Read the book: «Landmarks in French Literature», page 11
CONCLUSION
With the death of Flaubert in 1880, French literature entered upon a new phase—a phase which, in its essential qualities, has lasted till to-day, and which forms a suitable point for the conclusion of the present sketch.
This last phase has been dominated by two men of genius. In prose, MAUPASSANT carried on the work of Flaubert with a sharper manner and more vivid style, though with a narrower range. He abandoned the exotic and the historical visions of his predecessor, and devoted himself entirely, in his brilliant novels and yet more brilliant short stories, to an almost fiendishly realistic treatment of modern life. A precisely contrary tendency marks the poetry of VERLAINE. While Maupassant completely disengaged prose from every alien element of poetry and imagination, pushing it as far as it could go in the direction of incisive realism, Verlaine and his fellow-workers in verse attempted to make poetry more truly poetical than it had ever been before, to introduce into it the vagueness and dreaminess of individual moods and spiritual fluctuations, to turn it away from definite fact and bring it near to music.
It was with Verlaine and his successors that French verse completely broke away from the control of those classical rules, the infallibility of which had been first attacked by the Romantics. In order to express the delicate, shifting, and indecisive feelings which he loved so well, Verlaine abolished the last shreds of rhythmical regularity, making his verse a perfectly fluid substance, which he could pour at will into the subtle mould of his feeling and his thought. The result justified the means. Verlaine's poetry exhales an exquisite perfume—strange, indistinct, and yet, after the manner of perfume, unforgettable. Listening to his enchanting, poignant music, we hear the trembling voice of a soul. This last sad singer carries us back across the ages, and, mingling his sweet strain with the distant melancholy of Villon, symbolizes for us at once the living flower and the unchanging root of the great literature of France.
We have now traced the main outlines of that literature from its dim beginnings in the Dark Ages up to the threshold of the present time. Looking back over the long line of writers, the first impression that must strike us is one of extraordinary wealth. France, it is true, has given to the world no genius of the colossal stature and universal power of Shakespeare. But, then, where is the equal of Shakespeare to be found? Not even in the glorious literature of Greece herself. Putting out of account such an immeasurable magnitude, the number of writers of the first rank produced by France can be paralleled in only one other modern literature—that of England. The record is, indeed, a splendid one which contains, in poetry and drama, the names of Villon, Ronsard, Corneille, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Chénier, Lamartine, Hugo, Vigny, Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine; and in prose those of Froissart, Rabelais, Montaigne, Pascal, Bossuet, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Montesquieu, Saint-Simon, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Flaubert, and Maupassant. And, besides this great richness and variety, another consideration gives a peculiar value to the literature of France. More than that of any other nation in Europe, it is distinctive and individual; if it had never existed, the literature of the world would have been bereft of certain qualities of the highest worth which France alone has been able to produce. Where else could we find the realism which would replace that of Stendhal and Balzac, Flaubert and Maupassant? Where else should we look for the brilliant lucidity and consummate point which Voltaire has given us? Or the force and the precision that glow in Pascal? Or the passionate purity that blazes in Racine?
Finally, if we would seek for the essential spirit of French literature, where shall we discover it? In its devotion to truth? In its love of rhetoric? In its clarity? In its generalizing power? All these qualities are peculiarly its own, but, beyond and above them, there is another which controls and animates the rest. The one high principle which, through so many generations, has guided like a star the writers of France is the principle of deliberation, of intention, of a conscious search for ordered beauty; an unwavering, an indomitable pursuit of the endless glories of art.
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AUTHORS AND THEIR PRINCIPAL WORKS
I. Middle Ages
● CHANSONS DE GESTE, eleventh to thirteenth centuries.
● Chanson de Roland, circa 1080.
● ROMANS BRETONS, twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
● CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES, wrote circa 1170-80.
● FABLIAUX, twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
● Roman de Renard, thirteenth century.
● Aucassin et Nicolete, circa thirteenth century.
● VILLEHARDOUIN, d. 1213.
● Conquête de Constantinople, 1205-13.
● GUILLAUME DE LORRIS (?).
● Le Roman de la Rose (first part), circa 1237.
● JEAN DE MEUNG, d. 1305.
● Le Roman de la Rose (second part), 1277.
● JOINVILLE, 1224-1319.
● Vie de Saint Louis, 1309.
● FROISSART, 1337-circa 1410.
● Chroniques, 1373-1400.
● VILLON, 1431-(?).
● Grand Testament, 1461.
● COMMYNES, 1445-1509.
● Mémoires, 1488-98.
II. Renaissance
● MAROT, 1496-1544.
● RABELAIS, circa 1494-1553.
● RONSARD, 1524-85.
● DU BELLAY, 1522-60.
● Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française, 1549.
● JODELLE, 1532-73.
● Cléopâtre, 1552.
● MONTAIGNE, 1533-92.
● Essays, 1580-88.
III. Age of Transition
● MALHERBE, 1555-1628.
● Odes, 1607-28.
● HARDY, 1570-1631 (circa).
● Tragedies, 1593-1630.
● ACADEMY, founded 1629.
● CORNEILLE, 1606-84.
● Le Cid, 1636.
● Les Horaces, 1640.
● Cinna, 1640.
● Polyeucte, 1643.
● PASCAL, 1623-62.
● Lettres Provinciales, 1656-57.
● Pensées, first edition 1670, first complete edition 1844.
IV. Age of Louis XIV
● MOLIÈRE, 1622-73.
● Les Précieuses Ridicules, 1659.
● L'École des Femmes, 1662.
● Tartufe, 1664.
● Le Misanthrope, 1666.
● Le Malade Imaginaire, 1673.
● LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, 1613-80.
