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17th-century French literature

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By Hyacinthe Rigaud (1701)

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French literature of the 17th century spans the reigns of Henry IV of France, the Regency of Marie de Medici, Louis XIII of France, the Regency of Anne of Austria (and the civil war called the Fronde) and the reign of Louis XIV of France. The literature of this period is often equated with the Classicism of Louis XIV's long reign during which France was beyond question the leading country in Europe (both politically and culturally) and the classical ideals of order, clarity, sense of proportion, and good taste were expounded -- but the century produced in fact far more than just the classicist masterpieces of Jean Racine and Madame de Lafayette.

For the visual arts of the seventeenth century in France, see French Baroque and Classicism.


Society and literature in 17th century France

"Les ruelles" and "Les précieuses"

Henri IV's court was considered by contemporaries as a rude one, lacking in the Italianate sophistication of the court of the Valois kings; it also lacked a queen, which had traditionally been the meeting point for authors and poets. Henri's literary tastes seemed largely limited to the chivalric novel Amadis of Gaul. Literary culture was thus decentralized in the first half of the century and salons formed around many noble and upper class women, such as Marie de Medici and Marguerite de Valois. By the 1620s, the most famous gatherings were at the Hôtel de Rambouillet by Madame de Rambouillet and the rival salon that gathered around Madeleine de Scudéry.

Although frequently called "salons" today, the word salon first appears in French in 1664 (from the Italian word sala, used to designate the large reception hall of Italian mansions). Literary gatherings before this were often referred to by using the name of the room in which they occured, like cabinet, réduit, ruelle and alcôve. Before the end of the 17th century, these gatherings were frequently held in the bedroom (treated as a form of drawing room): nobels, lying on their bed, would receive close friends who would sit on chairs or stools around them (this practice is even found with Louis XIV). The expression ruelle, literally meaning "little street", designates the space betweeen a bed and the wall in a bedroom, and more generally the entire bedroom; it was used commonly to designate the gatherings of the "précieuses", the much maligned (often unfairly) intellectual and literary circles that formed around women in the first half of the 17th century.

For more information on literary gatherings, see Salon (gathering).

Classicism

In an attempt to restrict the proliferation of private centers of intellectual or literary life, so as to impose the royal court as the artistic center of France, Cardinal Richelieu took an existing literary gathering and designated it at the official Académie française in 1634. This process of state control of the arts and literature would be expanded even more during the reign of Louis XIV.

The expression classicism as it applies to literature implies notions of order, clarity, moral purose and good taste. Many of these notions are directly inspired by the works of Aristotle and Horace and by classical Greek and Roman masterpieces.

In theater, a play should follow the Three Unities:

  • Unity of place : the setting should not change. In practice, this lead to the frequent "Castle, interior". Battles take place off stage.
  • Unity of time: ideally the entire play should take place in 24 hours.
  • Unity of action: there should be one central story and no secondary ones.

Sometimes grouped with these is the notion that no character should appear unexpectedly late in the drama. All of these rules effected the baroque "tragi-comedy" most: no longer were possible the flying horses, chiralric battles and magical trips to foreign lands.

Linked with the theatrical unities are the following concepts:

  • "Les bienséances" : literature should respect moral codes and good taste; nothing should be presented that flaunts these codes, even if they are historical events.
  • "La vraisemblance" : actions should be believable. When historical events contradicte believability, some critics counselled the latter. The criterion of believability was sometimes also used to criticize soliloquy, and in late classical plays characters are almost invarriably supplied with confidents (valets, friends, nurses) to whom they reveal their emotions.
  • Finally, literature and art should consciously following Horace's precept "to please and educate" (aut delectare aut prodesse est).

These "rules" or "codes" were seldom completely followed,and many of the centuries masterpieces broke these rules intentionally to highten emotional effect:

  • Corneille's "Le Cid" was criticised for having Rodrigue appear before Chimène after having killed her father, a violation of moral codes.
  • "La Princesse de Clève"'s revelation to his husband of her adulterous feelings for the Duc de Nemour was criticized for being unbelievable.

