The Middle Ages Early Old French literature The origins of the French language By 50 BC, when the Roman occupation of Gaul under Julius Caesar was complete, the region's population had been speaking Gaulish, a Celtic language, for some 500 years. Gaulish, however, gave way to the conquerors' speech, Vulgar Latin, which was the spoken form of the non-Classical Latin used by the soldiers and settlers throughout the Roman Empire. In different regions, local circumstances determined Vulgar Latin's evolution into the separate tongues that today constitute the family of Romance languages, to which French belongs. This linguistic development was speeded by the empire's collapse under the impact of the 5th-century barbarian invasions. Gaul was overrun by Germanic tribes, in the north principally by the Franks (who gave France its name), and by the Visigoths in the south. But the Latin speech survived: it not only was the language of the majority of the population but also was backed by its associations with the old Roman culture and with the new Christian religion, which used Low Latin, its own form of the Roman tongue. Although it retained relatively few Celtic words, the developing language had its vocabulary greatly enriched by Germanic borrowings, and its phonetic development was influenced by Germanic speech habits. The 9th-century Norse incursions and settlement of Normandy, however, left few traces in the language. The Romans had introduced written literature, and until the 12th century almost all documents and other texts were in Latin. The first text in recognizable Old French is the Romance version of the Oath of Strasbourg (842), an oath sworn by Louis the German and Charles the Bald against their brother Lothair in the partitioning of the empire of their grandfather Charlemagne. A German version also survives. Only a few other texts, all religious in content, survive from before about 1100. By about the 9th century a broad division had emerged between the speech of the north of Gaul, which had suffered most from the invasions, and that in the more stable, cultured, and linguistically conservative south. The tongue spoken to the north of an imaginary line running roughly from the Gironde River to the Alps was the langue d'ol (the future French), and to the south was spoken the langue d'oc (Provencal or Occitan), terms derived from the respective expressions for "yes." Vulgar Latin's development had not been uniform throughout the area of the langue d'ol; and, by the time a recognizable Old French had developed, various dialects had evolved, notably Francien (in the Ile-de-France, the region around Paris), Picard, Champenois, and Norman. From the latter stemmed Anglo-Norman, the French used alongside English in Britain, especially among the upper classes, from even before the Norman Conquest (1066) until well into the 14th century. Each dialect had its own literature. But for various reasons the status of Francien increased until it achieved dominance in the Middle French period (after 1300); and from it Modern French developed. Old French was a fine literary medium, enlarging its vocabulary from other languages such as Arabic, Provencal, and Low Latin. It had a wide phonetic range and, until the decay of its two-case system inherited from Latin, had syntactic flexibility. The context and nature of French medieval literature Whatever Classical literature survived the upheavals of the early Middle Ages was preserved, along with pious Latin works, in monastic libraries. By encouraging scholars and writers, Charlemagne had increased the Latin heritage available to educated vernacular authors of later centuries. He also left his image as a great warrior-emperor to stimulate the legend-making process that generated the Old French epic. There one finds exemplified the feudal ideal, evolved by the Franks to combat social fragmentation and insecurity. The warrior's code of morality, founded on loyalty, bolstered the entire political system. As stability increased under the Capetians, windows opened onto other cultures and elements: that of the Arabs in Spain and, with the Crusades, the East; the advanced Provencal civilization; and the legends of Celtic Britain. The Roman Catholic Church grew in wealth and power, and by the 12th century its schools were flourishing, training generations of clerks in the liberal arts. Society itself became less embattled, and the nobility became more leisured and sophisticated. The muscularity of the epics was tempered by the social graces of courtoisie: generosity, modesty, and consideration for others, especially the weak and distressed, and with love regarded no longer as a weakness in a knight but as an objective inspiring and not hindering chivalry. By the 13th century an additional source of patronage for writers and performers was the bourgeoisie of the developing towns. New genres emerged, and, as literacy increased, prose found favour as a less frivolous medium than verse. There is in much of the literature a rather irreverent spirit, a sometimes cynical realism, yet, at the same time, a countercurrent of deep spirituality. In the 14th and 15th centuries France was ravaged by war, plague, and famine. Alongside a preoccupation in literature with death and damnation appeared