French Language and Literature
123-432: French literary history Medieval 16th century • 17th century 18th century • 19th century 20th century • Contemporary Literature by country France • Quebec Postcolonial • Haiti Franco-American Portals France • Literature French literature Wikisource The Précieuses ( French : la préciosité , French pronunciation: [la pʁesjɔzite] , i.e. "preciousness")
246-409: A terraformed planet or moon. Unlike most genres of science fiction, pastoral science fiction works downplay the role of futuristic technologies. In the 1950s and 1960s, Clifford Simak wrote stories about rural people who have contact with extraterrestrial beings who hide their alien identity. Pastoral science fiction stories typically show a reverence for the land, its life-giving food harvests,
369-716: A usurer to leave it behind for the country. Later Silver Latin poets who wrote pastoral poetry, modeled principally upon Virgil's Eclogues, include Calpurnius Siculus and Nemesianus and the author(s) of the Einsiedeln Eclogues . Italian poets revived the pastoral from the 14th century onwards, first in Latin (examples include works by Petrarch , Pontano and Mantuan ) then in the Italian vernacular ( Sannazaro , Boiardo ). The fashion for pastoral spread throughout Renaissance Europe. Leading French pastoral poets include Marot ,
492-484: A central theme, such as loyalty to a feudal chief, or the defence of Christianity . This is a list of the cycles with a few of the chansons that belong to each: New chansons tended to be produced and incorporated into the existing literature in two ways: This method of epic expansion, with its obsession with blood line, was to be an important compositional technique throughout the Middle Ages. It also underscores
615-668: A feature of grand opera , most particularly in Meyerbeer's operas: often composers would develop a pastoral-themed "oasis", usually in the centre of their work. Notable examples include the shepherd's "alte Weise" from Wagner 's Tristan und Isolde , or the pastoral ballet occupying the middle of Tchaikovsky 's The Queen of Spades . The 20th-century continued to bring new pastoral interpretations, particularly in ballet, such as Ravel's Daphis and Chloe , Nijinsky's use of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune , and Stravinsky 's Le sacre du printemps and Les Noces . The Pastorale
738-753: A group of three books of the canonical New Testament : the First Epistle to Timothy (1 Timothy) the Second Epistle to Timothy (2 Timothy), and the Epistle to Titus . They are presented as letters from Paul the Apostle to Timothy and to Titus . They are generally discussed as a group (sometimes with the addition of the Epistle to Philemon ) and are given the title "pastoral" because they are addressed to individuals with pastoral oversight of churches and discuss issues of Christian living, doctrine and leadership . In
861-540: A guise for political discourse, which other forms had previously neglected. The Pastoral, he writes, has a didactic duty to “contain and enforme morall discipline for the amendment of mans behaviour”. Friedrich Schiller linked the Pastoral to childhood and a childlike simplicity. For Schiller, we perceive in nature an “image of our infancy irrevocably past”. Sir William Empson spoke of the ideal of Pastoral as being embedded in varying degrees of ambivalence, and yet, for all
984-464: A highly unrealistic manner. The pastoral life is usually characterized as being closer to the golden age than the rest of human life. The setting is a locus amoenus , or a beautiful place in nature, sometimes connected with images of the Garden of Eden . An example of the use of the genre is the short poem by the 15th-century Scottish makar Robert Henryson Robene and Makyne which also contains
1107-563: A life of melancholy and solitude. Milton's, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629) blends Christian and pastoral imagery. Milton is perhaps best known for his epic Paradise Lost , one of the few Pastoral epics ever written. A notable part of Paradise Lost is book IV where he chronicles Satan's trespass into paradise. Milton's iconic descriptions of the garden are shadowed by the fact that we see it from Satan's perspective and are thus led to commiserate with him. Milton elegantly works through
1230-459: A literary form was a late phenomenon (in the late Middle Ages, many of the romances and epics were converted into prose versions). The French language does not have a significant stress accent (like English) or long and short syllables (like Latin). This means that the French metric line is not determined by the number of beats, but by the number of syllables . The most common metric lengths are
1353-428: A non-liturgical origin (among "jongleurs" or in pagan and folk festivals), others see the influence of liturgical drama (some of the dramas listed above include farcical sequences) and monastic readings of Plautus and Latin comic theater. Pastoral The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to
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#17328769166871476-488: A pastoral view demonstrates how prestigious Penshurst was, to be worthy in the company with gods. "A Country Life", another 17th-century work by Katherine Philips , was also a country house poem. Philips focuses on the joys of the countryside and looks upon the lifestyle that accompanies it as being "the first and happiest life, when man enjoyed himself." She writes about maintaining this lifestyle by living detached from material things, and by not over-concerning herself with
1599-506: A poet of the French court, and Pierre de Ronsard , once called the "prince of poets" in his day. The first pastorals in English were the Eclogues (c. 1515) of Alexander Barclay , which were heavily influenced by Mantuan. A landmark in English pastoral poetry was Spenser ’s The Shepheardes Calender , first published in 1579. Spenser's work consists of twelve eclogues, one for each month of
1722-467: A presentation of Adam and Eve ’s pastorally idyllic, eternally fertile living conditions and focuses upon their stewardship of the garden. He gives much focus to the fruit bearing trees and Adam and Eve's care of them, sculpting an image of pastoral harmony. However, Milton in turn continually comes back to Satan , constructing him as a character the audience can easily identify with and perhaps even like. Milton creates Satan as character meant to destabilize
1845-412: A prominent literary theorist, defines pastoral in three ways in his critical book Pastoral . The first way emphasizes the historical literary perspective of the pastoral in which authors recognize and discuss life in the country and in particular the life of a shepherd. This is summed up by Leo Marx with the phrase "No shepherd, no pastoral." The second type of the pastoral is literature that "describes
