A Short History of French Literature. Saintsbury George
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 Provençal 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'Orléans.
General Character. Varieties.
The principle underlying all these forms is the same, that is to say, the substitution for the half-articulate refrain of the early Romances, of a refrain forming part of the sense, and repeated with strict regularity at the end or in the middle of stanzas rigidly corresponding in length and constitution. In at least two cases, the lai and the pastourelle, the names of earlier and less rigidly exact forms were borrowed for the newer schemes; but the more famous and prevailing models110, the Ballade, with its modification the Chant Royal, and the Rondel, with its modifications the Rondeau and the Triolet, are new. It has been customary to see in the adoption of these forms a sign of decadence; but this can hardly be sustained in face of the fact that, in Charles d'Orléans and Villon respectively, the Rondel and the Ballade were the occasion of poetry far surpassing in vigour and in grace all preceding work of the kind, and also in presence of the service which the sonnet – a form almost if not quite as artificial – has notoriously done to poetry. It may be admitted, however, that the practitioners of the Ballade and the Rondeau soon fell into puerile and inartistic over-refinements. The forms of Ballade known as Équivoquée, Fratrisée, Couronnée, etc., culminating in the preposterous Emperière, are monuments of tasteless ingenuity which cannot be surpassed in their kind, and they have accordingly perished. But both in France and in England the Ballade itself and a few other forms have retained popularity at intervals, and have at the present day broken out into fresh and vigorous life.
Jehannot de Lescurel.
Guillaume de Machault.
Eustache Deschamps
The chief authors of these pieces during the period we are discussing were Jehannot de Lescurel, Guillaume de Machault, Eustache Deschamps, Jean Froissart, Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier, and Charles d'Orléans. Besides these there were many others, though the epoch of the Hundred Years' War was not altogether fertile in lighter poetry or poetry of any kind. Jehannot de Lescurel111 is one of those poets of whom absolutely nothing is known. His very name has only survived in the general syllabus of contents of the manuscript which contains his works, and which is in this part incomplete. The thirty-three poems – sixteen Ballades, fifteen Rondeaus112, and two nondescript pieces – which exist are of singular grace, lightness, and elegance. They cannot be later and are probably earlier than the middle of the fourteenth century, and thus they are anterior to most of the work of the school. Guillaume de Machault was a person sufficiently before the world, and his work is very voluminous. As usual with all these poets, it contains many details of its author's life, and enables us to a certain extent to construct that life out of these indications. Machault was probably born about 1284, and may not have died till 1377. A native of Champagne and of noble birth, he early entered, like most of the lesser nobility of the period, the service of great feudal lords. He was chamberlain to Philip the Fair, and at his death became the secretary of John of Luxembourg, the well-known king of Bohemia. After the death of this prince at Cressy, he returned to the service of the court of France and served John and Charles V., finally, as it appears, becoming in some way connected with Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus. His works were very numerous, amounting in all to some 80,000 lines, of which until recently nothing but a few extracts was in print. In the last few years, however, La Prise d'Alexandrie113, a rhymed chronicle of the exploits of Lusignan, and the Voir Dit114, a curious love poem in the style of the age, have been printed. Besides these his works include numerous ballades, etc., and several long poems in the style of those of Froissart, shortly to be described. On the other hand, the works of Eustache Deschamps, which are even more voluminous than those of Machault, his friend and master, are almost wholly composed of short pieces, with one notable exception, the Miroir de Mariage, a poem of 13,000 lines115. Deschamps has left no less than 1175 ballades, and as the ballade usually contains twenty-four lines at least, and frequently thirty-four, this of itself gives a formidable total. Rondeaus, virelais, etc., also proceeded in great numbers from his pen; and he wrote an important 'Art of Poetry,' a treatise rendered at once necessary and popular by the fashion of artificial rhyming. The life of Deschamps was less varied than that of Machault, whose inferior he was in point of birth, but he held some important offices in his native province, Champagne. Both Deschamps and Machault exhibit strongly the characteristics of the time. Their ballades are for the most part either moral or occasional in subject, and rarely display signs of much attention to elegance of phraseology or to weight and value of thought. In the enormous volume of their works, amounting in all to nearly 200,000 lines, and as yet mostly unpublished, there is to be found much that is of interest indirectly, but less of intrinsic poetical worth. The artificial forms in which they for the most part write specially invite elegance of expression, point, and definiteness of thought, qualities in which both, but especially Deschamps, are too often deficient. When, for instance, we find the poet in his anxiety to discourage swearing, filling, in imitation of two bad poets of his time, one, if not two ballades116 with a list of the chief oaths in use, it is difficult not to lament the lack of critical spirit displayed.
Froissart.
Froissart, though inferior to Lescurel, and though far less remarkable as a poet than as a prose writer, can fairly hold his own with Deschamps and Machault, while he has the advantage of being easily accessible117. The later part of his life having been given up to history, he is not quite so voluminous in verse as his two predecessors. Yet, if the attribution to him of the Cour d' Amour and the Trésor Amoureux be correct, he has left some 40,000 or 50,000 lines. The bulk of his work consists of long poems in the allegorical courtship of the time, interspersed with shorter lyrical pieces in the prevailing forms. One of these poems, the Buisson de Jonece, is interesting because of its autobiographical details; and some shorter pieces approaching more nearly to the Fabliau style, Le Dit du Florin, Le Débat du Cheval et du Lévrier, etc., are sprightly and agreeable enough. For the most part, however, Froissart's poems, like almost all the poems of the period, suffer from the disproportion of their length to their matter. If the romances of the time, which are certainly not destitute of incident, be tedious from the superabundance of prolix description, much more tedious are these recitals of hyperbolical passion tricked out with all the already stale allegorical imagery of the Roman de la Rose and with inappropriate erudition of the fashion which Jean de Meung had confirmed, if he did not set it.
Christine de Pisan.
Christine de Pisan, who was born in 1363, was a pupil of Deschamps, as Deschamps had been a pupil of Machault. She was an industrious writer, a learned person, and a good patriot, but not by any means a great poetess. So at least it would appear, though here again judgment has to be formed on fragments, a complete edition of Christine never having been published, and even her separate poems being unprinted for the most part, or printed only in extract. Besides a collection of Ballades, Rondeaux, and so forth, she wrote several Dits (the Dit de la Pastoure, the Dit de Poissy, the Dittié de Jeanne d'Arc, and some Dits Moraux), besides a Mutation
The following is an account of these forms, in their more important developments. The
Ed. Montaiglon. Paris, 1855.
The Rondeau is not in Lescurel systematised into any regular form.
Ed. L. de Mas Latrie. Société de l'Orient Latin, Geneva, 1877. This is a poem not much shorter than the
Ed. P. Paris. Société des Bibliophiles, Paris, 1875. This is a very interesting poem consisting of more than 9000 lines, mostly octosyllabic couplets, with ballades, etc. interspersed, one of which is given at the end of this chapter. It is addressed either to Agnes of Navarre, or, as M. P. Paris thought, to Péronelle d'Armentières, and was written in 1362, when the author was probably very old.
Deschamps is said to have been also named Morel. A complete edition of his works has been undertaken for the Old French Text Society by the Marquis de Queux de Saint Hilaire.
Ballades, 147, 149. Ed. Queux de St. Hilaire.
Ed. Schéler. 3 vols. Brussels, 1870-1872.