a contrasting refinement of expression and sentiment bred of nostalgia for the courtly, chivalric ideal. At the same time a new humanistic learning anticipated the coming Renaissance. Before 1200 almost all French "literature" had been in verse and had been communicated orally to its public. The jongleurs, professional minstrels, travelled and performed their extensive repertoires, which ranged from epics to the lives of saints (the lengthy romances were not designed for memorization), sometimes using mime and musical accompaniment. Seeking an immediate impact, most poets made their poems strikingly visual in character, more dramatic than reflective, and revealed psychology and motives through action and gesture. Verbal formulas and cliches were used by the better poets as an effective narrative shorthand, especially in the epic. Such oral techniques left their mark throughout the period. The chansons de geste More than 80 chansons de geste ("songs of deeds") are known, the earliest and finest being the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100). Most are anonymous and are composed in lines of 10 or 12 syllables grouped into laisses (tirades) based on assonance or, later, rhyme. Their length varies from about 1,500 to more than 18,000 lines. They are exemplary stories of warfare, often pitting Franks against Saracens, that fire the emotions with their insistent rhythms. Under the influence of the genre known as romance, however (see below Romance), the chansons de geste lost some of their early vigour. Their story lines became looser, their adventures more exotic, and their tone often amatory or even humorous. Many were eventually turned into prose. Cycles formed as new songs were composed featuring heroes, families, or themes already familiar. The Chanson de Roland belongs to the cycle known as the "Geste du Roi," or "Geste of the King," the king being Charlemagne, Roland's uncle, in whose service he perished with the rear guard at Roncevaux. Charlemagne is treated less reverently in the parodic Pelerinage de Charlemagne ("Charlemagne's Pilgrimage"), describing his journey to Jerusalem and Constantinople. Dominating the "Geste de Garin de Monglane" is Garin's great-grandson, Guillaume d'Orange, whose historical prototype was count of Toulouse and Charlemagne's cousin. His dogged loyalty to an unworthy monarch (Charlemagne's son Louis) is the subject of a group of poems including the Chanson de Guillaume ("Song of William"). The epics in the "Geste de Doon de Mayence" deal with rebellious vassals, among them Raoul de Cambrai, in a gripping story of injustice and strained loyalties. The fanciful 13th-century Huon de Bordeaux, which introduces the fairy king Auberon (Shakespeare's Oberon), has been placed here and in the "Geste du Roi." The First Crusade is handled, with legendary embellishment, in a minor cycle. Controversy surrounds the origins of the genre. It is not known how most of the poems came to contain elements, somewhat garbled, from Carolingian history some 300 years before their composition. Some scholars believe in a continuous process of oral transmission and elaboration culminating in the writing down of the epics as they have survived. Others suppose the historical facts were retrieved much later by poets wishing to celebrate certain heroes, many of whom were associated with pilgrim routes which the jongleurs could then ply with profit. Some evolutionary process seems probable; yet the author of the Chanson de Roland (perhaps the Turoldus named in the last line) was undoubtedly a poet of both genius and learning. The romance The romance, which came into being in the middle of the 12th century in France, was a creation of formally educated poets. The earliest took their subjects from antiquity: Alexander the Great, Thebes, Aeneas, and Troy were all treated at length, and shorter contes ("tales") were derived from Ovid. Other romances, like Floire et Blancheflor (adapted in Middle English as Flores and Blancheflur), exploited Greco-Byzantine sources; but by about 1150 the Celtic legends of Britain were capturing the public's imagination. The romance's standard metre is octosyllabic rhyming couplets. It differs from the chanson de geste in concentrating on individual rather than communal exploits and presenting them in a more detached fashion. It offers fuller descriptions, freer dialogue, and more authorial intervention. Christian miracles and fervour are replaced by Eastern or Celtic marvels and the cult of courtoisie and amour courtois ("courtly love"). There is more interest in psychology, especially in the love situations. The universally popular legend of Tristan and Iseult had evolved by the mid-12th century, apparently from a fusion of Scottish, Irish, Cornish, and Breton elements. The main French versions (both fragmentary) are by the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas (c. 1170) and the Norman Beroul (rather later and possibly composite). The legend was reworked in French prose and widely translated (Thomas' version can be reconstructed from Gottfried von Strassburg's German rendering and another in Old Norse). Chretien de Troyes's treatment, mentioned in his Cliges, has been lost. The deep-rooted British tradition of King Arthur was firmly established