Audiobook A Short History of French Literature

The work opens with an exhaustive examination of the origins of the French language out of Latin, tracing early texts such as the Strasburg Oaths and the Cantilena of Saint Eulalie. The author categorizes early French narrative poetry into three distinct cycles: the national epics or Chansons de Gestes, exemplified by the Chanson de Roland and Amis et Amiles; the Arthurian cycle and romances of antiquity; and the indigenous fabliaux alongside the massive beast epic of Reynard the Fox. The study then transitions to Provençal poetry and the intricate artificial lyrical forms of northern France, including the ballade and rondeau cultivated by Machault, Deschamps, and Charles d'Orleans. A significant section is devoted to the mediaeval drama, detailing the emergence of mysteries, miracles, farces, moralities, and soties. Finally, the evolution of historical prose is traced from the early chronicles of Villehardouin and Joinville through the polished chivalric narratives of Froissart and the fifteenth-century Burgundian and royalist annalists.