1968-494: A rural region of Greece , mythological home of the god Pan , which was portrayed as a sort of Eden by the poets. The tasks of their employment with sheep and other rustic chores is held in the fantasy to be almost wholly undemanding and is left in the background, leaving the shepherdesses and their swains in a state of almost perfect leisure . This makes them available for embodying perpetual erotic fantasies. The shepherds spend their time chasing pretty girls – or, at least in
2091-482: A sense of nostalgia for their country way of living. His next argument focuses on the artificiality of poetry, drawing upon fellow theorist, Puttenham. Kermode elaborates on this and says, "the cultivated, in their artificial way, reflect upon and describe, for their own ends, the natural life". Kermode wants us to understand that the recreation or reproduction of the natural is in itself artificial. Kermode elaborates on this in terms of imitation, describing it as "one of
2214-709: A specifically ‘Irish pastoral'". In 2014, The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature had a chapter on the urban pastoral subgenre. Charles Siebert's Wickerby: An Urban Pastoral describes a man who splits his time between a gritty Brooklyn apartment, where the night is filled with the sounds of pigeons, starlings, and youth gangs shouting, and driving to rural Quebec to squat in an abandoned, tumbledown cabin in rural Quebec. Theocritus's Idylls include strophic songs and musical laments, and, as in Homer , his shepherds often play
2337-411: A tool for writers to discuss a controversial topic without repercussions. Raymond Williams argues that the foundation of the pastoral lies in the idea that the city is a highly urban, industrialized center that has removed us from the peaceful life we once had in the countryside. However, he states that this is really a "myth functioning as a memory" that literature has created in its representations of
2460-408: A voyeuristic point of view with his love, and they are not directly interacting with the other true shepherds and nature. Pastoral shepherds and maidens usually have Greek names like Corydon or Philomela, reflecting the origin of the pastoral genre. Pastoral poems are set in beautiful rural landscapes, the literary term for which is "locus amoenus" (Latin for "beautiful place"), such as Arcadia ,
2583-431: Is a form of Italian folk song still played in the regions of Southern Italy where the zampogna continues to thrive. They generally sound like a slowed down version of a tarantella , as they encompass many of the same melodic phrases. The pastorale on the zampogna can be played by a solo zampogna player, or in some regions can be accompanied by the piffero (also commonly called a ciaramella , 'pipita', or bifora ), which
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#17328769166872706-561: Is a primitive key-less double reed oboe type instrument. Idealised pastoral landscapes appear in Hellenistic and Roman wall paintings. Interest in the pastoral as a subject for art revived in Renaissance Italy, partly inspired by the descriptions of pictures Jacopo Sannazaro included in his Arcadia . The Pastoral Concert in the Louvre attributed to Giorgione or Titian is perhaps
2829-487: Is evident in the encounter of a shepherd and a goatherd who meet in the pastures in Theocritus ' poem Idylls 1 . Traditionally, pastoral refers to the lives of herdsmen in a romanticized, exaggerated, but representative way. In literature , the adjective 'pastoral' refers to rural subjects and aspects of life in the countryside among shepherds , cowherds and other farm workers that are often romanticized and depicted in
2952-913: Is known as "langue d'oc" or the Occitan language family (a language where one says "oc" to mean "yes"), also known under the name of one of its dialects, the Provençal language . The Western peninsula of Brittany spoke Breton , a Celtic language. Catalan was spoken in the South, and Germanic languages and Franco-Provençal were spoken in the East. The various dialects of Old French developed into what are recognised as regional languages today. Languages which developed from dialects of Old French include Bourguignon , Champenois , Franc-Comtois , Francien (theoretical), Gallo , Lorrain , Norman , Anglo-Norman (spoken in England after
3075-405: Is of six 'books' only, though Spenser intended to write twelve. He wrote the poem primarily to honor Queen Elizabeth . William Cowper addressed the artificiality of the fast-paced city life in his poems Retirement (1782) and The Winter Nosegay (1782). Pastoral nevertheless survived as a mood rather than a genre, as can be seen from such works as Matthew Arnold 's Thyrsis (1867), a lament on
3198-547: Is often acknowledged to be the first female professional writer. Over the course of her lifetime, she produced 41 pieces of prose or poetry. She ran her own manuscript workshop and employed women as well as men to be scribes and illuminators. François Villon was a student and vagabond whose two poetic "testaments" or "wills" are celebrated for their portrayal of the urban and university environment of Paris and their scabrous wit, satire and verbal puns. The image of Villon as vagabond poet seems to have gained almost mythic status in
3321-453: Is often contrasted with the negative aspects of noisy, dirty, fast-paced cities. Some works take a Luddite tone, criticizing mechanization and industrialization and showing the ills of urbanization and over-reliance on advanced technologies. In 1994, British literature professor Terry Gifford proposed the concept of a "post-pastoral" subgenre. By appending the prefix "post-", Gifford does not intend this to refer to “after” but rather to
3444-541: Is perhaps no coincidence that the Song of Roland was first written down at a date very close to that of Pope Urban's call (1095) for the First Crusade ; its plot may be seen as a glorification of the crusader ethos. The earliest chansons de geste are (more or less) anonymous. They are popular literature (aimed at a warrior class, some say, though the evidence for this is inconclusive). They use an assortment of stock characters:
3567-479: Is the Edenic Pastoral, which alludes to the perfect relationship between God, man, and nature in the Garden of Eden . It typically includes biblical symbols and imagery. In 1645 John Milton wrote L'Allegro , which translates as the happy person. It is a celebration of Mirth personified, who is the child of love and revelry. It was originally composed to be a companion poem to, Il Penseroso , which celebrates
3690-509: Is the first example of literature that has pastoral sentiments and may have begun the pastoral tradition. Ovid's Metamorphoses is much like the Works and Days with the description of ages (golden, silver, bronze, iron, and human) but with more ages to discuss and less emphasis on the gods and their punishments. In this artificially constructed world, nature acts as the main punisher. Another example of this perfect relationship between man and nature