In the second half of the century there errupted an intellectual debate -- the debate of the Anciens et Modernes -- on whether the arts and literature of the modern era had acheived more than the illustrious writers and artists of the past.

Louis XIV's reign is also synonymous with the construction of the château of Versailles. In his youth, Louis XIV had suffered during the civil and parliamentary insurrection known as the Fronde. By relocating to Versailles, he could avoid the dangers of Paris; he could also keep his eye very closely on the affairs of the nobles and could play them off against each other and against the newer "noblesse de robe". Versailles became a gilded cage: to leave spelled disaster for a noble, for all official charges and appointments were made there. A strict etiquette was imposed. A word or glance from the king could make or destroy a career. The king himself followed a strict daily program, and there was little privacy. Through his wars and the glory of Versailles, Louis became, to a certain degree, the arbiter of taste and power in Europe and both his château and the etiquette in Versailles were copied by the other European courts. Yet the difficult wars at the end of his long reign and the religious problems created by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes made the last years dark ones.

Prose fiction

"Les Amours" and "Les histoires tragiques"

In France, the period following the Wars of Religion saw the appearance of a new form of narrative fiction – that some critics have since termed the “sentimental novel” – which very quickly became a literary sensation thanks to the enthusiasm of a reading public searching for delight after so many years of conflict.

These relatively short (and often realistic) novels of love (or “amours” as they are frequently called in the titles) included extensive examples of gallant letters and polite discourse, amorous dialogues, letters and poems inserted in the story; gallant conceits and other rhetorical figures. These texts played an important role in the elaboration of new modes of civility and discourse of the upper classes (leading to the notion of the noble "honnête homme"). None of these novels have been republished since the early part of the seventeenth century and they remain largely unknown today. Authors associated with "les Amours": Antoine de Nervèze, Nicolas Des Escuteaux and François Du Souhait.

Meanwhile, the tradition of the dark tale - coming from the tragic short story ("histoire tragique") associated with Bandello and frequently ending in suicide or murder - continued in the works of François de Rosset.

The Baroque novel

By 1610, the short novel of love had largely disappeared as tastes had returned to longer adventure novels ("romans d'aventures") using all the clichés of the genre: pirates, storms, kidnapped maidens. Both Nervèze and Des Escuteaux, in their later works, attempted multi-volume adventure novels, and over the next twenty years the priest Jean-Pierre Camus adapted the form to tell harrowing moral tales heavily influenced by the "histoire tragique". But the most well known of these long adventure novels is perhaps Polexandre (1629-49) by the young author Marin le Roy de Gomberville.

All of these authors were eclipsed however by the international success of Honoré d'Urfé’s immense novel l’Astrée (1607-1633) -- centered around the shepard Céladon and his love Astrée -- which combined a frame-tale device of characters meeting each other and telling their stories and philosophizing on love (a form derived from the ancient Greek novel "the Aethiopica" by Heliodorus of Emesa) and a pastoral setting (derived from the Spanish and Italian pastoral tradition from such writers as Jacopo Sannazaro, Jorge de Montemayor, Torquato Tasso and Giambattista Guarini) of noble and idealized shepards and maidens tending their sheep and falling in and out of love.

The influence of d'Urfé's novel was immense, especially in its discursive structure which permitted an infinite number of separate stories and characters to be introduced and their resolution to be constantly delayed for thousands of pages. D'Urfé's novel also promoted a rarified neo-platonism which differed profoundly with the frequent physicality of the knights in the Renaissance novel (such as Amadis of Gaul). The only element of d'Urfé's work which did not produce countless imitations was in its "roman pastoral" setting.

In passing, it should be mentined that the use of inserted stories within the novels of the following decades was also influenced by the international success of Miguel de Cervantes Exemplary Tales (a short story collection) and "Don Quixote de la Mancha" (in which Cervantes inserted a number of nearly autonomous stories).