● Maximes, 1665.
● BOILEAU, 1636-1711.
● Satires, 1666.
● Art Poétique, 1674.
● RACINE, 1639-99.
● Andromaque, 1667.
● Phèdre, 1677.
● Athalie, 1691.
● LA FONTAINE, 1621-95.
● Fables, 1668-92.
● BOSSUET, 1627-1704.
● Oraisons Funèbres, 1669-87.
● Histoire Universelle, 1681.
● MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ, 1626-96.
● Letters, 1671-96.
● MADAME DE LAFAYETTE, 1634-93.
● La Princesse de Clèves, 1678.
● LA BRUYÈRE, 1645-96.
● Les Caractères, 1688-94.
V. Eighteenth Century
● FONTENELLE, 1657-1757.
● Histoire des Oracles, 1687.
● BAYLE, 1647-1706.
● Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, 1697.
● FÉNELON, 1651-1715.
● Télémaque, 1699.
● MONTESQUIEU, 1689-1755.
● Lettres Persanes, 1721.
● L'Esprit des Lois, 1748.
● VOLTAIRE (1694-1778).
● La Henriade, 1723.
● Zaïre, 1732.
● Lettres Philosophiques, 1734.
● Essai sur les Moeurs, 1751-56.
● Candide, 1759.
● Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764.
● Dialogues, etc., 1755-78.
● LE SAGE, 1668-1747.
● Gil Blas, 1715-35.
● MARIVAUX, 1688-1763.
● Vie de Marianne, 1731-41.
● Les Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard, 1734.
● SAINT-SIMON, 1675-1755.
● Mémoires, begun 1740, first edition 1830.
● DIDEROT, 1713-84.
● Encyclopédie, 1751-80.
● La Religieuse, first edition 1796.
● Le Neveu de Rameau, first edition 1823.
● ROUSSEAU, 1712-78.
● La Nouvelle Héloïse, 1761.
● Contrat Social, 1762.
● Confessions, first edition 1781-88.
● BEAUMARCHAIS, 1732-99.
● Le Mariage de Figaro, 1784.
● CONDORCET, 1743-94.
● Progrès de l'Esprit Humain, 1794.
● CHÉNIER, 1762-94.
● Poems, 1790-94, first edition 1819.
VI. Nineteenth Century—I
● CHATEAUBRIAND, 1768-1848.
● Atala, 1801.
● Génie du Christianisme, 1802.
● Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe, published 1849.
● LAMARTINE, 1790-1869.
● Méditations, 1820.
● HUGO, 1802-85.
● Hernani, 1830.
● Les Feuilles d'Automne, 1831.
● Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831.
● Les Châtiments, 1852.
● Les Contemplations, 1856.
● La Légende des Siècles, 1859.
● Les Misérables, 1862.
● VIGNY, 1797-1863.
● Poemes Antiques et Modernes, 1826.
● Servitude et Grandeur Militaires, 1835.
● MUSSET, 1810-57.
● Caprices de Marianne, 1833.
● Lorenzaccio, 1834.
● Les Nuits, 1835-40.
● GEORGE SAND, 1804-76.
● Indiana, 1832.
● François le Champi, 1850.
● STENDHAL, 1783-1842.
● Le Rouge et le Noir, 1831.
● BALZAC, 1799-1850.
● La Comédie Humaine, 1829-50.
● MICHELET, 1798-1874.
● History, 1833-67.
VII. Nineteenth Century—II
● SAINTE-BEUVE, 1804-69.
● Lundis, 1850-69.
● RENAN, 1833-92.
● Vie de Jésus, 1863.
● TAINE, 1828-93.
● FLAUBERT, 1821-80.
● Madame Bovary, 1857.
● Salammbô, 1862.
● GAUTIER, 1811-72.
● Émaux et Camées, 1852.
● BAUDELAIRE, 1821-67.
● Les Fleurs du Mal, 1857.
● LECONTE DE LISLE, 1818-94.
● Poems, 1853-84.
● SULLY PRUDHOMME, 1839-1907.
● Poems, 1865-88.
● HEREDIA, 1842-1905.
● Les Trophées, 1893.
● MAUPASSANT, 1850-93.
● VERLAINE, 1844-96.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The number of works dealing with the history and criticism of French literature is very large indeed. The following are the most useful reviews of the whole subject:—
● PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature française (8 vols.).
● LANSON. Histoire de la Littérature française (1 vol.).
● BRUNETIÈRE. Manuel de l'histoire de la Littérature française (1 vol.).
● DOWDEN. History of French Literature (1 vol.).
An excellent series of biographies of the principal authors, by the leading modern critics, is that of Les Grands Écrivains Français (published by Hachette).
The critical essays of Sainte-Beuve are particularly valuable. They are contained in his Causeries du Lundi, Premiers Lundis, Nouveaux Lundis, Portraits de Femmes, Portraits Littéraires, and Portraits Contemporains.
Some interesting criticisms of modern writers are to be found in La Vie Littéraire, by Anatole France.
Editions of the principal authors are very numerous. The monumental series of Les Grands Écrivains de la France (Hachette) contains complete texts of most of the great writers, with elaborate and scholarly commentaries of the highest value. Cheaper editions of the masterpieces of the language are published by Hachette, La Bibliothèque Nationale, Jean Gillequin, Nelson, Dent, Gowans & Gray.
There are also numerous lyrical anthologies, of which two of the best are Les Chefs-d'oeuvre de la Poésie lyrique française (Gowans & Gray) and The Oxford Book of French Verse (Clarendon Press). But it must be remembered that the greater part of what is most characteristic in French literature appears in its poetic drama and its prose, and is therefore necessarily excluded from such collections.