3813-537: Is the most famous writers of "dits"; another notable author of "dits" is Gautier le Leu . King René I of Naples 's allegorical romance Cœur d'amour épris (celebrated for its illustrations) is also a work in the same tradition. Medieval French lyric poetry was indebted to the poetic and cultural traditions in Southern France and Provence —including Toulouse , Poitiers , and the Aquitaine region—where "langue d'oc"
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3936-403: Is the subject area of the chansons de geste ("songs of exploits" or "songs of (heroic) deeds"), epic poems typically composed in ten-syllable assonanced (occasionally rhymed ) laisses . More than one hundred chansons de geste have survived in around three hundred manuscripts. The chief theme of the earliest French epics was the court of Charlemagne , Charles Martel and Charles
4059-587: The Hebrew word רעה ( roʿeh ), which is used as a noun as in "shepherd", and as a verb as in "to tend a flock." It occurs 173 times in 144 Old Testament verses and relates to the literal feeding of sheep, as in Genesis 29:7. In Jeremiah 23:4, both meanings are used ( ro'im is used for "shepherds" and yir'um for "shall feed them"), "And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith
4182-615: The douceur de vivre of the Ancien Régime and the aristocratic leisure of its authors, at least for the upper classes. Later, Roxane, a critical character in Edmond Rostand 's 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac , is described as a précieuse . René Bary (died in 1680) a French historiographer and rhetorician wrote La Rhétorique française où pour principale augmentation l'on trouve les secrets de nostre langue published in Paris in 1653 for
4305-421: The précieuses' salons reflected the " courts of love " (fictional courts which judged lovers' behavior) that were a feature of medieval courtly love . None of the women ever actually used or defined the term Précieuse themselves. Myriam Maître has found in préciosité not so much a listable series of characteristics "as an interplay of forces, a place to confront and resolve the tensions that extended through
4428-481: The seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture . The target audience is typically an urban one. A pastoral is a work of this genre . A piece of music in the genre is usually referred to as a pastorale . The genre is also known as bucolic , from the Greek βουκολικόν , from βουκόλος , meaning a cowherd . Pastoral is a mode of literature in which the author employs various techniques to place
4551-460: The syrinx , or pan flute, which is considered a quintessentially pastoral instrument. Virgil's Eclogues were performed as sung mime in the 1st century, and there is evidence of the pastoral song as a legitimate genre of classical times. The pastoral genre was a significant influence in the development of opera . After settings of pastoral poetry in the pastourelle genre by the troubadours , Italian poets and composers became increasingly drawn to
4674-423: The "Matter of Britain"—concern the French romance or "roman". The term "roman" signifies, roughly, " vernacular " (i.e. not Latin), but it is used to designate narrative poetry ("romance") usually written in octosyllabic rhymed couplets and telling stories of chivalry and love. The most famous "romans" are those of the "Matter of Britain" dealing with Arthurian romance , the stories of Tristan and Iseult ,
4797-475: The "favor" sought for is decidedly sexual, but in others there is a rarefied notion of love as spiritual and moral force. For more information on the troubadour tradition, see Provençal literature . Selected trouvère poets of the 12th and 13th centuries: By the late 13th century, the poetic tradition in France had begun to develop in ways that differed significantly from the troubadour poets, both in content and in
4920-456: The "post-pastoral" concept, as well as two other variants: "gay pastoral", the seemingly contradictory "urban pastoral" and "radical pastoral". Gifford lists further examples of pastoral variants, which he calls "prefix-pastoral[s]": " postmodern pastoral,...hard pastoral, soft pastoral, Buell’s revolutionary lesbian feminist pastoral, black pastoral, ghetto pastoral, frontier pastoral, militarized pastoral, domestic pastoral and, most recently,
5043-462: The "roman" are the Breton lais , narrative ballads of Britain by Marie de France , many of which have Celtic themes and origins. Around a hundred verse romances survive from the period 1150–1220. From around 1200 on, the tendency was increasingly to write the romances in prose (many of the earlier verse romances were adapted into prose versions), although new verse romances continued to be written to
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5166-614: The 12th and 13th centuries Important romances of the 13th and 14th centuries: The most important romance of the 13th century is the Romance of the Rose which breaks considerably from the conventions of the chivalric adventure story: in a dream a lover comes upon a garden and meets various allegorical figures. The second part of the work (written by Jean de Meun) expands on the initial material with scientific and mythological discussions. The novel would have an enormous impact on French literature up to
5289-518: The 15th centuries: The last three poets on this list deserve further comment. Charles, duc d'Orléans was a noble and head of one of the most powerful families in France during the Hundred Years' War . Captured in the Battle of Agincourt , he was a prisoner of the English from 1415 to 1441 and his ballades often speak of loss and isolation. His son became King Louis XII of France . Christine de Pizan
5412-417: The 16th century, and this figure would be championed by poetic rebels of the 19th century and 20th centuries (see Poète maudit ). Poetic forms used by medieval French poets include: Discussions about the origins of non-religious theater ( théâtre profane )—both drama and farce—in the Middle Ages remain controversial, but the idea of a continuous popular tradition stemming from Latin comedy and tragedy to
5535-498: The 17th century came the Country house poem . Included in this genre is Emilia Lanier 's The Description of Cooke-ham in 1611, in which a woman is described in terms of her relationship to her estate and how it mourns for her when she leaves it. In 1616, Ben Jonson wrote To Penshurst, a poem in which he addresses the estate owned by the Sidney family and tells of its beauty. The basis of
5658-405: The 9th century seems unlikely. Most historians place the origin of medieval drama in the church's liturgical dialogues and "tropes". At first simply dramatizations of the ritual, particularly in those rituals connected with Christmas and Easter (see Mystery play ), plays were eventually transferred from the monastery church to the chapter house or refectory hall and finally to the open air, and
