When this point had been reached, Huon began to be turned into
prose, was with many of his fellows published and republished
during the 15th and subsequent centuries, and retains, in the
form of a roughly printed chap-book, the favour of the country
districts of France to the present day. It is not, however, in the
later versions that the special characteristics of the chansons
de geste are to be looked for. Of those which we possess, one and
one only, the Chanson de Roland, belongs in its present form
to the 11th century. Their date of production extends, speaking
roughly, from the 11th to the 14th century, their palmy days were
the 11th and the 12th. After this latter period the Arthurian
romances, with more complex attractions, became their rivals,
and induced their authors to make great changes in their style
and subject. But for a time they reigned supreme, and no better
instance of their popularity can be given than the fact that
manuscripts of them exist, not merely in every French dialect,
but in many cases in a strange macaronic jargon of mingled
French and Italian. Two classes of persons were concerned in
them. There was the trouvère who composed them, and the
jongleur who carried them about in manuscript or in his memory
from castle to castle and sang them, intermixing frequent appeals
to his auditory for silence, declarations of the novelty and the
strict copyright character of the chanson, revilings of rival
minstrels, and frequently requests for money in plain words.
Not a few of the manuscripts which we now possess appear to
have been actually used by the jongleur. But the names of the
authors, the trouvères who actually composed them, are in very
few cases known, those of copyists, continuators, and mere
possessors of manuscripts having been often mistaken for them.
The moral and poetical peculiarities of the older and more authentic of these chansons are strongly marked, though perhaps not quite so strongly as some of their encomiasts have contended, and as may appear to a reader of the most famous of them, the Chanson de Roland, alone. In that poem, indeed, war and religion are the sole motives employed, and its motto might be two lines from another of the finest chansons (Aliscans, 161-162):—
“Dist à Bertran: ‘N’avons mais nul losir, |
In Roland there is no love-making whatever, and the hero’s betrothed “la belle Aude” appears only in a casual gibe of her brother Oliver, and in the incident of her sudden death at the news of Roland’s fall. M. Léon Gautier and others have drawn the conclusion that this stern and masculine character was a feature of all the older chansons, and that imitation of the Arthurian romance is the cause of its disappearance. This seems rather a hasty inference. In Amis et Amiles, admittedly a poem of old date, the parts of Bellicent and Lubias are prominent, and the former is demonstrative enough. In Aliscans the part of the Countess Guibourc is both prominent and heroic, and is seconded by that of Queen Blancheflor and her daughter Aelis. We might also mention Oriabel in Jourdans de Blaivies and others. But it may be admitted that the sex which fights and counsels plays the principal part, that love adventures are not introduced at any great length, and that the lady usually spares her knight the trouble and possible indignities of a long wooing. The characters of a chanson of the older style are somewhat uniform. There is the hero who is unjustly suspected of guilt or sore beset by Saracens, the heroine who falls in love with him, the traitor who accuses him or delays help, who is almost always of the lineage of Ganelon, and whose ways form a very curious study. There are friendly paladins and subordinate traitors; there is Charlemagne (who bears throughout the marks of the epic king common to Arthur and Agamemnon, but is not in the earlier chanson the incapable and venal dotard which he becomes in the later), and with Charlemagne generally the duke Naimes of Bavaria, the one figure who is invariably wise, brave, loyal and generous. In a few chansons there is to be added to these a very interesting class of personages who, though of low birth or condition, yet rescue the high-born knights from their enemies. Such are Rainoart in Aliscans, Gautier in Gaydon, Robastre in Gaufrey, Varocher in Macaire. These subjects, uniform rather than monotonous, are handled with great uniformity if not monotony of style. There are constant repetitions, and it sometimes seems, and may sometimes be the case, that the text is a mere cento of different and repeated versions. But the verse is generally harmonious and often stately. The recurrent assonances of the endless tirade soon impress the ear with a grateful music, and occasionally, and far more frequently than might be thought, passages of high poetry, such as the magnificent Granz doel por la mort de Rollant, appear to diversify the course of the story. The most remarkable of the chansons are Roland, Aliscans, Gerard de Roussillon, Amis et Amiles, Raoul de Cambrai, Garin le Loherain and its sequel Les quatre Fils Aymon, Les Saisnes (recounting the war of Charlemagne with Witekind), and lastly, Le Chevalier au Cygne, which is not a single poem but a series, dealing with the earlier crusades. The most remarkable group is that centring round William of Orange, the historical or half-historical defender of the south of France against Mahommedan invasion. Almost all the chansons of this group, from the long-known Aliscans to the recently printed Chançon de Willame, are distinguished by an unwonted personality of interest, as well as by an intensified dose of the rugged and martial poetry which pervades the whole class. It is noteworthy that one chanson and one only, Floovant, deals with Merovingian times. But the chronology, geography, and historic facts of nearly all are, it is hardly necessary to say, mainly arbitrary.
Arthurian Romances.—The second class of early French epics consists of the Arthurian cycle, the Matière de Bretagne, the earliest known compositions of which are at least a century junior to the earliest chanson de geste, but which soon succeeded the chansons in popular favour, and obtained a vogue both wider and far more enduring. It is not easy to conceive a greater contrast in form, style, subject and sentiment than is presented by the two classes. In both the religious sentiment is prominent, but the religion of the chansons is of the simplest, not to say of the most savage character. To pray to God and to kill his enemies constitutes the whole duty of man. In the romances the mystical element becomes on the contrary prominent, and furnishes, in the Holy Grail, one of the most important features. In the Carlovingian knight the courtesy and clemency which we have learnt to associate with chivalry are almost entirely absent. The gentix ber contradicts, jeers at, and execrates his sovereign and his fellows with the utmost freedom. He thinks nothing of striking his cortoise moullier so that the blood runs down her cler vis. If a servant or even an equal offends him, he will throw the offender into the fire, knock his brains out, or set his whiskers ablaze. The Arthurian knight is far more of the modern model in these respects. But his chief difference from his predecessor is undoubtedly in his amorous devotion to his beloved, who, if not morally superior to Bellicent, Floripas, Esclairmonde, and the other Carlovingian heroines, is somewhat less forward. Even in minute details the difference is strongly marked. The romances are in octosyllabic couplets or in prose, and their language is different from that of the chansons, and contains much fewer of the usual epic repetitions and stock phrases. A voluminous controversy has been held respecting the origin of these differences, and of the story or stories which were destined to receive such remarkable attention. Reference must be made to the article Arthurian Legend for the history of this controversy and for an account of its present state. This state, however, and all subsequent states, are likely to be rather dependent upon opinion than upon actual knowledge. From the point of view of the general historian of literature it may not be improper here to give a caution against the frequent use of the word “proven” in such matters. Very little in regard to early literature, except the literary value of the texts, is ever susceptible of proof; although things may be made more or less probable. What we are at present concerned with, however, is a body of verse and prose composed in the latter part of the 12th century and later. The earliest romances, the Saint Graal, the Quête du Saint Graal, Joseph d’Arimathie and Merlin bear the names of Walter Map and Robert de Borron. Artus and part at least of Lancelot du Lac (the whole of which has been by turns attributed and denied to