on the Continent by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae (c. 1136; History of the Kings of Britain), translated and romanticized by the Jerseyman Wace as the Roman de Brut (1155). The Bretons and Anglo-Normans were likely intermediaries in the transmission of further Arthurian material to French writers such as Chretien de Troyes, the virtual founder of Arthurian romance, who wrote between about 1165 and 1182. His first known romance, Erec et Enide, is a serious study of marital and social responsibilities and contains elements of Celtic enchantment. Cliges, a partly Greco-Byzantine tale of young love and an adulterous relationship, uses the motif of feigned death later familiar from Romeo and Juliet. Lancelot, or Le Chevalier de la charrette, relates the infatuated hero's rescue of the abducted queen Guinevere. Yvain, or Le Chevalier au lion, treats the converse of the situation depicted in Erec. Chretien' s ironies and ambiguities invited divergent interpretations, and of no work more than the incomplete Perceval, or Le Conte du Graal, which may be the conflation of two unfinished poems. The grail, first introduced here, was to become, as the Holy Grail, a remarkably potent symbol. The romance genre was diversely exploited well into the 14th century, but by 1384 Jean Froissart's contribution, Meliador, was only a ponderous valediction to romance's golden age. On the genre's periphery were short courtly tales and lais like those of Marie de France, treating Celtic themes and probably composed in England. The unique Aucassin et Nicolette, a charmingly comic idyll told in alternating sections of verse (to be sung) and prose (to be recited), pokes sly fun at the conventions of epic and romance alike. Lyric poetry to the 13th century The 12th century saw the revolution in sexual attitudes that has come to be known as amour courtois, or courtly love. Its first exponents were the Provencal troubadours, poet-musicians of the 12th and 13th centuries, of whom some 400 are known by name. Among them are nobles of both sexes and even clerics. The troubadours no longer considered women to be the disposable assets of men. On the contrary, the enjoyment of a woman's love was a man's aspiration, achievable, if at all, only after the suitor had served a period of amorous vassalage modelled on the subject's service to his lord. This is the main theme of the troubadours' songs, whose origins have been sought in Arabic poetry, the writings of Ovid, Latin liturgical hymns, and other less likely sources. The canso (French chanson), made of five or six stanzas with a summary envoi, was the favourite vehicle for their love poetry; but they used various other forms, from dawn songs to satirical or debating poems, all usually highly crafted. Guillaume IX, duke of Aquitaine, the first known poet in the Provencal language, mixed obscenity with his courtly sentiments. Among the finest are the graceful Bernard de Ventadour; Jaufre Rudel, who expressed an almost mystical longing for a distant love; and the soldier and poet Bertran de Born. The langue d'ol had a tradition of dance and spinning songs before the troubadours exerted by the mid-12th century an influence encouraged by, among others, Eleanor of Aquitaine, granddaughter of Guillaume IX and queen of France and later England. The troubadours' verse inspired a number of northern trouveres, including Chretien de Troyes, two of whose songs are extant, and some nobles such as Thibaut (Theobald I), count of Champagne and king of Navarre. More interesting is the work of certain bourgeois poets, notably, in the 13th century, a group from Arras and especially Rutebeuf, a Parisian often compared with Villon. Rutebeuf wrote very personal verse on a variety of subjects: his own pitiful circumstances, the quarrel between the University of Paris and the religious orders, the need to support the Crusades, his reverence for the Virgin, and his disgust at clerical corruption. But he did not treat love, nor was his verse set to music. Satire, the fabliaux, and the Roman de Renart Medieval literature in both Latin and the vernacular is full of sharp, often bitter criticism of the world's evils: the injustice of rulers, churchmen's avarice and hypocrisy, corruption among lawyers, doctors' quackery, and the wiles and deceits of women. It appears in pious and didactic literature and, as authorial comment, in other genres but more usually in general terms than as particular, corrective satire. Human vice and folly also serve purely comic ends, as in the fabliaux. These fairly short verse tales, most of which are anonymous though some are by leading poets, generate laughter from situations extending from the obscene to the mock-religious, built sometimes around simple wordplay and frequently around elaborate deceptions and counterdeceptions. They are played out in all classes of society but predominantly among the bourgeoisie. Many fabliaux carry mock morals, inviting comparison with the didactic fables. Realistic in tone, they paint instructive pictures of everyday life in medieval France. After the 13th century, when the majority were composed, they yielded in importance to the farces, bequeathing a fund of anecdotes to later writers such as Chaucer and Boccaccio. Inspired partly