5781-713: The Alexis' intercession and join him in Paradise. The earliest and best surviving text is in St. Albans Psalter , written probably at St Albans , England, in the second or third decade of the twelfth century. This provenance is indicative of the fact that many of the most important early texts were composed in Anglo-Norman dialect. At the beginning of the 13th century, Jean Bodel , in his Chanson de Saisnes , divided medieval French narrative literature into three subject areas: The first of these
5904-752: The Bald and their wars against the Moors and Saracens , or disputes between kings and their rebellious vassals. The oldest and most celebrated of the chansons de geste is The Song of Roland (earliest version composed c. 1098 ), seen by some as the national epic of France (comparable with Beowulf in England, the Song of the Nibelungs in Germany and the Lay of el Cid in Spain). It
6027-420: The City . This acknowledgment of Herrick's work is appropriate, as both Williams and Herrick accentuate the importance of labor in the pastoral lifestyle. The pastoral elegy is a subgenre that uses pastoral elements to lament a death or loss. The most famous pastoral elegy in English is John Milton 's " Lycidas " (1637), written on the death of Edward King, a fellow student at Cambridge University. Milton used
6150-524: The Greek and Roman versions, pretty boys as well. The eroticism of Virgil 's second eclogue , Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin ("The shepherd Corydon burned with passion for pretty Alexis"), is entirely homosexual . Pastoral literature continued after Hesiod with the poetry of the Hellenistic Greek Theocritus , several of whose Idylls are set in the countryside (probably reflecting
6273-556: The Jewish world at the time of the origins of Christianity in the first century CE. A pastoral letter , often called simply a pastoral, is an open letter addressed by a bishop to the clergy or laity of a diocese or to both, containing general admonition, instruction or consolation, or directions for behavior in particular circumstances. In most episcopal church bodies, clerics are often required to read out pastoral letters of superior bishops to their congregations. The pastoral epistles are
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#17328769166876396-583: The LORD." ( KJV ). A pastoral economic system had great cultural significance for the Jewish people from earliest recorded times: Abraham herded flocks. Throughout the biblical accounts of the Children of Israel , a pastoral lifestyle in the harsh hinterland of the Levant related to the ideal of a society obedient to Yahweh , in contrast to the corruption and idolatry encountered in the "fleshpots of Egypt" (Exodus 16:3), in
6519-479: The Middle Ages in the northern half of what is today France are collectively known as "ancien français" (" Old French ") or " langues d'oïl " (languages where one says "oïl" to mean "yes"); following the Germanic invasions of France in the fifth century, these Northern dialects had developed distinctly different phonetic and syntactical structures from the languages spoken in southern France. The language in southern France
6642-514: The Norman Conquest of 1066), Picard , Poitevin , Saintongeais and Walloon . From 1340 to the beginning of the seventeenth century, a generalized French language became clearly distinguished from the other competing Oïl languages . This is referred to as Middle French ("moyen français"). The vast majority of literary production in Old French is in verse ; the development of prose as
6765-562: The Renaissance. Related to the previous romance is the medieval narrative poem called "dit" (literally "spoken", i.e. a poem not meant to be sung) which follows the poetic form of the "roman" (octosyllabic rhymed couplets). These first-person narrative works (which sometimes include inserted lyric poems) often use allegorical dreams ( songes ), allegorical characters, and the situation of the narrator-lover attempting to return toward or satisfy his lady. The 14th-century poet Guillaume de Machaut
6888-405: The apparent dichotomies, and contradicting elements found within it, he felt there was a unified harmony within it. He refers to the pastoral process as 'putting the complex into the simple.' Empson argues that "... good proletarian art is usually Covert Pastoral", and uses Soviet Russia's propaganda about the working class as evidence. Empson also emphasizes the importance of the double plot as
7011-559: The article of that name). The occitan troubadours were amazingly creative in the development of verse forms and poetic genres, but their greatest impact on medieval literature was perhaps in their elaboration of complex code of love and service called "fin amors" or, more generally, courtly love . The "fin amors" tradition appears at roughly the same time in Europe as the Cult of the Virgin Mary , and
7134-451: The audience’s understanding of themselves and the world around them. Through this mode, Milton is able to create a working dialogue between the text and his audience about the ‘truths’ they hold for themselves. Italian writers invented a new genre, the pastoral romance, which mixed pastoral poems with a fictional narrative in prose. Although there was no classical precedent for the form, it drew some inspiration from ancient Greek novels set in
7257-452: The century, the court and the field of literature". In assessing the career of Philippe Quinault , which began at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, Patricia Howard noted, "For if in French theatre in the second half of the century, women's roles are preeminent, it was the précieux movement which made them so." One préciosité parlor game, the retelling of fairy tales as if spontaneously (though
7380-402: The chivalric romance ("roman") was usually written in octosyllabic rhymed couplets . The earliest extant French literary texts date from the ninth century, but very few texts before the eleventh century have survived. The first literary works written in Old French were saints' lives . The Canticle of Saint Eulalie , written in the second half of the ninth century, is generally accepted as
7503-404: The complex life into a simple one. Paul Alpers distinguishes pastoral as a mode rather than a genre, and he bases this distinction on the recurring attitude of power; that is to say that pastoral literature holds a humble perspective toward nature. Thus, pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of literature (poetry, drama, etc.) as well as genres (most notably the pastoral elegy). Terry Gifford,
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#17328769166877626-412: The concept of Gifford's second definition of 'pastoral'. The speaker of the poem, who is the titled shepherd, draws on the idealization of urban material pleasures to win over his love rather than resorting to the simplified pleasures of pastoral ideology. This can be seen in the listed items: "lined slippers", "purest gold", "silver dishes", and "ivory table" (lines 13, 15, 16, 21, 23). The speaker takes on
