Walter Map) appear to be due to unknown authors. Tristan
came later, and has a stronger mixture of Celtic tradition. At
the same time as Walter Map, or a little later, Chrétien (or
Chrestien) de Troyes threw the legends of the Round Table
into octosyllabic verse of a singularly spirited and picturesque
character. The chief poems attributed to him are the Chevalier
au Lyon (Sir Ewain of Wales), the Chevalier à la Charette (one
of the episodes of Lancelot), Eric et Enide, Tristan and Percivale.
These poems, independently of their merit, which is great, had
an extensive literary influence. They were translated by the
German minnesingers, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of
Strassburg, and others. With the romances already referred
to, which are mostly in prose, and which by recent authorities
have been put later than the verse tales which used to be postponed
to them, Chrétien’s poems complete the early forms of
the Arthurian story, and supply the matter of it as it is best
known to English readers in Malory’s book. Nor does that book,
though far later than the original forms, convey a very false
impression of the characteristics of the older romances. Indeed,
the Arthurian knight, his character and adventures, are so much
better known than the heroes of the Carlovingian chanson that
there is less need to dwell upon them. They had, however, as has
been already pointed out, great influence upon their rivals, and
their comparative fertility of invention, the much larger number
of their dramatis personae, and the greater variety of interests to
which they appealed, sufficiently explain their increased popularity.
The ordinary attractions of poetry are also more largely
present in them than in the chansons; there is more description,
more life, and less of the mere chronicle. They have been accused
of relaxing morality, and there is perhaps some truth in the
charge. But the change is after all one rather of manners than
of morals, and what is lost in simplicity is gained in refinement.
Doon de Mayence is a late chanson, and Lancelot du Lac is an early
romance. But the two beautiful scenes, in the former between
Doon and Nicolette, in the latter between Lancelot, Galahault,
Guinevere, and the Lady of Malehaut, may be compared as
instances of the attitude of the two classes of poets towards the
same subject.
Romances of Antiquity.—There is yet a third class of early narrative poems, differing from the two former in subject, but agreeing, sometimes with one sometimes with the other in form. These are the classical romances—the Matière de Rome—which are not much later than those of Charlemagne and Arthur. The chief subjects with which their authors busied themselves were the conquests of Alexander and the siege of Troy, though other classical stories come in. The most remarkable of all is the romance of Alixandre by Lambert the Short and Alexander of Bernay. It has been said that the excellence of the twelve-syllabled verse used in this romance was the origin of the term alexandrine. The Trojan romances, on the other hand, are chiefly in octosyllabic verse, and the principal poem which treats of them is the Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte More. Both this poem and Alixandre are attributed to the last quarter of the 12th century. The authorities consulted for these poems were, as may be supposed, none of the best. Dares Phrygius, Dictys Cretensis, the pseudo-Callisthenes supplied most of them. But the inexhaustible invention of the trouvères themselves was the chief authority consulted. The adventures of Medea, the wanderings of Alexander, the Trojan horse, the story of Thebes, were quite sufficient to spur on to exertion the minds which had been accustomed to spin a chanson of some 10,000 lines out of a casual allusion in some preceding poem. It is needless to say that anachronisms did not disturb them. From first to last the writers of the chansons had not in the least troubled themselves with attention to any such matters. Charlemagne himself had his life and exploits accommodated to the need of every poet who treats of him, and the same is the case with the heroes of antiquity. Indeed, Alexander is made in many respects a prototype of Charlemagne. He is regularly knighted, he has twelve peers, he holds tournaments, he has relations with Arthur, and comes in contact with fairies, he takes flights in the air, dives in the sea and so forth. There is perhaps more avowed imagination in these classical stories than in either of the other divisions of French epic poetry. Some of their authors even confess to the practice of fiction, while the trouvères of the chansons invariably assert the historical character of their facts and personages, and the authors of the Arthurian romances at least start from facts vouched for, partly by national tradition, partly by the authority of religion and the church. The classical romances, however, are important in two different ways. In the first place, they connect the early literature of France, however loosely, and with links of however dubious authenticity, with the great history and literature of the past. They show a certain amount of scholarship in their authors, and in their hearers they show a capacity of taking an interest in subjects which are not merely those directly connected with the village or the tribe. The chansons de geste had shown the creative power and independent character of French literature. There is, at least about the earlier ones, nothing borrowed, traditional or scholarly. They smack of the soil, and they rank France among the very few countries which, in this matter of indigenous growth, have yielded more than folk-songs and fireside tales. The Arthurian romances, less independent in origin, exhibit a wider range of view, a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more extensive command of the sources of poetical and romantic interest. The classical epics superadd the only ingredient necessary to an accomplished literature—that is to say, the knowledge of what has been done by other peoples and other literatures already, and the readiness to take advantage of the materials thus supplied.
Romans d’Aventures.—These are the three earliest developments of French literature on the great scale. They led, however, to a fourth, which, though later in date than all except their latest forms and far more loosely associated as a group, is so closely connected with them by literary and social considerations that it had best be mentioned here. This is the roman d’aventures, a title given to those almost avowedly fictitious poems which connect themselves, mainly and centrally, neither with French history, with the Round Table, nor with the heroes of antiquity. These began to be written in the 13th century, and continued until the prose form of fiction became generally preferred. The later forms of the chansons de geste and the Arthurian poems might indeed be well called romans d’aventures themselves. Hugues Capet, for instance, a chanson in form and class of subject, is certainly one of this latter kind in treatment; and there is a larger class of semi-Arthurian romance, which so to speak branches off from the main trunk. But for convenience sake the definition we have given is preferable. The style and subject of these romans d’aventures are naturally extremely various. Guillaume de Palerme deals with the adventures of a Sicilian prince who is befriended by a were-wolf; Le Roman de l’escoufle, with a heroine whose ring is carried off by a sparrow-hawk (escoufle), like Prince Camaralzaman’s talisman; Guy of Warwick, with one of the most famous of imaginary heroes; Meraugis de Portléguez is a sort of branch or offshoot of the romances of the Round Table; Cléomadès, the work of the trouvère Adenès le Roi, who also rehandled the old chanson subjects of Ogier and Berte aux grans piés, connects itself once more with the Arabian Nights as well as with Chaucer forwards in the introduction of a flying mechanical horse. There is, in short, no possibility of classifying their subjects. The habit of writing in gestes, or of necessarily connecting the new work with an older one, had ceased to be binding, and the instinct of fiction writing was free; yet those romans d’aventures do not rank quite as high in literary importance as the classes which preceded them. This under-valuation arises rather from a lack of originality and distinctness of savour than from any shortcomings in treatment. Their versification, usually octosyllabic, is pleasant enough; but there is not much distinctness of character about them, and their incidents often strike the reader with something of the sameness, but seldom with much of the naïveté, of those of the older poems. Nevertheless some of them attained to a very high popularity, such, for instance, as the Partenopex de Blois of Denis Pyramus, which has a motive drawn from the story of Cupid and Psyche and the charming Floire et Blanchefleur, giving the woes of a
