady usually spares her knight the trouble and possible indignities of a long wooing. The characters of a chanson of the older style are somewhat uniform. There is the hero who is unjustly suspected of guilt or sore beset by Saracens, the heroine who falls in love with him, the traitor who accuses him or delays help, who is almost always of the lineage of Ganelon, and whose ways form a very curious study. There are friendly paladins and subordinate traitors; there is Charlemagne (who bears throughout the marks of the epic king common to Arthur and Agamemnon, but is not in the earlier chanson the incapable and venal dotard which he becomes in the later), and with Charlemagne generally the duke Naimes of Bavaria, the one figure who is invariably wise, brave, loyal and generous. In a few chansons there is to be added to these a very interesting class of personages who, though of low birth or condition, yet rescue the high-born knights from their enemies. Such are Rainoart in _Aliscans_, Gautier in _Gaydon_, Robastre in _Gaufrey_, Varocher in _Macaire_. These subjects, uniform rather than monotonous, are handled with great uniformity if not monotony of style. There are constant repetitions, and it sometimes seems, and may sometimes be the case, that the text is a mere cento of different and repeated versions. But the verse is generally harmonious and often stately. The recurrent assonances of the endless tirade soon impress the ear with a grateful music, and occasionally, and far more frequently than might be thought, passages of high poetry, such as the magnificent _Granz doel por la mort de Rollant_, appear to diversify the course of the story. The most remarkable of the chansons are _Roland_, _Aliscans_, _Gerard de Roussillon_, _Amis et Amiles_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, _Garin le Loherain_ and its sequel _Les quatre Fils Aymon_, _Les Saisnes_ (recounting the war of Charlemagne with Witekind), and lastly, _Le Chevalier au Cygne_, which is not a single poem but a series, dealing with the earlier crusades. The most remarkable _group_ is that centring round William of Orange, the historical or half-historical defender of the south of France against Mahommedan invasion. Almost all the chansons of this group, from the long-known _Aliscans_ to the recently printed _Chancon de Willame_, are distinguished by an unwonted _personality_ of interest, as well as by an intensified dose of the rugged and martial poetry which pervades the whole class. It is noteworthy that one chanson and one only, _Floovant_, deals with Merovingian times. But the chronology, geography, and historic facts of nearly all are, it is hardly necessary to say, mainly arbitrary.