7749-531: The conflicted emotions often present in the genre. A more tranquil mood is set by Christopher Marlowe 's well known lines from his 1588 The Passionate Shepherd to His Love : Come live with me and be my Love, And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dale and field, And all the craggy mountains yield. There will we sit upon the rocks And see the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" exhibits
7872-463: The country with an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban". The third type of pastoral depicts the country life with derogative classifications. Hesiod 's Works and Days presents a 'golden age' when people lived together in harmony with nature. This Golden Age shows that even before the Alexandrian age , ancient Greeks had sentiments of an ideal pastoral life that they had already lost. This
7995-637: The countryside, such as Daphnis and Chloe . The most influential Italian example of the form was Sannazzaro 's Arcadia (1504). The vogue for the pastoral romance spread throughout Europe producing such notable works as Bernardim Ribeiro "Menina e Moça" (1554) in Portuguese, Montemayor 's Diana (1559) in Spain, Sir Philip Sidney 's Arcadia (1590) in England, and Honoré d'Urfé 's Astrée (1607–27) in France. Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age Pastoral drama also emerged in Renaissance Italy. Again, there
8118-419: The cycle of the seasons, and the role of the community. While fertile agrarian environments on Earth or Earth-like planets are common settings, some works may be set in ocean or desert planets or habitable moons. The rural dwellers, such as farmers and small-townspeople, are depicted sympathetically, albeit with the tendency to portray them as conservative and suspicious of change. The simple, peaceful rural life
8241-457: The death of his fellow poet Arthur Hugh Clough . Robert Burns can be read as a Pastoral poet for his nostalgic portrayals of rural Scotland and simple farm life in To A Mouse and The Cotter's Saturday Night . Burns explicitly addresses the Pastoral form in his Poem on Pastoral Poetry . In this he champions his fellow Scot Allan Ramsey as the best Pastoral poet since Theocritus . Another subgenre
8364-425: The earthly honor that came with such fame, he left Syria and was driven back to Rome, where he lived as a beggar at his family's house, unrecognized by all until his death. He was only identified later when the pope read his name in a letter held in the dead saint's hand. Although the saint left his family in order to devote his life more fully to God, the poem makes clear that his father, mother, and wife are saved by
8487-442: The end of the 14th century., and it was chiefly in their prose form that many romances were read from the 14th to the 16th century. The success of the early Arthurian romances also led, from around 1200 on, to a restructuring and compiling of the material into vast prose cycles. Important "Matter of Rome" romances of the 12th century Important Byzantine and adventure romances of the 12th century Important romances of Britain of
8610-411: The expression Ars nova [new art, or new technique] to distinguish the new musical practice from the music of the immediately preceding age). The best-known poet and composer of ars nova secular music and chansons was Guillaume de Machaut . (For more on music, see medieval music ; for more on music in the period after Machaut, see Renaissance music ). Selected French poets from the late 13th to
8733-409: The famous pastoral epic The Faerie Queene , in which he employs the pastoral mode to accentuate the charm, lushness, and splendor of the poem's (super)natural world. Spenser alludes to the pastoral continuously throughout the work and also uses it to create allegory in his poem, with the characters as well as with the environment, both of which are meant to have symbolic meaning in the real world. It
8856-473: The female audience of the précieuses. Medieval French literature French Language and Literature French literary history Medieval 16th century • 17th century 18th century • 19th century 20th century • Contemporary Literature by country France • Quebec Postcolonial • Haiti Franco-American Portals France • Literature French literature Wikisource Medieval French literature is, for
8979-566: The first such text. It is a short poem that recounts the martyrdom of a young girl. The best known of the early Old French saints' lives is the Vie de saint Alexis , the life of Saint Alexis , a translation/rewriting of a Latin legend. Saint Alexis fled from his family's home in Rome on his wedding night and dwelled as a hermit in Syria until a mystical voice began telling people of his holiness. In order to avoid
9102-422: The folk tradition, for example the characters were made to be of genteel origin. Whilst the heroes and heroines of fairy tales written by the précieuses often appeared as shepherds and shepherdesses, in pastoral settings, these figures were often secretly royal or noble. The précieuses are also remembered through the filter of Molière 's one-act satire, Les Précieuses ridicules (1659). After years touring
9225-615: The form both to explore his vocation as a writer and to attack what he saw as the abuses of the Church. Also included is Thomas Gray 's, "Elegy In a Country Churchyard" (1750). The formal English pastoral continued to flourish during the 18th century, eventually dying out at the end. One notable example of an 18th-century work is Alexander Pope 's Pastorals (1709). In this work Pope imitates Edmund Spenser 's Shepheardes Calendar , while utilizing classical names and allusions aligning him with Virgil . In 1717, Pope's Discourse on Pastoral Poetry
9348-426: The fundamental laws of literary history" because it "gives literary history a meaning in terms of itself, and provides the channels of literary tradition". Kermode goes on to explain about the works of Virgil and Theocritus as progenitors of the pastoral. Later poets would draw on these earlier forms of pastoral, elaborating on them to fit their own social context. As the pastoral was becoming more modern, it shifted into
9471-753: The heroic legend of the doomed utopia of Camelot and the Holy Grail . Much of this material derives from Breton (Celtic) legends. The most important of these writers was Chrétien de Troyes (twelfth century). The "Matter of Rome" concerns romances that take place in the ancient world, such as romances dealing with Alexander the Great , Troy , the Aeneid and Oedipus . Yet Bodel's category leaves little place for another important group of romances: those adventurous romances which are often set in Byzantium. Sometimes linked with
