A Short History of French Literature

The Tale of Arthur. Its Origin. Order of French Arthurian Cycle. Chrestien de Troyes. Spirit and Literary value of Arthurian Romances. Romances of Antiquity. Chanson d'Alixandre...

Hybrid School of Poetry. Jean le Maire. Jehan du Pontalais. Roger de Collerye. Minor Predecessors of Marot. Clement Marot. The School of Marot. Mellin de Saint-Gelais. Miscellan...

General Historians. Mezeray. Historical Essayists. St. Real. Memoir-writers. Rohan. Bassompierre. Madame de Motteville. Cardinal de Retz. Mademoiselle. La Rochefoucauld. Saint S...

Characteristics and Divisions of Eighteenth-century History. Rollin. Dubos. Boulainvilliers. Voltaire. Mably. Rulhiere. Memoirs. Mme. de Staal-Delaunay. Duclos. Besenval. Madame...

The Romantic Movement. Writers of the later Transition. Beranger. Lamartine. Lamennais. Victor Cousin. Beyle. Nodier. Delavigne. Soumet. The Romantic Propaganda in Periodicals....

Of all European literatures the French is, by general consent, that which possesses the most uniformly fertile, brilliant, and unbroken history. In actual age it may possibly yi...

The earliest form which finished literature took in France was that of epic or narrative poetry. Towards the middle of the eleventh century certainly, and probably some half-cen...

The Romance language, spoken in the country now called France, has two great divisions, the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil[44], which stand to one another in hardly more intim...

The passion for narrative poetry, which at first contented itself with stories drawn from the history or tradition of France, took before very long a wider range. The origin of...

Singular as the statement may appear, no one of the branches of literature hitherto discussed represents what may be called a specially French spirit. Despite the astonishing po...

The lyric poetry of the middle ages in France divides itself naturally into two periods, distinguished by very strongly marked characteristics. The end of the thirteenth century...

In consequence of the slowness with which prose was used for any regular literary purpose in France, verse continued to do duty for it until a comparatively late period in almos...

The remarkable fecundity of early French literature in narrative poetry on the great scale was not limited to the Chanson de Geste, the Arthurian Romance, and the classical stor...

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 origins of the drama in France, like most other points affecting mediaeval literature, have been made the subject of a good deal of dispute. It has been attempted, on the on...

In all countries the use of prose for literature is chronologically later than the use of poetry, and France is no exception to the rule. The Chansons de Gestes were in their wa...

It was natural, and indeed necessary, that, when the use of prose as an allowable vehicle for literary composition was once understood and established, it should gradually but r...

To determine at what period exactly mediaeval literature ceases in France and modern literature begins, is not one of the easiest problems of literary history. It has sometimes...

The beginnings of the Renaissance in France manifest, as we should expect, a mixture of the characteristics of the later middle ages and of the new learning. In those times the...

At the beginning of the sixteenth century prose fiction in France was represented by a considerable mass of literature divided sharply into two separate classes of very differen...

Almost exactly at the middle of the sixteenth century a movement took place in French literature which has no parallel in literary history, except the similar movement which too...

It so happened that the mediaeval theatre closed, as far as its exclusive possession of the stage is concerned, with one of the most remarkable of all its writers. Pierre Gringo...

It has been pointed out that Rabelais, in his capacity of representative author of the French Renaissance, exhibits all the characteristics of that Renaissance--its interest, ha...

A period of enthusiasm passes naturally and almost necessarily into one of scepticism, and it is in no way surprising that the prominent literary figure of the second half of th...

The period of the Renaissance in France closed with two works (one for the most part in prose and due to various authors, the other wholly in verse and the work of one only) whi...

The history of the poetry of the seventeenth century in France naturally and necessarily opens with Malherbe, though he was forty-five years old at its beginning, and considerab...

While the influence of Malherbe was thus cramping and withering poetry proper in France, it combined with some other causes to enable drama to attain the highest perfection poss...

Prose fiction, for reasons which it is not at all hard to discover, is in its more complete forms always a late product of literature. Up to the beginning of the seventeenth cen...

Although the seventeenth century did not witness the acceptance in France of what may be called a philosophical conception of history, and though few or none of the regular hist...

The enormous popularity which the Essays of Montaigne enjoyed could not fail to raise up imitators and followers in the century succeeding their publication. But Montaigne's inf...

The history of literature and the history of philosophy touch each other only at certain points of their course. There are periods (the nineteenth century itself is perhaps an e...

There is no period in the whole course of French literature in which theological writers and orators contribute so much to literary history as in the seventeenth century. The ca...

The literature of the eighteenth century, despite the many great names which adorn it, and the extraordinary practical influence which it exercised, is, from the point of view o...

At the beginning, and indeed during the whole course, of the eighteenth century, the theatre continued to enjoy all the vogue which the extraordinary brilliancy of the authors o...

The peculiarity of the eighteenth century in France as regards literature----that is to say, the application of great talents to almost every branch of literary production witho...

In the three branches of literature included in this chapter the interest of the eighteenth century is great, but unequally divided. In history proper, that is to say, the conne...

What may be, for want of a better word, called occasional writing in prose received a considerable development during the eighteenth century. Some of the forms which it had prev...

The entire literary and intellectual movement of the eighteenth century is very often called the _philosophe_ movement, and the writers who took part in it _les philosophes_. Th...

As the sciences divide and subdivide themselves more and more, the works which treat of them become less and less the subject of strictly literary history. Besides this truth, i...

The preceding chapter will at once have indicated the defects under which the later classical literature of France laboured, and the remedies which were necessary for them. Thos...