upbraids the nobles for their desertion of the Latin empire of
Constantinople, considers the expediency of crusading, inveighs
against the religious orders, and takes part in the disputes
between the pope and the king. He composes pious poetry too,
and in at least one poem takes care to distinguish between the
church which he venerates and the corrupt churchmen whom
he lampoons. Besides Rutebœuf the most characteristic figure
of his class and time (about the middle of the 13th century) is
Adam de
la Halle.
Lais.
Adam de la Halle, commonly called the Hunchback
of Arras. The earlier poems of Adam are of a sentimental
character, the later ones satirical and somewhat
ill-tempered. Such, for instance, is his invective against his
native city. But his chief importance consists in his jeux, the
Jeu de la feuillie, the Jeu de Robin et Marion, dramatic compositions
which led the way to the regular dramatic form. Indeed
the general tendency of the 13th century is to satire, fable and
farce, even more than to serious or sentimental poetry. We
should perhaps except the lais, the chief of which
are known under the name of Marie de France. These
lays are exclusively Breton in origin, though not in application,
and the term seems originally to have had reference rather to
the music to which they were sung than to the manner or matter
of the pieces. Some resemblance to these lays may perhaps be
traced in the genuine Breton songs published by M. Luzel. The
subjects of the lais are indifferently taken from the Arthurian
cycle, from ancient story, and from popular tradition, and, at
any rate in Marie’s hands, they give occasion for some passionate,
and in the modern sense really romantic, poetry. The most
famous of all is the Lay of the Honeysuckle, traditionally assigned
to Sir Tristram.
Satiric and Didactic Works.—Among the direct satirists of the middle ages, one of the earliest and foremost is Guyot de Provins, a monk of Clairvaux and Cluny, whose Bible, as he calls it, contains an elaborate satire on the time (the beginning of the 13th century), and who was imitated by others, especially Hugues de Brégy. The same spirit soon betrayed itself in curious travesties of the romances of chivalry, and sometimes invades the later specimens of these romances themselves. One of the earliest examples of this travesty is the remarkable composition entitled Audigier. This poem, half fabliau and half romance, is not so much an instance of the heroi-comic poems which afterwards found so much favour in Italy and elsewhere, as a direct and ferocious parody of the Carlovingian epic. The hero Audigier is a model of cowardice and disloyalty; his father and mother, Turgibus and Rainberge, are deformed and repulsive. The exploits of the hero himself are coarse and hideous failures, and the whole poem can only be taken as a counterblast to the spirit of chivalry. Elsewhere a trouvère, prophetic of Rabelais, describes a vast battle between all the nations of the world, the quarrel being suddenly atoned by the arrival of a holy man bearing a huge flagon of wine. Again, we have the history of a solemn crusade undertaken by the citizens of a country town against the neighbouring castle. As erudition and the fancy for allegory gained ground, satire naturally availed itself of the opportunity thus afforded it; the disputes of Philippe le Bel with the pope and the Templars had an immense literary influence, partly in the concluding portions of the Renart, partly in the Roman de la rose, still to be mentioned, and partly in other satiric allegories of which the chief is the romance of Fauvel, attributed to François de Rues. The hero of this is an allegorical personage, half man and half horse, signifying the union of bestial degradation with human ingenuity and cunning. Fauvel (the name, it may be worth while to recall, occurs in Langland) is a divinity in his way. All the personages of state, from kings and popes to mendicant friars, pay their court to him.
But this serious and discontented spirit betrays itself also
in compositions which are not parodies or travesties in form.
One of the latest, if not absolutely the latest (for
Cuvelier’s still later Chronique de Du Guesclin is only a
most interesting imitation of the chanson form adapted Baudouin
de Sebourc.
to recent events), of the chansons de geste is Baudouin
de Sebourc, one of the members of the great romance or cycle of
romances dealing with the crusades, and entitled Le Chevalier au
Cygne. Baudouin de Sebourc dates from the early years of the
14th century. It is strictly a chanson de geste in form, and also
in the general run of its incidents. The hero is dispossessed of
his inheritance by the agency of traitors, fights his battle with
the world and its injustice, and at last prevails over his enemy
Gaufrois, who has succeeded in obtaining the kingdom of Friesland
and almost that of France. Gaufrois has as his assistants
two personages who were very popular in the poetry of the
time,—viz., the Devil, and Money. These two sinister figures
pervade the fabliaux, tales and fantastic literature generally
of the time. M. Lenient, the historian of French satire, has well
remarked that a romance as long as the Renart might be spun out
of the separate short poems of this period which have the Devil
for hero, and many of which form a very interesting transition
between the fabliau and the mystery. But the Devil is in one
respect a far inferior hero to Renart. He has an adversary in the
Virgin, who constantly upsets his best-laid schemes, and who
does not always treat him quite fairly. The abuse of usury at
the time, and the exactions of the Jews and Lombards, were
severely felt, and Money itself, as personified, figures largely in
the popular literature of the time.
Roman de la Rose.—A work of very different importance from
all of these, though with seeming touches of the same spirit,
a work which deserves to take rank among the most
important of the middle ages, is the Roman de la rose,—one
of the few really remarkable books which isWilliam
of Lorris.
the work of two authors, and that not in collaboration but in
continuation one of the other. The author of the earlier part was
Guillaume de Lorris, who lived in the first half of the 13th century;
the author of the later part was Jean de Meung, who was born
about the middle of that century, and whose part in the Roman
dates at least from its extreme end. This great poem exhibits in
its two parts very different characteristics, which yet go to make
up a not inharmonious whole. It is a love poem, and yet it is
satire. But both gallantry and raillery are treated in an entirely
allegorical spirit; and this allegory, while it makes the poem
tedious to hasty appetites of to-day, was exactly what gave it
its charm in the eyes of the middle ages. It might be described
as an Ars amoris crossed with a Quodlibeta. This mixture
exactly hit the taste of the time, and continued to hit it for two
centuries and a half. When its obvious and gallant meaning was
attacked by moralists and theologians, it was easy to quote the
example of the Canticles, and to furnish esoteric explanations of
the allegory. The writers of the 16th century were never tired
of quoting and explaining it. Antoine de Baïf, indeed, gave the
simple and obvious meaning, and declared that “La rose c’est
d’amours le guerdon gracieux”; but Marot, on the other hand,
gives us the choice of four mystical interpretations,—the rose
being either the state of wisdom, the state of grace, the state of
eternal happiness or the Virgin herself. We cannot here analyse
this celebrated poem. It is sufficient to say that the lover meets
all sorts of obstacles in his pursuit of the rose, though he has for
a guide the metaphorical personage Bel-Accueil. The early part,
which belongs to William of Lorris, is remarkable for its gracious Jean de Meung.
and fanciful descriptions. Forty years after Lorris’s
death, Jean de Meung completed it in an entirely
different spirit. He keeps the allegorical form, and
indeed introduces two new personages of importance, Nature and
Faux-semblant. In the mouths of these personages and of
another, Raison, he puts the most extraordinary mixture of
erudition and satire. At one time we have the history of classical
heroes, at another theories against the hoarding of money, about
astronomy, about the duty of mankind to increase and multiply.
Accounts of the origin of loyalty, which would have cost the poet
his head at some periods of history, and even communistic ideas,
are also to be found here. In Faux-semblant we have a real
creation of the theatrical hypocrite. All this miscellaneous
and apparently incongruous material in fact explains the success
of the poem. It has the one characteristic which has at all times
secured the popularity of great works of literature. It holds
the mirror up firmly and fully to its age. As we find in Rabelais