9594-416: The intellectual, witty and educated women who frequented the salon of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet . Her Chambre bleue (the "blue room" of her hôtel particulier ) offered a Parisian refuge from the dangerous political factionalism and coarse manners of the royal court during the regency of Louis XIV . One of the central figures of the salon that gathered at the Hôtel de Rambouillet
9717-479: The landscape of the island of Cos where the poet lived) and involve dialogues between herdsmen. Theocritus may have drawn on authentic folk traditions of Sicilian shepherds. He wrote in the Doric dialect but the metre he chose was the dactylic hexameter associated with the most prestigious form of Greek poetry, epic . This blend of simplicity and sophistication would play a major part in later pastoral verse. Theocritus
9840-479: The lush Canaanite lowlands "flowing with milk and honey" (Exodus 3:8), or in Babylon , the "great city" of Israelite exile. David , a righteous shepherd-boy associated with the arid hill-country, contrasts with Goliath and Saul , representatives of luxurious urban élites. Thus New Testament imagery of shepherds and their sheep builds on established cultural and economic distinctions familiar, directly or indirectly, to
9963-516: The most famous painting in this style. Later, French artists were also attracted to the pastoral, notably Claude , Poussin (e.g., Et in Arcadia ego ) and Watteau (in his Fêtes galantes ). The Fête champêtre , with scenes of country people dancing was a popular subject in Flemish painting. Thomas Cole has a series of paintings titled The Course of Empire , and the second of these paintings (shown on
10086-466: The most important tropes of which he cites as religion (embodied by Pan); friendship; allegory;and poetic and musical calling. He concedes though that such a categorization is open to much misinterpretation. As well, Poggioli focused on the idea that Pastoral was a nostalgic and childish way of seeing the world. In The Oaten Flue , he claims that the shepherd was looked up to was because they were “an ideal kind of leisure class." Frank Kermode discusses
10209-406: The much debated origins of this epic genre, see Chanson de geste . Approximately one hundred chansons survive, in manuscripts that date from the 12th to the 15th century. Not long after Jean Bodel (above), Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube in his Girart de Vienne set out a grouping of the chansons de geste into three cycles , each named after a chief character or ancestral figure, and each with
10332-539: The next hundred years, writers, " jongleurs ", "clercs" and poets produced a profusion of remarkable creative works in all genres. Although the dynastic struggles of the Hundred Years' War and the Black Death pandemic of the fourteenth century in many ways curtailed this creative production, the fifteenth century laid the groundwork for the French Renaissance . Up to roughly 1340, the Romance languages spoken in
10455-710: The nymph responds realistically to the idealizing shepherd of The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by embracing and explaining the true course of nature and its incompatibility with the love that the Shepherd yearns for with the nymph. Terry Gifford defined the anti-pastoral in his 2012 essay "Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral and Post-Pastoral as Reading Strategies" as an often explicit correction of pastoral, emphasizing "realism" over romance, highlighting problematic elements (showing tensions, disorder and inequalities), challenging literary constructs as false distortions and demythologizing mythical locations such as Arcadia and Shangri-La . In
10578-427: The past four hundred years, a range of writers have worked on theorizing the nature of pastoral. These include Friedrich Schiller , George Puttenham , William Empson , Frank Kermode , Raymond Williams , Renato Poggioli , Annabel Patterson, Paul Alpers, and Ken Hiltner. George Puttenham was one of the first Pastoral theorists. He did not see the form as merely a recording of a prior rustic way of life but
10701-417: The past. As a result, when society evolves and looks back to these representations, it considers its own present as the decline of the simple life of the past. He then discusses how the city's relationship with the country affected the economic and social aspects of the countryside. As the economy became a bigger part of society, many country newcomers quickly realized the potential and monetary value that lay in
10824-471: The pastoral within the historical context of the English Renaissance. His first condition of pastoral poetry is that it is an urban product. Kermode establishes that the pastoral is derived as an opposition between two modes of living, in the country and in the city. London was becoming a modern metropolis before the eyes of its citizens. The result of this large-scale urban sprawl left the people with
10947-539: The pastoral". He gives examples of post-pastoral works, including Cormac McCarthy ’s The Road (2006), Margaret Atwood ’s The Year of the Flood (2009) and Maggie Gee ’s The Ice People (1999), and he points out that these works "raise questions of ethics, sustenance and sustainability that might exemplify [Leo] Marx’s vision of the pastoral needing to find new forms in the face of new conditions". Gifford states that British eco-critics such as Greg Garrard have used
11070-421: The pastoral. Musical settings of pastoral poetry became increasingly common in first polyphonic and then monodic madrigals : these later led to the cantata and the serenata , in which pastoral themes remained on a consistent basis. Partial musical settings of Giovanni Battista Guarini 's Il pastor fido were highly popular: the texts of over 500 madrigals were taken from this one play alone. Tasso 's Aminta
11193-512: The play who embraces and appreciates both the real and idealized life and manages to make the two ideas coexist. Therefore, Shakespeare explores city and country life as being appreciated through the coexistence of the two. Pastoral science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction which uses bucolic, rural settings, like other forms of pastoral literature. Since it is a subgenre of science fiction, authors may set stories either on Earth or another habitable planet or moon, sometimes including
11316-418: The play, Shakespeare employs various characters to illustrate pastoralism . His protagonists Rosalind and Orlando metaphorically depict the importance of the coexistence of realism and idealism, or urban and rural life. While Orlando is absorbed in the ideal, Rosalind serves as a mediator, bringing Orlando back down to reality and embracing the simplicity of pastoral love. She is the only character throughout
11439-486: The poem is a harmonious and joyous elation of the memories that Jonson had at the manor. It is beautifully written with iambic pentameter, a style that Jonson eloquently uses to describe the culture of Penshurst. It includes Pan and Bacchus as notable company of the manor. Pan, Greek god of the Pastoral world, half man and half goat, was connected with both hunting and shepherds; Bacchus was the god of wine, intoxication and ritual madness. This reference to Pan and Bacchus in
