French literature

“ Under the dictation of none but her own genius, she had as a child selected the heroic masterpieces of the early French tragedians, as the mouth-piece of her genius, and in an age when Romanticism, extravagance, and rhodomontade were at their height, the young priestess stepped forth, and lit the sacred fire on altars grown dim and cold, bringing Frenchmen's hearts back to the worship of what is truest and best in their country's literature. ”

“ If we take a rapid view of French literature, from the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, down to the Revolution, we are dazzled by the record of brilliant and celebrated women, who protected or cultivated letters, and obtained the homage of men of talent. ”

“ But look at the imagination, the vivacity, of the others: we read them in childhood for the poetry of their wonders, and in more advanced life for their wit; for they are the Horaces of fairy land. The French have the very perfection of short stories in their literature—little touches like the flight of a shining arrow. ”

“ So the novel was born, expressing, though in a different way, exactly the same ideals of personality and of the dignity of common life which were later proclaimed in the American and in the French Revolution, and were welcomed with rejoicing by the poets of the romantic revival. To tell men, not about knights or kings or types of heroes, but about themselves in the guise of plain men and women, about their own thoughts and motives and struggles, and the results of actions upon their own characters,--this was the purpose of our first novelists. ”

“ FRENCH LITERATURE FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.—The influences already spoken of, in connection with the literary progress which began in Germany and England towards the close of the eighteenth century, produced in the beginning of the nineteenth century a revival in French literature; but the conflict of opinions, the immense number of authors, and their extraordinary fecundity, render it difficult to examine or classify them. We first notice the great advances in history and biography. ”

“ English and of German literature to give the particular without a sufficient tincture of the universal, to lose themselves in mere 'humours.' It is the fault of French literature to give the type only without differentiation. ”

“ The supremacy of the French in the delicately finished short story is undisputed, and the six authors here represented are the finest flowers of this development of French literature. The little volumes are all that is charming in outward appearance, are literally volumes for the pocket, have portraits of the authors, and each is introduced by a competent critic. ”

“ The clearness of French prose has a tendency to become colourless in French poetry, its sobriety turns to the bald, its wit to conceits and prettinesses, its inventiveness to an undue reliance on complicated devices for creating an artificial attraction, its sense of form and rule to dryness and lack of passion. ”

“ A fifth striking thing about French literature is, that it has to a degree, as we believe beyond parallel, exercised a real and vital influence on the character and the fortune of the nation. The social, the political, the moral, the religious, history of France is from age to age a faithful reflex of the changing phases of its literature. ”

“ The view of life suggested by so much of the best French literature, that thinking men are generally in a practical dilemma between the extremes of sensual excess and of spiritual exaltation, did not commend itself to him in the least. ”

“ The poetical power of French has been once more triumphantly proved, and its productiveness in all branches of literature has been renewed, while in that of prose fiction there has been almost created a new class of composition. ”

“ That form of literature called the romance abounds with us. France has always loved it, for French writers exhibit a curiosity—and I may say an indiscretion—that is almost charming in the study of customs and morals at large; a quality that induces them to talk freely of themselves and of their neighbors, and to set forth fearlessly both the good and the bad in human nature. In this fascinating phase of literature, France never has produced greater examples than of late years. ”

“ Their works became remarkable for clarity and elegance, for a graceful simplicity, an easy strength; they were cast in the fine mould of perfect manners—majestic without pretension, expressive without emphasis, simple without carelessness, and subtle without affectation. These are the dominating qualities in the style of that great body of literature, which has rightly come to be distinguished as the Classical literature of France. ”

“ The amateur is very rare in French literature—as rare as he is common in our own. ”

“ It is, perhaps, an arguable point of literary criticism, whether the persevering analysis of individual, and more or less unusual, character does not lead novelists away from the best path—as it certainly leads in the long run to monstrosities of the modern French and English 'realist' type. ”

“ As has already been observed, the older foreign literature which had hitherto been kept out of France, and the new, which was captivating men's minds by its novelty, were simultaneously seized on and assimilated by the young generation, with an eagerness exactly proportioned to the vehemence with which the works in question repudiated the rules adhered to in earlier French literature. ”

“ Some have written general histories of French literature; some have written histories of periods—the Middle Ages, the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth centuries; some have studied special literary fields or forms—the novel, the drama, tragedy, comedy, lyrical poetry, history, philosophy; many have written monographs on great authors; many have written short critical studies of books or groups of books. ”

“ That a book which was thus rich in vocabulary, richer still in idiosyncrasy of expression, gracefully familiar in general style, and admirably eloquent in occasional passages, should at once become popular, and should remain so, could not be without a happy effect on the general standard of literary taste and the general acquaintance with the capabilities of the French language. ”