In theorizing the origins of the novel, the early seventeenth century conceived of the novel as "an epic in prose", and in truth the epic poem at the end of the Renaissance had few thematic differences from the novel: novelistic love had spilled into the epic and adventurous knights had become the subject of novels. The novels from 1640 to 1660 would make this melding complete. These novels entended to multiple volumes and were structurally complicated, using the same techniques of inserted stories and tale-within-a-tale dialogues as d'Urfé. Often called "romans de longue haleine" (or "deep-breath books"), they usually took place in an ancient historical period like Rome, Egypt or ancient Persia, used historical characters (for this reason they are called "romans héroiques" heroic romances) and told the adventures of a series of perfect lovers separated by accident or misfortune to the four corners of the world. Unlike the chivalric romance, magical elements and creatures were relatively rare. Furthermore, there was a concentration in these works on psychological analysis and on moral and sentimental questions that the Renaissance novel lacked. Many of these novels were actually "romans à clé" which described actual contemporary relationships under disguised noevlistic names and characters. The most famous of these authors and novels are:

The Comic novel

The Novel of Classicism

By 1660, the multi-volume baroque historical novel had largely fallen out of fashion. The tendancy was for much shorter works ("nouvelles" or "petits romans") without the complex structure or adventurous elements (pirates, shipwrecks, kidnappings). When the action was placed in an historical setting, this was increasinglly a setting in the recent past, and although still filled with anacronisms, these novels showed an interest in historical detail. A number of these short novels recounted the "secret history" of a famous event (like Villedieu's "Annales galantes"), linking the action generally to an amorous intrigue; these were called "histoires galantes". Some of these short novels told stories of the contemporary world (like Préchac's "L'Illustre Parisienne").

An interest in love, psychological analysis, moral dilemmas and social constraints permeates these novels. These obsessions are also apparent in the anonymous Lettres d'une religieuse portugaise ("Letters of a Portugese Nun") (1668), attributed to Guilleragues, which were a major sensation when they were published, in part because of their perceived authenticity. These letters written by a scorned woman to her absent lover were a powerful representation of amorous passion with many similarities to the language of Racine.

Madame de Villedieu (her real name was Marie-Catherine Desjardins) was also the author of a unique longer work that represented (and satirized) the contemporary world via the "mémoires" of young woman telling her amorous and economic hardships: Mémoires de la vie d'Henriette Sylvie de Molière (1672-1674)

Important "nouvelles classiques":

The most famous of all of these is clearly Madame de Lafayette's La princesse de Clèves. Reduced to essentially three characters, the short novel tells the story of a married noble woman in the time of Henri II who falls in love with another man, but who reveals her passion to her husband. Although the novel includes a couple of inserted stories, on the whole the narration concentrates on the unspoken doubts and fears of the two individuals living in a social setting dominated by etiquette and moral correctness; despite the historical setting, Lafayette was clearly describing her contemporary world. The psychological analysis is close to the pessisim of La Rochefoucauld, and the abnegation of the characters leads ultimately to tragedy. For all of its force however, Madame de Lafayette's novel is not the first to have a recent historical setting or psychological depth, as some critics state; these elements can be found in novels of the decade before, and in fact are already present in certain of the "Amours" at the beginning of the century.

The novel at the end of the century

Poetry

Theater

Theaters and theatrical companies

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, public theatrical representations in Paris were under the control of guilds, but in the last decades of the sixteenth century only one of these continued to exist: although "les Confrères de la Passion" no longer had the right to perform mystery plays (1548), they were given exclusive rights to oversee all theatrical productions in the capital and rented out their theater (the Hôtel de Bourgogne) to theatrical troups at a high price. In 1599, this guild abandonded its privilege which permitted theaters and theatrical companies to proliferate in the capital.

In addition to public theaters, plays were produced in private residences, before the court and in the university. In the first half of the century, the public public, the humanist theater of the colleges and the theater performed at court showed extremely divergent tastes. For example, while the tragicomedy was fashionable at the court in the first decade, the public was more interested in tragedy.

The early theaters in Paris were often placed in existing structures like tennis courts; their stages were extremely narrow, and facilities for sets and scene changes were often non-existant (this would encourage the development of the unity of place). Eventually, theaters would develop systems of elaborate machines and decors, fashionable for the chevaleresque flights of knights found in the tragicomedies of the first half of the century.