11562-507: The provinces, this bitter comedy of manners brought Molière and his company to the attention of Parisians and attracted the patronage of Louis XIV . Les Précieuses ridicules is considered to be the origin of the pejorative connotation of précieuse as "affected". The phenomenon of the précieuses in establishing French literary classicism was first revived by Louis Roederer in 1838. His Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la société polie en France , evoked an atmosphere of nostalgia for
11685-468: The purpose of this article, Medieval literature written in Oïl languages (particularly Old French and early Middle French ) during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century. The material and cultural conditions in France and associated territories around the year 1100 unleashed what the scholar Charles Homer Haskins termed the " Renaissance of the 12th century " and, for over
11808-673: The right) depicts the perfect pastoral setting. Pastoral imagery and symbolism feature heavily in Christianity and the Bible. Jesus calls himself the "Good Shepherd" in John 10:11 , contrasting his role as the Lamb of God . Many Christian denominations use the title " Pastor ", a word rooted in the Biblical metaphor of shepherding. ( Pastor in Latin means "shepherd"). The Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) uses
11931-624: The same time, Italian and German composers developed a genre of vocal and instrumental pastorals, distinguished by certain stylistic features, associated with Christmas Eve. The pastoral, and parodies of the pastoral, continued to play an important role in musical history throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. John Gay may have satirized the pastoral in The Beggar's Opera , but also wrote an entirely sincere libretto for Handel 's Acis and Galatea . Rousseau 's Le Devin du village draws on pastoral roots, and Metastasio 's libretto Il re pastore
12054-422: The sense of “reaching beyond” the contraints of the pastoral genre, but while continuing the core conceptual elements that have defined the pastoral tradition. Gifford states that the post-pastoral is "best used to describe works that successfully suggest a collapse of the human/nature divide whilst being aware of the problematics involved", noting that it is "more about connection than the disconnections essential to
12177-476: The symbolic weight placed within this culture on family honor, paternal fidelity and on the idea of proving one's filial worth. As the genre matured, it began to borrow elements from the French roman and the role of love became increasingly important. In some chansons de geste an element of self- parody appears, as in the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne . Jean Bodel 's other two categories—the "Matter of Rome" and
12300-457: The tales were in fact carefully prepared), was to have great effects. Many of these fairy tales, in the préciosité style, were written, mostly notably by Madame d'Aulnoy . This fashion for fairy tales, and the writers themselves, were a notable influence later upon Charles Perrault , and Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve , the author of Beauty and the Beast . The stories tended to vary from
12423-503: The ten-syllable line ( decasyllable ), the eight-syllable line ( octosyllable ) and the twelve-syllable line (the " alexandrine "). Verses could be combined in a variety of ways: blocks (of varying lengths) of assonanced (occasionally rhymed) lines are called " laisses "; another frequent form is the rhymed couplet . The choice of verse form was generally dictated by the genre. The Old French epics (" chansons de geste ") are generally written in ten-syllable assonanced "laisses" , while
12546-419: The traditional pastoral conventions of Theocritus. He was the first to set his poems in Arcadia, an idealized location to which much later pastoral literature will refer. Horace 's Epodes , ii Country Joys has "the dreaming man" Alfius, who dreams of escaping his busy urban life for the peaceful country. But as "the dreaming man" indicates, this is just a dream for Alfius. He is too consumed in his career as
12669-531: The two have obvious similarities. In the "fin amors" tradition, the poet pledges his service to his lady ("dame", usually a married woman), in much the same way a knight or vassal pledges service to his lord. In the poems of the troubadours, the lady is frequently cold, distant, or upset with the poet and demands that he prove his service to her; the poet, for his part, is generally tormented by his passion, and his poems are often desperate pleas to his lady so that she might grant him some favor. In some troubadour poetry,
12792-419: The untouched land. Furthermore, this new system encouraged a social stratification in the countryside. With the implementation of paper money came a hierarchy in the working system, as well as the "inheritance of titles and making of family names". Poggioli was concerned with how death reconciled itself with the pastoral, and thus came up with a loose categorization of death in the pastoral as 'funeral elegy',
12915-512: The use of certain fixed forms. The new poetic (as well as musical: some of the earliest medieval music has lyrics composed in Old French by the earliest composers known by name) tendencies are apparent in the Roman de Fauvel in 1310 and 1314, a satire on abuses in the medieval church filled with medieval motets, lais , rondeaux and other new secular forms of poetry and music (mostly anonymous, but with several pieces by Philippe de Vitry who would coin
13038-472: The valiant hero, the brave traitor, the shifty or cowardly traitor, the Saracen , the giant, and so forth. But they also reveal much of the fears and conflicts that were part of the audience's experience. Kings are vain, foolish, old or wily. Insults that threaten honour or cause shame are seen to provoke bloody conflict, which may arise simply from competitiveness among knights or noble families. For discussion of
13161-445: The vernacular was substituted for Latin. In the 12th century one finds the earliest extant passages in French appearing as refrains inserted into liturgical dramas in Latin, such as a Saint Nicholas (patron saint of the student clercs) play and a Saint Stephen play. Dramatic plays in French from the 12th and 13th centuries: The origins of farce and comic theater remain equally controversial; some literary historians believe in
13284-405: The woods, the river, his Pupil Mary, and the future. Marvell used nature as a thread to weave together a poem centered around man. We once again see nature fully providing for man. Marvell also continuously compares nature to art and seems to point out that art can never accomplish on purpose what nature can achieve accidentally or spontaneously. Robert Herrick 's The Hock-cart, or Harvest Home