by the popular animal fable and more specifically by the Latin poem Ysengrimus by Nivard of Ghent (c. 1150), Pierre de Saint-Cloud composed about 1175 a poem chronicling the rivalry of Reynard the Fox and the wolf Ysengrin, or Isengrin. This seems to have prompted other writers to relate more of the lively and largely scandalous goings-on in the animal kingdom ruled by Noble the Lion. By the 14th century about 30 branches existed, forming a veritable beast epic. Full of close social observation, they exude the earthy humour of the fabliaux; but, particularly in some of the later branches, this is sharpened into true satire directed against abuses in church and state, with the friars and rapacious nobility as prime targets. Allegory Allegory, popular from early times, was employed in Latin literature by such authorities as Augustine, Prudentius, Martianus Capella, and, in the late 12th century, Alain de Lille. It was used widely in religious and moralizing works, as in the long Pelerinage de la vie humaine ("Pilgrimage of Human Life") by Guillaume de Deguileville, Dante's contemporary and a precursor of Bunyan. But the most influential allegorical work in French was the Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose), where courtly love is first celebrated, then undermined. The first 4,058 lines were written about 1230 by Guillaume de Lorris, a sensitive, elegant poet who, through a play of allegorical figures, analyzed the psychology of a young couple's venture into love. The affair is presented as a dream, in which the plucking of a crimson rose by the dreamer/lover would represent his conquest of the lady. Guillaume, however, left the poem unfinished, with the dreamer frustrated and his chief ally imprisoned. Forty years or more later, a poet of very different temperament, Jean de Meun (or de Meung), added more than 17,700 lines to complete it, submerging Guillaume's delicate allegory with debates and disquisitions, laden with medieval and ancient learning, by the characters. Courtly idealism is shunned for a practical, often critical or cynical view of the world. Love, only one of many topics treated in the completed version, is synonymous with procreation; and a misogynistic tone pervades the writing. Embodying these two characteristically medieval but diametrically opposed attitudes to love, the Roman was immensely popular until well into the Renaissance (which in some respects is foreshadowed by Jean's humanistic learning) and gave rise to a long-running literary quarrel on the nature and role of women. Lyric poetry in the 14th century Allegory and similar conceits abound in much late medieval poetry, as with Guillaume de Machaut, the outstanding musician of his day, who composed for noble patronage a number of narrative dits amoureux and a quantity of lyric verse. A talented technician, Machaut did much to popularize and develop the relatively new fixed forms: ballade, rondeau, and virelai. Eustache Deschamps, his great admirer and perhaps also his nephew, struck in his verse a more personal note than many of his contemporaries. A prolific writer, he dealt with public and private affairs, sometimes satirically; but he composed little love poetry, and his work was not set to music. Jean Froissart wrote pleasantly in a variety of lyric forms; but more individual is the varied output of Christine de Pisan, the gifted daughter of an Italian astrologer and physician at the French court. Widowed at 25, she expressed her grief in some of her finest verse. Elsewhere, a prime mover in the controversy provoked by the Roman de la Rose, she espouses the feminist cause. Most court verse of this period has an unreal air as if, amid the political and social agonies of the Hundred Years' War, the poets were voicing a yearning for humane and gracious living founded on the ideals of courtoisie. Thus Alain Chartier, a political polemicist in both French and Latin, was most admired for La Belle Dame sans merci, which tells of the death of a lover rejected by his lady. Villon and his contemporaries One distinguished victim of the Hundred Years' War was Charles, duc d'Orleans, who was captured at Agincourt at the age of 21 and was held prisoner in England for 25 years. There is an elegiac tone to much of his graceful verse. On his return to France, his court at Blois became a literary centre. For one of his poetry competitions Francois Villon produced a ballade that, while not outstanding, is remarkable for its individuality and relative lack of contrivance. Born in Paris in 1431 as Francois de Montcorbier, Villon adopted the name of his uncle, a priest, who saw to his upbringing. At the University of Paris, where he became Master of Arts in 1452, he acquired some learning but also loose habits that involved him in manslaughter and robbery. His forced departure from Paris was the occasion for his Lais, or Le Petit Testament (1456; The Legacy). This mock legacy in eight-line octosyllabic stanzas is conversational and often facetious in tone, full of allusions to people and events sometimes made cryptic by Villon's taste for antiphrasis. His main work, the Testament (or Le Grand Testament), was written five or six years later after a spell in the Bishop of Orleans's dungeons. It uses the octets of the Lais interspersed