“ The literature which has been able to exert both must have very strongly marked general characteristics of its own. As a matter of fact French literature has these characteristics: and a brief enumeration and description of them may complete, more appropriately than anything else could do, the survey of its history. French literature, notwithstanding the revolution of fifty years ago, is generally and rightly held to be the chief representative among the greater European literatures of the classical rather than the romantic spirit. ”

“ Even painters in oils often use this drawing card; the Paris salons have always a considerable sprinkling of nudes, in all sorts of voluptuous attitudes, making a frank appeal to desire. French literature abounds in books, some of great literary merit, that exploit this aspect of human nature ”

“ It shows, as fully as anything well could, the wealth of French prose that we can leave aside so many writers, even in what is not one of the great periods, and yet retain a considerable body of literature in the very fullest sense of the word. ”

“ The French are, namely, accustomed to regard knowledge of human nature founded upon observation as the substance, the essence of poetry—such knowledge as is displayed in Molière's Tartuffe and Misanthrope. ”

“ The logical bent of the French mind, its love of rule, the elaborateness of its conventions in literature, its ceremonial observances dating from by-gone times, the custom of giving account of everything, of letting no nuance pass unchallenged or uncommented, have given it a power of expression and definiteness which holds together as a complete code of written and unwritten laws, and makes a perfect instrument of its kind. ”

“ French literature—Effects produced on it by the revolution—The sciences preferred to literature, and for what reason—The French government has flattered the literati and artists; but the solid distinctions have been reserved for men of science—Epic Poetry—Tragedy—Comedy—Novels—Moral Fable—Madrigal and Epigram—Romance—Lyric Poetry—Song—Journals. ”

“ The law which seems to have ordained that, though the eighteenth century in France should produce no masterpiece in fictitious literature, or only one, all the most distinguished literary names should be connected with fiction, extended to the long and, in a literary sense, dreary debateable land between the eighteenth [Pg 429] century itself and the nineteenth. ”

“ These great writers are not merely remarkable for the vigour and originality of their thoughts, the freshness, variety and grace of their fancy, the abundance of their learning and the solidity of their arguments in the cases where argument is required. Their great merit is the creation of a language and a style able to give expression to these good gifts. The foregoing account of the medieval literature of France will have shown sufficiently that it is not lawful to despise the literary capacities and achievements of the older French. ”

“ But the intense admiration of the severe beauties of classical literature, which was the dominant literary note of the Renaissance, translated itself in their active minds into a determination to make, if it were possible, French itself more able to emulate the triumphs of Greek and of Latin. ”

“ How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question. ”

“ It has been of a kind that French people, rather than English, understand; because for French people literature and conversation are serious matters, not trifles that don't count, as they are with us. ”

“ It is exposed to the touch of influences from another world, and though many of the French poems, or great part of many of them, may tell of heroes who would be content with the simple and positive rules of the heroic life, this is not allowed them. ”

“ In one word, the single inspiring aim of the author has here been to furnish enlightened readers, versed only in the English language, the means of acquiring, through the medium of their vernacular, some proportioned, trustworthy, and effective knowledge and appreciation, in its chief classics, of the great literature which has been written in French. This object has been sought, not through narrative and description, making books and authors the subject, but through the literature itself, in specimen extracts illuminated by the necessary explanation and criticism. ”

“ This is a sketch, necessarily and designedly rapid, of the poetical history of the eighteenth century in France. The matter thus rapidly treated is of no small interest to professed students of literature; it abounds in curious social indications; it gives frequent instances of the extremest ingenuity applied to somewhat unworthy use. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In particular the French, certainly the literature which ranges at the lowest elevation upon the scale of passion, nevertheless is often homely, and even gross, in its recurrences to frank elementary nature. ”

“ It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms. ”

“ Their efforts betoken a craving for that which they could not supply. Vile imitations of French taste, extravagant romances, exaggerated sentiment, are the characteristics of the works wherewith it was attempted to supply the national want of a literature. ”

“ Of modern romantic drama in France it must suffice to say that it derives some of its characteristics from the general movement of romanticism which in various ways and at various points of time transformed nearly every modern European literature, others from the rhetorical tendency which The romantic school.is a French national feature. ”

“ The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction—in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint. ”

“ A fourth very salient trait in French literary history consists in the self-conscious, elaborate, persistent efforts put forth from time to time by individuals, and by organizations, 20 both public and private, in France, to improve the language and to elevate the literature of the nation. We know of nothing altogether comparable to this anywhere else in the literature of the world. ”

“ In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought. ”

“ So true is this that it is difficult to determine whether social practices called forth the literature, or whether, as in the case of the seventeenth-century pastoral romance in France, it is truer to say that literature suggested to society its ideals. ”

“ Without arrogating to myself the pretension of a critic, I should be unjust if I did not acknowledge that I have perused many a French novel by modern authors, from which I have derived interest and pleasure. ”