In the early part of the century, the theater perofrmances took place twice a week starting at two or three o'clock. Theatrical representations often encompased several works, beginning with a comic prologue, then a tragedy or tragicomedy, then a farce and finally a song. Nobles sometimes sat on the side of the stage during the performance. Given that it was impossible to lower the house lights, the audience was always aware of each other and spectators were notably vocal during performances. The place directly in front of the stage, without seats -- the "parterre" -- was reserved for men, but being the cheapest tickets, the parterre was usually a mix of social groups. Elegant people watched the show from the galleries. Before 1630, an honest woman did not go to the theater.

Unlike England, France placed no restrictions on women performing on stage, but the career of actors of either sex was seen a morally wrong by the Catholic church (actors were excommunicated) and by the ascetic religious Janseanist movement. Actors typically had fantastic stage names that described typical roles or stereotypical characters.

In addition to scripted comedies and tragedies, Parisians were also great fans of the Italian acting troup who performed their Commedia dell'arte, a kind of improvised theater based on types. The characters from the Commedia dell'arte would have a profound effect on French theater, and one finds echoes of them in the braggarts, fools, lovers, old men and wily servants that populate French theater.

Finally, it should be noted that opera came to France in the second half of the century.

The most important theaters and troups in Paris:

  • Hôtle de Bourgogne - housing the troup Vallerin-Lecomte, which became "Troupe Royale" in 1628. Actors included: Turlupin, Gros-Guillaume, Gautier-Gargouille, Floridor, Monfleury, la Champmeslé.
  • Théâtre du Marais (1600-1673) - a troup with the actor Jodelet.
  • 'La troupe de Monsieur" - under the protection of Louis XIV's brother, this was Molière's first Paris troup. They moved to several theaters in Paris (the Petit-Bourbon, the Palais-Royal, the Hôtel Guénégaud) before combining with the Théâtre du Marais.
  • La Comédie française - in 1689 Louis XIV united the Hôtel de Bourgogne and the Hôtel Guénégaud into one official troup.

Outside of Paris, in the suburbs and in the provinces, there were many wandering theatrical troups. Molière got his start in a such a troup.

The royal court and other noble houses were also important organizers of theatrical representations, court ballets, mock battles and other sorts of "divertissement" for their festivities, and in the some cases the roles of dancers and actors were held by the nobles themselves. The early years at Versailles -- before the massive expansion of the residence -- were entirely consacrated to such pleasures, and similar spectacles continued throughout the reign. Engravings show Louis XIV and the court seating outside before the "Cour du marbre" of Versailles watching the performance of a play.

Baroque theater

French theater from the seventeenth century is often reduced to three great names -- Pierre Corneille, Molière and Jean Racine -- and to the triumph of "classicism"; the truth is however far more complicated.

Theater at the beginning of the century was dominiated by the genres and dramatists of the previous generation. Most influential in this respect was Robert Garnier. Although the royal court had grown tired of the tragedy (preferring the more escapist tragicomedy), the theater going public prefered the former. This would change in the 1630s and 1640s when, influenced by the long baroque novels of the period, the tragicomedy -- a heroic and magical adventure of knights and maidens -- became the dominant genre. The amazing success of Corneille's "Le Cid" in 1637 and "Horace" in 1640 would bring the tragedy back into fashion, where it would remain for the rest of the century.

Regular comedies (i.e. comedies in five acts modeled on Plautus or Terence) were less frequent, as the comedic element of the early stage was dominated by the farce, the satirical monologue and by the Italian commedia dell'arte. Jean Rotrou and Pierre Corneille would return to the regular comedy shortly before 1630.

Corneille's tragedies were strangely un-tragic (his first version of "Le Cid" was even listed as a tragicomedy), for they had happy endings. In his theoretical works on theater, Corneille redefined both comedy and tragedy around the following suppositions:

  • The stage -- in both comedy and tragedy -- should feature noble characters (this would eliminate many low-charcacters, typical of the farce, from Corneille's comedies)
  • Tragedy deals with affairs of the state (wars, dynastic marriages); comedy deals with love. For a work to be tragic, it need not have a tragic ending.
  • Although Aristotle says that catharsis (purgation of emotion) should be the goal of tragedy, this is only an ideal.

