A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1

CHAPTER VI. Rabelais 105

RABELAIS 105

The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authorship up to this point--Rabelais unquestionably the first very great known writer--But the first great novelist?--Some objections considered--And dismissed as affecting the general attraction of the book--Which lies, largely if not wholly, in its story-interest--Contrast of the Moyen de Parvenir--A general theme possible--A reference, to be taken up later, to the last Book--Running survey of the whole--Gargantua--The birth and education--The war--The Counsel to Picrochole--The peace and the Abbey of Thelema--Pantagruel I. The contrasted youth--Panurge--Short view of the sequels in Book II.--Pantagruel II. (Book III.) The marriage of Panurge and the consultations on it--Pantagruel III. (Book IV.) The first part of the voyage--Pantagruel IV. (Book V.) The second part of the voyage: the "Isle Sonnante"--"La Quinte"--The conclusion and The Bottle.

CHAPTER VII. The Successors of Rabelais and the Influence of the

THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE "AMADIS" ROMANCES 134

Subsidiary importance of Brantôme and other character-mongers--The Heptameron--Note on Montaigne--Character and "problems"--Parlamente on human and divine love--Despériers--Contes et Joyeux Devis--Other tale-collections--The "provincial" character of these--The Amadis romances--Their characteristics--Extravagance in incident, nomenclature, etc.--The "cruel" heroine--Note on Hélisenne de Crenne.

CHAPTER VIII. The Seventeenth-Century Novel--I. 152

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--I. 152

The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story.

Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our subject--The divisions of its contribution--Note on marked influence of Greek Romance--The Pastoral in general--Its beginnings in France--Minor romances preceding the Astrée--Their general character--Examples of their style--Montreux and the Bergeries de Juliette--Des Escuteaux and his Amours Diverses--François de Molière: Polyxéne--Du Périer: Arnoult et Clarimonde--Du Croset: Philocalie--Corbin: Philocaste--Jean de Lannoi and his Roman Satirique--Béroalde de Verville outside the Moyen de Parvenir--The Astrée: its author--The book--Its likeness to the Arcadia--Its philosophy and its general temper--Its appearance and its author's other work--Its character and appeals--Hylas and Stella and their Convention--Narrative skill frequent--The Fountain of the Truth of Love--Some drawbacks: awkward history--But attractive on the whole--The general importance and influence--The Grand Cyrus--Its preface to Madame de Longueville--The "Address to the Reader"--The opening of the "business"--The ups and downs of the general conduct of the story--Extracts: the introduction of Cyrus to Mandane--His soliloquy in the pavilion--The Fight of the Four Hundred--The abstract resumed--The oracle to Philidaspes--The advent of Araminta--Her correspondence with Spithridates--Some interposed comments--Analysis resumed--The statue in the gallery at Sardis--The judgment of Cyrus in a court of love--Thomyris on the warpath--General remarks on the book and its class--The other Scudéry romances: Ibrahim--Almahide--Clélie--Perhaps the liveliest of the set--Rough outline of it--La Calprenède: his comparative cheerfulness--Cléopatre: the Cypassis and Arminius episode--The book generally--Cassandre--Faramond--Gomberville: La Caritée--Polexandre--Camus: Palombe, etc.--Hédelin d'Aubignac: Macarise--Gombauld: Endimion--Mme. de Villedieu--Le Grand Alcandre Frustré--The collected love-stories--Their historic liberties--Carmente, etc.--Her value on the whole--The fairy tale--Its general characteristics: the happy ending--Perrault and Mme. d'Aulnoy--Commented examples: Gracieuse et Percinet--L'Adroite Princesse--The danger of the "moral"--Yet often redeemed--The main Cabinet des Fées: more on Mme. d'Aulnoy--Warning against disappointment--Mlle. de la Force and others--The large proportion of Eastern Tales--Les Voyages de Zulma--Fénelon--Caylus--Prince Courtebotte et Princesse Zibeline--Rosanie--Prince Muguet et Princesse Zaza--Note on Le Diable Amoureux.

CHAPTER IX. The Seventeenth-Century Novel--Ii. 274

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--II. 274

From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Clèves"--Anthony Hamilton.

The material of the chapter--Sorel and Francion--The Berger Extravagant and Polyandre--Scarron and the Roman Comique--The opening scene of this--Furetière and the Roman Bourgeois--Nicodème takes Javotte home from church--Cyrano de Bergerac and his Voyages--Mme. de la Fayette and La Princesse de Clèves--Its central scene--Hamilton and the Nymph--The opening of Fleur d'Épine--Les Quatre Facardins.

CHAPTER X. Lesage, Marivaux, Prévost, Crébillon 325

LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PRÉVOST, CRÉBILLON 325

The subjects of the chapter--Lesage: his Spanish connections--Peculiarity of his work generally--And its variety--Le Diable Boiteux--Lesage and Boileau--Gil Blas: its peculiar cosmopolitanism--And its adoption of the homme sensuel moyen fashion--Its inequality, in the Second and Fourth Books especially--Lesage's quality: not requiring many words, but indisputable--Marivaux: Les Effets de la Sympathie (?)--His work in general--Le Paysan Parvenu--Marianne: outline of the story--Importance of Marianne herself--Marivaux and Richardson: "Marivaudage"--Examples: Marianne on the physique and moral of Prioresses and Nuns--She returns the gift-clothes--Prévost--His minor novels: the opinions on them of Sainte-Beuve--And of Planche--The books themselves: Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne--Cléveland--Le Doyen de Killérine--The Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité--Its miscellaneous curiosities--Manon Lescaut--Its uniqueness--The character of its heroine--And that of the hero--The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness of their history--Crébillon fils--The case against him--For the defendant: the veracity of his artificiality and his consummate cleverness--The Crébillonesque atmosphere and method--Inequality of his general work; a survey of it.

