French Renaissance Literature - Long Prose Fiction

Long Prose Fiction

In the first half of the century, the novel in France was still dominated by the chivalric novels of the Middle Ages (in their prose versions) such as: Les Quatre fils Aymon (or Renaud de Montauban), Fierabras, Ogier le Danois, Perceforest and Galien le Réthoré. From 1540 on however, the genre was dominated by foreign productions, most notably the Hispano-Portuguese multi-volume adventure novels Amadis de Gaule, Palmerin d'Olive, Primaléon de Grèce and others like them. The first of these, Amadis of Gaul — in its celebrated French translation/adaptation by Nicolas de Herberay des Essarts — became the de facto code of conduct of the French court from Francis I through Henry IV and was emulated in jousts and in manners. Of similar tone and content (albeit in verse), the Italian epic poems Roland amoureux (Orlando Innamorato) by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Roland furieux (Orlando furioso) by Ludovico Ariosto (and, at the end of the century, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered) were also enormous successes (French translations of these works were often in prose). Finally, the Italian Luigi Pulci's Morgant le géant, a comic version of the chivalric novel, was an important model for Rabelais's giants.

The most notable French novels of the first half of the century are François Rabelais’s masterpieces Pantagruel, Gargantua and their sequels. Rabelais’s works blend both humanism (Erasmus, Thomas More) and medieval farce (giants, heroic battles, scatological humor) in a manner that is grotesquely extravagant (the language and humor were often viewed as coarse by later centuries), but along with the buffoonery there is a keen satire of religious hypocrisy, political injustice and human doubt.

Alongside the chivalric, French literary tastes of the period were drawn to the amorous and pathetic, especially as depicted in the novels of Spaniards Diego de San Pedro and Juan de Flores, themselves inspired by Boccaccio's Lady Fiammeta and its psychologically insightful portrayal of a woman spurned. This sentimental vein would find admirable expression in parts of Hélisenne de Crenne’s Les Angoisses douloureuses qui procèdent d’amours which blends sentimental and chivalric elements, humanist scholarship, orality and eloquence.

The foreign adventure novel would start to face competition from domestic French production in the second half of the century in the long works of authors Béroalde de Verville and Nicolas de Montreux. These authors (largely unread today) — like the authors of the later volumes of the Amadis cycle — abandoned many of the traditional chivalric modes, replacing them with techniques and incidents borrowed from two new sources of inspiration: the ancient Greek novel (Heliodorus, Longus and Achilles Tatius) and the mixed-form (prose and verse) pastoral novel from Italy and Spain (Jacopo Sannazaro and Jorge de Montemayor).

The novelty and inventiveness of the last years of the century are best seen in the anonymous La Mariane du Filomene (1596) which mixes the frame-tale, amorous sentiment, dreams, and pastoral elements to tell the story of a man wandering through the Parisian countryside trying to forget the woman who betrayed him.

Notable works of long prose fiction, including translations (preceded by an --) published in France in the sixteenth century:

• Jean Lemaire de Belges Les Illustrations de Gaule (1510)
• -- Diego de San Pedro La Prison d’Amour laquelle traite l’amour de Leriano et Laureole (13 editions between 1526–1604)
• -- Juan de Flores Le Judgement d’Amour or Histoire d’Aurelio et d’Isabelle (1530)
• François Rabelais Pantagruel (1532)
• -- Boccaccio Complainte des tristes amours de Fiammette (1532)
• François Rabelais Gargantua (1534)
• -- Juan de Flores La Déplourable fin de Flamète (translation by Maurice Scève, 1535)
• -- Baldassare Castiglione Le Courtesan (1535)
• Hélisenne de Crenne (Marguerite Briet) Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d’amours (1538)
• -- Diego de San Pedro Les Amours d’Arnalte et de Lucenda or L’amant mal traicté de s’amye (14 editions from 1539–1582)
• -- Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo Amadis de Gaule (first books translated by Nicolas de Herberay des Essarts, starting from 1540; for more on its sequels and translations, see the article on "Amadis of Gaul")
• -- Jacopo Sannazaro Arcadia (1544)
• -- Ariosto Roland furieux (prose translation, 1544)
• François Rabelais Le tiers livre (1546)
• -- Francesco Colonna Songe de Poliphile (with engravings attributed to Jean Goujon, 1546)
• -- L’histoire de Palmerin d’Olive (translated by Jean Maugin, 1546)
• -- Heliodorus of Emesa L’histoire aethiopique (translated by Jacques Amyot, 1547)
• François Rabelais Le quart livre (1552)
• “Théodose Valentinian” L’Histoire de l’amant resuscité par la mort d’amour (partly inspired by Diego de San Pedro, 1555)
• -- Longus Les Amours pastorales de Daphnis et de Chloé (translated by Jacques Amyot, 1559)
• François Rabelais (attributed) Le cinquième livre (1564)
• -- Achilles Tatius Les Amours de Clitophon et de Leucippe (translated by François de Belleforest, 1568)
• François de Belleforest La Pyrénée (or La Pastorale amoureuse) (1571)
• -- Jorge de Montemayor La Diane (1578)
• Nicolas de Montreux Les Bergeries de Juliette (1585–98)
• -- Tasso Jérusalem délivrée(prose translation, 1587)
• Béroalde de Verville Les Avantures de Floride (1593–1596)
• Nicolas de Montreux Les chastes et delectables Jardins d’Amour (1594)
• Nicolas de Montreux L’Œuvre de la Chasteté (1595-9)
• (Anon) La Mariane du Filomene (1596)
• (Anon) Les chastes amours d’Helene de Marthe(1597)
• Nicolas de Montreux Les Amours de Cleandre et Domiphille (1597)
• Béroalde de Verville Le Restablissement de Troye (1597)