The history of the public and critical reaction to Corneille's "Le Cid" can be found in other articles (he was criticized for his use of sources, for his violation of good taste, and for other irregularities that did not conform to Aristotian or Horacian rules), but its impact was stunning. Cardinal Richelieu asked the newly formed Académie française to investigate and pronounce on the criticisms (it was the Academy's first official judgement), and the controversy reveals a growing attempt to control and regulate theater and theatrical forms. This would be the beginning of seventeenth century "classicism".

Corneille continued to write plays through 1674 (mainly tragedies, but also something he called "heroic comedies") and many continued to be successes, but the success of Jean Racine from the late 1660s signaled the end of his preeminence.

Select list of dramatists and their plays, with indication of their genre (dates are often approximative):

  • Antoine de Montchrestien (c.1575-1621)
    • Sophonisbe a/k/a La Cathaginoise a/k/a La Liberté (tragedy) - 1596
    • La Reine d'Ecosse a/k/a L'Ecossaise (tragedy) - 1601
    • Aman (tragedy) - 1601
    • La Bergerie (pastoral) - 1601
    • Hector (tragedy) - 1604
  • Alexandre Hardy (1572-c.1632)
    • Scédase, ou l'hospitalité violée (tragedy) - 1624
    • La Force du sang (tragicomedy) - 1625 (the plot is taken from a Cervantes short story)
    • Lucrèce, ou l'Adultère puni (tragedy) - 1628
  • Théophile de Viau (1590-1626)
    • Les Amours tragiques de Pyrame et Thisbé (tragedy) - 1621
  • Honoré de Bueil, marquis de Racan (1589-1670)
    • Les Bergeries (pastoral) - 1625
  • Jean de Mairet (1604-1686)
    • La Sylve (pastoral tragicomedy) - c.1626
    • La Silvanire, ou La Morte vive (pastoral tragicomedy) - 1630
    • Les Galanteries du Duc d'Ossonne Vice-Roi de Naples (comedy) - 1632
    • La Sophonisbe (tragedy) - 1634
    • La Virginie (tragicomedy) - 1636
  • Jean Rotrou (1609-1650)
    • La Bague de l'oubli (comedy) - 1629
    • La Belle Alphrède (comedy) - 1639
    • Laure persécutée (tragicomedy) - 1637
    • Le Véritable saint Genest (tragedy) - 1645
    • Venceslas (tragicomedy) - 1647
    • Cosroès (tragedy) - 1648
  • Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)
    • Mélite (comedy) - 1629
    • Clitandre (tragicomedy, later changed to tragedy) - 1631
    • La Veuve (comedy) - 1631
    • La Place Royale (comedy) - 1633
    • Médée (tragedy) - 1635
    • L'Illusion comique (comedy) - 1636
    • Le Cid (tragicomedy, later changed to tragedy) - 1637
    • Horace (tragedy) - 1640
    • Cinna (tragedy) - 1640
    • Polyeucte ("Christian" tragedy) - c.1641
    • La Mort de Pompée (tragedy) - 1642
    • Le Menteur (comedy) - 1643
    • Rodogune, princesse des Parthes (tragedy) - 1644
    • Héraaclius, empereur d'Orient (tragedy) - 1647
    • Don Sanche d'Aragon ("heroic" comedy) - 1649
    • Nicomède (tragedy) - 1650
    • Sertorius (tragedy) - 1662
    • Sophonisbe (tragedy) - 1663
    • Othon (tragedy) - 1664
    • Tite et Bérénice ("heroic" comedy) - 1670
    • Suréna, général des Parthes (tragedy) - 1674

Theater under Louis XIV

From the 1660's on, two dramatists dominated French theater: Molière and Jean Racine.

Other genres

François de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) was a master of prose maxims, a form which the French have cultivated with special success. The theologian and orator Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) seemed to embody the spirit of authority, though posterity has accorded more attention to another religious writer, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), who, besides being a profound thinker, is a great satirist.

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