CHAPTER XI. The _philosophe_ Novel 377

THE PHILOSOPHE NOVEL 377

The use of the novel for "purpose"; Voltaire--General characteristics of his tales--Candide--Zadig and its satellites--Micromégas--L'Ingénu--La Princesse de Babylone--Some minors--Voltaire, the Kehl edition, and Plato--An attempt at different evaluation of himself--Rousseau: the novel character of the Confessions--The ambiguous position of Émile--La Nouvelle Héloïse--Its numerous and grave faults--The minor characters--The delinquencies of Saint-Preux--And the less charming points of Julie; her redemption--And the better side of the book generally--But little probability of more good work in novel from its author--The different case of Diderot--His gifts and the waste of them--The various display of them--Le Neveu de Rameau--Jacques le Fataliste--Its "Arcis-Pommeraye" episode--La Religieuse--Its story--A hardly missed, if missed, masterpiece--The successors--Marmontel--His "Telemachic" imitations worth little--The best of his Contes Moraux worth a good deal--Alcibiade ou le Moi--Soliman the Second--The Four Flasks--Heureusement--Le Philosophe Soi-disant--A real advance in these--Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.

CHAPTER XII. "sensibility." Minor and Later Novelists. the French

"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS. THE FRENCH NOVEL, c. 1800 428

"Sensibility"--A glance at Miss Austen--The thing essentially French--Its history--Mme. de Tencin and Le Comte de Comminge--Mme. Riccoboni and Le Marquis de Cressy--Her other work: Milady Catesby--Mme. de Beaumont: Lettres du Marquis de Roselle--Mme. de Souza--Xavier de Maistre--His illustrations of the lighter side of Sensibility--A sign of decadence--Benjamin Constant: Adolphe--Mme. de Duras's "postscript"--Sensibilité and engouement--Some final words on the matter--Its importance here--Restif de la Bretonne--Pigault-Lebrun: the difference of his positive and relative importance--His life and the reasons for giving it--His general characteristics--L'Enfant du Carnaval and Les Barons de Felsheim--Angélique et Jeanneton--Mon Oncle Thomas--Jérôme--The redeeming points of these--Others: Adélaïde de Méran and Tableaux de Société--L'Officieux--Further examples--Last words on him--The French novel in 1800.

CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRENCH FICTION NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME 475

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 479

INDEX 483

CHAPTER I. Introductory

INTRODUCTORY

Although I have already, in two places, given a somewhat precise account of the manner in which fiction in the modern sense of the term, and especially prose fiction, came to occupy a province in modern literature which had been so scantily and infrequently cultivated in ancient, it would hardly be proper to enter upon the present subject with a mere reference to these other treatments. It is matter of practically no controversy (or at least of none in which it is worth while to take a part) that the history of prose fiction, before the Christian era, is very nearly a blank, and that, in the fortunately still fairly abundant remains of poetic fiction, "the story is the least part" (as Dryden says in another sense), or at least the telling of the story, in our modern sense, is so. Homer (in the Odyssey at any rate), Herodotus (in what was certainly not intentional fiction at all), and Xenophon are about the only Greek writers who can tell a story, for the magnificent narrative of Thucydides in such cases as those of the Plague and the Syracusan cataclysm shows all the "headstrong" ethos of the author in its positive refusal to assume a "story" character. In Latin there is nothing before Livy and Ovid; of whom the one falls into the same category with Herodotus and Xenophon, and the other, admirable raconteur as he is, thinks first of his poetry. Scattered tales we have: "mimes" and other things there are some, and may have been more. But on the whole the schedule is not filled: there are no entries for the competition.

In later classical literature, both Greek and Latin, the state of things alters considerably, though even then it cannot be said that fiction proper--that is to say, either prose or verse in which the accomplishment of the form is distinctly subordinate to the interesting treatment of the subject--constitutes a very large department, or even any regular department at all. If Lucius of Patrae was a real person, and much before Lucian, he may dispute with Petronius--that first-century Maupassant or Meredith, or both combined--the actual foundation of the novel as we have it; but Lucian himself and Apuleius (strangely enough handling the same subject in the two languages) give securer and more solid starting-places. Yet nothing follows Apuleius; though some time after Lucian the Greek romance, of which we have still a fair number of examples (spread, however, over a still larger number of centuries), establishes itself in a fashion. It does one thing, indeed, which in a way refounds or even founds the whole conception--it establishes the heroine. There are certainly feminine persons, sometimes not disagreeable, who play conspicuous and by no means mute or unpractical parts in both Greek and Latin versions of the Ass-Legend; but one can hardly call them heroines. There need be no chicane about the application of that title to Chloe or to Chariclea, to Leucippe or to her very remarkable rival, to Anthia or to Hysmine. Without the heroine you can hardly have romance: the novel without her (though her individuality may be put in commission) is an absolute impossibility.

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