with ballades and rondeaux and is similarly packed with personal gossip, often tongue-in-cheek, but leaving a bitter aftertaste. Following more brushes with justice, he disappeared for good. Commonly considered to have been the first modern French poet, he was more traditional than innovative in his themes. Apart from the Lais and Testament, he produced a variety of lyrics, none provided with music in his day. His verse shows great technical skill and an economy of expression that not only enhances his lively wit but produces moments of intensely focussed vision and, in individual poems, moving statements of human experience. None of his contemporaries or immediate successors was able to match the vigour of his verse. Often obsessed by metrical ingenuity, extravagant rhymes, and other conceits, they favoured Italian as well as Classical models, thus heralding the Renaissance. It is unfair, however, to judge them by their words alone, since the music was, for most, a vital ingredient of their art. Prose literature Prose flourished as a literary medium from about 1200. A few years earlier Robert de Borron had used verse for his Joseph d'Arimathie (recounting the Holy Grail's sacred origins) and his Merlin; but both were soon turned into prose. Other Arthurian romances adopted it, notably the great Vulgate cycle with its five branches by various hands. These included the immensely popular Lancelot, the Queste del Saint Graal (whose Cistercian author used Galahad's Grail quest as a vehicle for the mystic pursuit of Christian truth and ecstasy), and La Mort le Roi Artu, powerfully describing the collapse of the Arthurian world. The Tristan legend was reworked and extended in prose. To spin out their romances while maintaining their public's interest, authors wove in many characters and adventures, producing complex interlacing patterns, which Sir Thomas Malory simplified when he drew on them for his Morte Darthur. As well as traditional material, new fictions appeared in prose. Early in the 15th century the ironically titled Les Quinze Joies de mariage amusingly pursued the antifeminist line. In Petit Jehan de Saintre (1456) Antoine de la Sale took a misogynistic view of an ill-starred courtly love relationship, and the work's realism and psychological interest have made it for some the first French novel. The bawdy tales of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (c. 1465), loosely modelled on Boccaccio, are more in the spirit of the fabliau, though written for the Burgundian court. Pious and instructional works abound. More interesting are the chronicles, which avoid the romantic extravagances of their verse predecessors. Geoffroi de Villehardouin's Conquete de Constantinople ("Conquest of Constantinople") is a sober, if biassed, eyewitness account of the Fourth Crusade (1199-1204). Jean, sire de Joinville, was 84 when, in 1309, he completed his Histoire de Saint Louis, a flattering biographical portrait of his intimate friend Louis IX, whom he had accompanied on the Seventh Crusade. Jean Froissart, who travelled extensively in England and Scotland and on the Continent, projected his admiration of chivalry into his four books of chronicles. Covering the years 1325 to 1400, they contain much picturesque detail, largely from personal observation. A far more cynical view of people, politics, and feudal values is found in the Memoires of Philippe de Commynes, with whom modern French historiography may be said to begin. Religious drama Classical theatre having disappeared, serious drama was reborn in the Middle Ages within the Roman Catholic Church. There, from early times, dramatic elements were introduced into certain offices, particularly at Easter and Christmas. From this practice liturgical drama sprang. Performances took place inside churches, with the cast of clergy moving from place to place in the sanctuary. At first only Latin was used, though occasionally snatches of vernacular verse were included, as in the early 12th-century Sponsus ("The Bridegroom"), which uses the Poitevin dialect. Stories from the Bible and lives of the saints were dramatized; and as the scope of the dramas broadened, more plays were performed outside the church and used only the vernacular. The all-male casts employed multiple setting (decor simultane) and moved from one setting, or mansion, to another as the action demanded. The first extant mystere, or mystery play, with entirely French dialogue (but elaborate stage directions in Latin) is the Jeu d'Adam ("Play of Adam"). It is known from a copy in an Anglo-Norman manuscript, and it probably originated in England in the mid-12th century. With lively dialogue and the varied metres characteristic of the later mysteres (all of which were based on Biblical stories), it presents the Creation and Fall, the story of Cain and Abel, and an incomplete procession of prophets. Neither it nor the later Resurrection du Sauveur ("Resurrection of the Saviour"; also Anglo-Norman and fragmentary) shows the events preceding the Crucifixion; these first appeared in the early 14th century in the Passion du Palatinus ("Passion of Palatinus"). Of relatively modest proportions, this contains diversified dialogue with excellent dramatic potential and probably drew on earlier plays now