Medieval Voices
French Literature
Course 1 · Chapter 2 · Medieval Voices
French literature begins with a poem about a battle that did not happen the way the poem says. Over the next four centuries, writers in what became France composed war epics, tales of knights and ladies, satirical stories, allegories of love and, at the end, the verse of a criminal poet who may have escaped the gallows by a whisker. This chapter surveys those medieval voices. The evidence is thin: manuscripts are few, dates are approximate, and many authors are known only by a name or a guess. Names, dates and attributions are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.
Before French Literature
The French language grew out of the Latin spoken in Roman Gaul, changed by centuries of local speech and by the Frankish rulers (check the details). The earliest surviving text in an early form of French is usually said to be the Oaths of Strasbourg, a political agreement of 842 recorded in an early Romance language alongside a Germanic one (check). Literature in the language followed in the following centuries. Scholars call the language of this period Old French, and it is different enough from modern French that a modern reader needs a translation.
The Chanson de Roland
The Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland) is the best-known of the epic poems called chansons de geste, "songs of deeds". It is usually dated to around the year 1100 and survives in several manuscripts, of which the oldest and best known is kept in Oxford (check the details). It tells how Roland, a nephew of the emperor Charlemagne, commands the rearguard of the army, is betrayed and is killed with his companions at a mountain pass in the Pyrenees, refusing for too long to blow his horn for help.
The poem's last lines name a "Turold", whose role, as author, copyist or reciter, has been debated for generations (check). The identity of the author is unknown.
Courtly Romance
Chrétien de Troyes
A poet writing in the second half of the twelfth century (check the dates) who gave the stories of King Arthur's knights their French form. His works include Erec et Enide, a tale of Lancelot and an unfinished tale of Perceval, which introduces the Grail (check the titles and the order).
Courtly love
A literary idea in which a knight serves and adores a lady, often one he cannot have. The modern phrase "courtly love" is a nineteenth-century scholarly label, and how far it describes real behaviour is debated (check).
Marie de France
A woman poet of the twelfth century, known for short narrative poems called lais. Almost nothing is known about her life beyond her name (check).
Troubadours and trouvères
The lyric poets of the south and north whose songs shaped the language of love. Their music is discussed in French Music 2.
The Late Middle Ages
| Work or writer | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Roman de la Rose | Allegorical love poem | Begun by Guillaume de Lorris and continued decades later by Jean de Meun; among the most copied works of its time (check the dates and the authors' roles) |
| Roman de Renart | Animal tales | Stories about a trickster fox that mock the powerful; so popular that "renard" replaced the older word for fox in French (check) |
| Fabliaux | Short comic tales | Often bawdy stories about tricksters and fools (check) |
| Christine de Pizan (about 1364 to about 1430) | Poet and prose writer | Born in Venice and raised in France; often described as one of the first women to earn a living by writing; her Book of the City of Ladies defends women (check the details) |
| François Villon (born 1431) | Poet | Parisian poet and criminal; his Testament mixes humour, fear of death and street slang (check) |
Villon
François Villon was born in Paris in 1431 and studied at the university, but he was involved in violence and theft and had to flee the city more than once (check the details). He was condemned to be hanged at one point, and his sentence was reduced to banishment, after which nothing certain is known of him (check). His verse is famous for the line asking where the snows of last year have gone, a refrain about the passing of time and of beauty, and for a ballad written as if from the mouths of hanged men (check the titles). Much of his reputation rests on the combination of a very personal voice and a deep awareness of death, and he is often described as the first modern French poet.
Exercises
Summarise the story of the Chanson de Roland in three sentences and explain how it differs from the historical event it is based on.
Explain what is meant by courtly love and why historians are cautious about the phrase.
Choose Villon or Christine de Pizan and describe, in four sentences, what makes the writer distinctive and what in the account of their life needs checking.
Quick Reference
- Earliest text: the Oaths of Strasbourg (842), usually cited
- Roland: chanson de geste of about 1100; based on an ambush of 778
- Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian romances; Lancelot and the Grail
- Courtly love: a scholarly label for a literary idea
- Marie de France: twelfth-century woman poet; the lais
- Late Middle Ages: Roman de la Rose, Roman de Renart, fabliaux
- Christine de Pizan: writer who defended women
- Villon: criminal poet; the Testament
Next chapter: The Renaissance, which covers Rabelais, Montaigne and the poets of the Pléiade.