French Literature: A Very Short Introduction Read Online Free Page B

The first is Christine de Pizan (c. 1364-c. 1434) and the
second Francois Villon (c. 1431-63). Christine de Pizan, born in
Venice, came to Paris as an infant when her father became advisor
to King Charles V. Much of her work takes an autobiographical
form, such as `Christine's Vision' (LAdvision Christine, 1405) and
particularly `The Mutation of Fortune' (Le livre de la mutacion de
Fortune, 1403). For Christine (the use of the first or given name
for this author, and many other woman writers of the early period
such as Marguerite de Navarre, in preference to the surname, is a
feature of the literary-critical tradition), the use of the first person
singular, the `I', in writing is itself an important gesture, or rather
a construct, the creation of an authoritative voice for a woman.
This is vividly conveyed in a passage of `The Mutation of Fortune',
in which Christine, become a widow, is symbolically transformed
into a man, her voice deepening so that she can pursue the career
of a professional writer.

    Francois Villon, though his life was brief and his writings few,
has commanded a place of choice in French letters since the 15th
century, reprinted continuously since the Renaissance, when he
was popularized by the poet Clement Marot (1496-1544), who
recognized in Villon a precursor both in lyricism and misfortune.
Villon is the quintessential poete maudit ('the accursed poet',
or poet with endless bad luck). His mythic life, very much
embellished, has been the subject of a half-dozen films, and his
poems have often been put to music - in 1953, Georges Brassens
recorded a musical setting of Villon's `Ballad of Ladies of Olden
Days' (Ballade des dames du tempsjadis). A student, poet,
thief, and convicted murderer, Villon may be called the first of
a long series of criminal protagonists (whom we see later in the picaresque novel). Although many, if not most, French poets have
been middle or upper class, there is a persistent attraction in the
lyric tradition to the marginal (perhaps precisely to compensate
for the rigid social stratification of society).

    Villon sets the pattern for much subsequent French poetry
in which the passing of time and the coming of death are the
overwhelming themes, linked to concrete details of life in Paris. The main character, the poet, defines himself as a creature whose
ephemeral existence is measured by the fragility of the world
around him, as in `The Ballad of Ladies', which gave the world the
ubiquitous refrain, `Where are the snows of yesteryear?' (Mais ou
sont les neiges d'antan?). Despite the anti-heroic nature of Villon's
self-description as literate singer living on the fringes of society (a
persona very welcome to such 19th-century successors as Nerval
and Baudelaire), there is much in this description that parallels
the life of a saint, for the saint also lives in the constant presence
of death, in abjection, and in disillusion.

    In the poem known as the Balade des pendus', Villon takes his
typically elegiac stance. Here is the first stanza.

    [Brother humans who live after us / Do not harden your hearts
against us, / For if you take pity on us wretches, / God will more
quickly have mercy on you. / You see us here, strung up, five or
six / As for the flesh, which we have too much fattened / It is long
ago devoured and rotted, / And we the bones are becoming ash
and dust. / At our misfortune let no one laugh: / But pray to God
that He forgive us all!]

     



The Renaissance, renewing contact with antiquity, challenged
French cultural identity and the identity of each individual in
France. For France and Frenchness, the cultural vitality of Italy
was a source of emulation and of anxiety. The odd reversal
that constituted Renaissance culture meant that the recent
achievement of French writers, painters, architects, and musicians
was increasingly seen as out of date, while the much older literary,
philosophical, and artistic legacy