lost. The oldest extant miracle, or miracle play (a real or fictitious account of the life, miracles, and martyrdom of a saint), is the remarkable Jeu de Saint Nicolas ("Play of Saint Nicholas"), by Jean Bodel of Arras, in which exotic crusading and boisterous tavern scenes alternate. Rutebeuf's Miracle de Theophile is an early version of the Faust theme, in which the Virgin Mary secures Theophile's salvation. From the 14th century comes the Miracles de Notre-Dame, a collection of 40 miracles, partly based on a nondramatic compilation by Gautier de Coincy. These miracles probably were performed by the Paris goldsmiths' guild. By the 15th century, societies had been formed in various towns for the performance of the increasingly elaborate mystery plays. In Paris the Confrerie de la Passion (Confraternity of the Passion) survived until 1676, though its production of sacred plays was banned in 1548. Notable authors of mysteres are Eustache Marcade; Arnoul Greban, organist and choirmaster at Notre-Dame, and his brother Simon; and Jean Michel. Arnoul Greban's monumental Mystere de la Passion (c. 1450, reworked by Michel in 1486) took four days to perform. Other plays took up to eight days. Biblical material was supplemented with legend, theology, and elements of lyricism and slapstick, and spectacular stage effects were employed. Secular drama A crucial factor in the emergence of the comic theatre was the oral presentation of much medieval literature. A natural consequence was complete dramatization and collaborative performances by jongleurs and later by guilds or confreries formed for the purpose. The earliest comic plays extant date from the second half of the 13th century. Le Garcon et l'aveugle ("The Boy and the Blind Man"), a simple tale of trickster tricked, could have been played by a jongleur and his boy and ranks as the first farce. The Arras poet Adam de la Halle composed two unique pieces: Le Jeu de la feuillee ("The Play of the Bower"), a kind of topical revue for his friends, and Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion, a dramatized pastourelle (a knight's encounter with a shepherdess and her friends) spiced with song and dance. The first serious nonreligious play was L'Estoire de Griseldis (1395), the story of a constant wife. The profane theatre eventually had its own societies of actors, such as the Basoches (associations of lawyers and clerks) and the Enfants sans Souci (probably a special group of Basochiens) in Paris. The societies frequently presented plays in triple bills: first a sotie, a slight, sometimes satirical, sketch; next a moralite (morality play), a didactic and often allegorical piece; and finally a farce. Some 150 farces have survived from the 15th and 16th centuries. Most are of less than 500 lines and involve a handful of characters acting out plots similar to those of the fabliaux. They use the octosyllabic rhyming couplet and may include songs, commonly in rondeau form. By far the best is the unusually long La Farce de maistre Pierre Pathelin (c. 1465), a tale of trickery involving a sly lawyer, a dull-witted draper, and a crafty shepherd. Its multifaceted humour is worthy of Moliere. Anglo-Norman literature Anglo-Norman is an important and in some respects pioneering branch of medieval French literature. Most genres are represented; and although scholars know of no chanson de geste composed in England, the sole manuscripts of the Chanson de Roland, Chanson de Guillaume, and Pelerinage de Charlemagne were copied there. The earliest copy of the Vie de Saint Alexis ("Life of Saint Alexis") is likewise Anglo-Norman. The first examples of "scientific" writing in French, from the early 12th century, are the Cumpoz or Comput (an ecclesiastical calendar), a bestiary, and a lapidary, all allegorical, by a cleric, Philippe de Thaon. He enjoyed patronage at the court of Henry I, as did another cleric and far superior poet, Benedeit, who dedicated his Vie de Saint Brendan ("Life of Saint Brendan") to Henry's queen before about 1125. It describes the Irish saint's marvellous voyage in search of Heaven and Hell. Other firsts for Anglo-Norman writers are in the fields of chronicle and drama: Gaimar's verse Estorie des Engleis (c. 1150), and the Jeu d'Adam mentioned above. The first significant prose texts in French seem also to have been produced in England: versions of the Psalter and a translation of the Books of Samuel and Kings. Anglo-Norman literature is particularly rich in homiletic, devotional, and didactic works, including numerous lives of saints. The trend was encouraged by the church's concern for the instruction of the laity, as expressed by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). However, a substantial number of chronicles, romances, and even courtly lyrics was produced. Among major writers working in England were Thomas, the author of Tristan, and his namesakes Master Thomas, who composed the romance of Horn, and Thomas, author of the Roman de toute Chevalerie, dealing with Alexander the Great. To Marie de France, author of the lais, are also attributed a collection of fables and an account of St. Patrick's Purgatory, translated from Latin. John Gower, in the late 14th century, was the last notable Englishman to write in any form of French. |