13407-418: The world around her. Andrew Marvell 's " Upon Appleton House " was written when Marvell was working as a tutor for Lord Fairfax's daughter Mary, in 1651. The poem is very rich with metaphors that relate to religion, politics and history. Similar to Jonson's "To Penshurst", Marvell's poem is describing a pastoral estate. It moves through the house itself, its history, the gardens, the meadows and other grounds,
13530-418: The world in a very anti-pastoral view. In “The Twenty-Third Psalm,” Nature is portrayed as something we need to be protected from, and in “The Nightingale,” the woe of Philomela is compared to the speaker's own pain. Sidney also wrote Arcadia , which is filled with pastoral descriptions of the landscape. " The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd " (1600) by Sir Walter Raleigh also comments on the anti-pastoral as
13653-608: The year, and is written in dialect. It contains elegies , fables and a discussion of the role of poetry in contemporary England. Spenser and his friends appear under various pseudonyms (Spenser himself is "Colin Clout"). Spenser's example was imitated by such poets as Michael Drayton ( Idea, The Shepherd's Garland ) and William Browne ( Britannia's Pastorals ). During this period of England's history, many authors explored "anti-pastoral" themes. Two examples of this, Sir Philip Sidney 's "The Twenty-Third Psalm" and "The Nightingale", focus on
13776-413: Was Madeleine de Scudéry . She wrote voluminous romance novels that embodied the refinements of preciosité including the concepts of feminine elegance, etiquette and courtly Platonic love that were hugely popular with female audiences, but scorned by most men, including Molière , who satirized the précieuses in his comedy Les Précieuses ridicules (1659). The "questions of love" that were debated in
13899-482: Was a 17th-century French literary style and movement . The main features of this style are the refined language of aristocratic salons, periphrases , hyperbole , and puns on the theme of gallant love. The movement was similar to the Italian marinism , Spanish culteranismo , and English euphuism . The movement arose in the 17th century from the lively conversations and playful word games of les précieuses ( French pronunciation: [le pʁesjøz] ),
14022-503: Was also a favourite. As opera developed, the dramatic pastoral came to the fore with such works as Jacopo Peri 's Dafne and, most notably, Monteverdi 's L'Orfeo . Pastoral opera remained popular throughout the 17th-century, and not just in Italy, as is shown by the French genre of pastorale héroïque , Englishman Henry Lawes 's music for Milton's Comus (not to mention John Blow 's Venus and Adonis ), and Spanish zarzuela . At
14145-465: Was also written in the 17th century. In this pastoral work, he paints the reader a colorful picture of the benefits reaped from hard work. This is an atypical interpretation of the pastoral, given that there is a celebration of labor involved as opposed to central figures living in leisure and nature just taking its course independently. This poem was mentioned in Raymond Williams ', The Country and
14268-497: Was derived from Thomas Lodge 's pastoral romance Rosalynde ) and The Winter's Tale , of which Act 4 Scene 4 is a lengthy pastoral digression. The forest in As You Like It can be seen as a place of pastoral idealization, where life is simpler and purer, and its inhabitants live more closely to each other, nature and God than their urban counterparts. However, Shakespeare plays with the bounds of pastoral idealization. Throughout
14391-480: Was imitated by the Greek poets Bion and Moschus . The Roman poet Virgil adapted pastoral into Latin with his highly influential Eclogues . Virgil introduces two very important uses of pastoral, the contrast between urban and rural lifestyles and political allegory most notably in Eclogues 1 and 4 respectively. In doing so, Virgil presents a more idealized portrayal of the lives of shepherds while still employing
14514-692: Was little Classical precedent, with the possible exception of Greek satyr plays . Poliziano 's Orfeo (1480) shows the beginnings of the new form, but it reached its zenith in the late 16th century with Tasso 's Aminta (1573), Isabella Andreini 's Mirtilla (1588), and Guarini 's Il pastor fido (1590). John Lyly 's Endimion (1579) brought the Italian-style pastoral play to England. John Fletcher 's The Faithful Shepherdess , Ben Jonson 's The Sad Shepherd and Sidney's The Lady of May are later examples. Some of Shakespeare 's plays contain pastoral elements, most notably As You Like It (whose plot
14637-407: Was one of the most prolific writers of her age. Her most famous work is The Book of the City of Ladies , which is considered a foundational feminist text, along with Le Livre de la mutation de fortune , where she depicts in an autobiographical allegorical poem an early account of gender transitioning to enable her to become a male writer to sustain her family after the death of her father. She
14760-496: Was published as a preface to Pastorals. In this work Pope sets standards for pastoral literature and critiques many popular poets, one of whom is Spenser, along with his contemporary opponent Ambrose Philips . During this time period Ambrose Philips, who is often overlooked because of Pope, modeled his poetry after the native English form of Pastoral, employing it as a medium to express the true nature and longing of Man. He strove to write in this fashion to conform to what he thought
14883-402: Was set over 30 times, most famously by Mozart . Rameau was an outstanding exponent of French pastoral opera. Beethoven also wrote his famous Pastoral Symphony , avoiding his usual musical dynamism in favour of relatively slow rhythms. More concerned with psychology than description, he labelled the work "more the expression of feeling than [realistic] painting". The pastoral also appeared as
15006-552: Was spoken ( Occitan language ); in their turn, the Provençal poets were greatly influenced by poetic traditions from the Hispano- Arab world. The Occitan or Provençal poets were called troubadours , from the word "trobar" (to find, to invent). Lyric poets in Old French are called " trouvères ", using the Old French version of the word (for more information on the "trouvères", their poetic forms, extant works and their social status, see
15129-469: Was the original intent of Pastoral literature. As such, he centered his themes around the simplistic life of the Shepherd, and, personified the relationship that humans once had with nature. John Gay , who came a little later was criticized for his poem's artificiality by Doctor Johnson and attacked for their lack of realism by George Crabbe , who attempted to give a true picture of rural life in his poem The Village. In 1590, Edmund Spenser also composed
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