The Epic in France from Piron's La Louisiade (1745)
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x THE EPIC IN FRANCE FROM N" PIRON'S LA LOUISIADE (1745) TO CHATEAUBRIAND-IS LES MARTYRS (1809) Terrence Miles Pratt .d Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph. D. ' The University of Leeds, Department of French. October, 1978 MISSINGýºýi c- No v/v PRINT t THE EPIC IN FRANCE FROM PIRON'S LA'LOUISIADE (1745) TO CHATEAUBRIAND-1S LES MARTYRS (1809) Terrence Miles Pratt Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph. D. The University of Leeds, Department of French. October, 1978 SUMMARY This thesis has as its object to investigate the fate of'epic in France in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Piron's La Louisiade of 1745 and Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs of 1809 are chosen to indicate the precise delimitation of the period of study. Given the incidence of epic composition during these sixty-odd years, no attempt at completeness has been made but representative works are examined in sufficient number and detail to ensure an accurate idea of the genre. In the belief that an informed reading of epic is impossible without a knowledge of epic theory, Chapter One explores the substantial corpus of critical writing on the subject during the years under review. There is constant reference to previous critical opinion in an attempt to dis- cover to what extent the theory of epic remained faithful to the neo- classical norm in France. Following this necessary preliminary, Chapters Two to Four present a detailed analysis of the three major categories of this generic form. These latter comprise: the national historical epic, epics on the dis- covery and conquest of the New World and the biblical epic. The first and third categories represent a continuation of an established French tradition, whereas the second is innovatory and peculiar to the eighteenth century. Within these three chapters, each of which is therefore devoted to one class of epic, works are subjected to individual critical assess- ment and are normally treated in a chronological sequence based on subject- matter. In order to achieve an overall picture of epic practice, Chapter Five briefly charts the general features of creative epic writing in France from 1745 to 1809. The Conclusion evaluates the genre and offers some reasons for its failure. FOREWORD I began work on this thesis when I was appointed to the Barbier Fellowship in the Department of French at the University of Leeds and I should first like to express my thanks to Dr. Howard Evans for his encouragement and for his patient supervision of my researches. I should like to acknowledge three grants from the Research Fund of the University of Sheffield which enabled me to work in Paris. I am most grateful to Mrs. Annette Roberts for typing the thesis. CONTENTS SUI'IMARY i .. 0.4.0. ._0.0.0.0.,.... 0. FOREWORD ii .... .... .... .... .... iii CONTENTS .... .... to .... .. - .. .s iv INTRODUCTION .... .. to .... .... .. CHAPTER I THE THEORY OF EPIC 1 .... .... II THE NATIONAL HISTORICAL 76 CHAPTER EPIC .... CHAPTER III EPICS ON THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF THE NEW WORLD 141 .... .. to CHAPTER IV THE BIBLICAL EPIC 198 .... ... .. CHAPTER V THE EPIC GENRE 264 ... .... .... CONCLUSION 275 .... .... .... .... .. LIST OF EPICS 277 CHRONOLOGICAL .... .. - .... .. ' BIBLIOGRAPHY 278 .... .... .... .., .... INTRODUCTION This thesis is intended as a record and analysis of a much criticized aspect of French literature - namely, the heroic epic poem in the second half of the eighteenth century and the earliest years of the nineteenth. It should immediately be admitted, however, that no ambition to reverse the critical disdain of some two centuries animates the present study and the point must clearly be made at the outset. that the choice of the epic poetry of that period for discussion contains no implicit indication that it enjoys any particular literary merit. The justification for the investigation conducted here lies not, then, in the intrinsic excellence of the poetic product itself but rather in the fact that, without according due attention to epic poetry, an accurate estimation of the literary scene in France from, say, Voltaire to Chateaubriand cannot be obtained. A survey of con- temporary opinion in Chapter One, for example, establishes that during those years epic continued to receive widespread critical recognition as the supreme species of literature and the most meritori- ous goal of literary endeavour. Moreover, the thirty or so poems which are examined here - and which admittedly do not comprehend all the specimens of the genre between 1745 and 1809 - show that the sublime status of epic exercised an attraction which writers, despite the sobering example of their predecessors in the seventeenth century, were unable to resist. French epic poetry in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries therefore merits serious consideration on account of the high esteem heroic epic commanded among theorists of literature and the creative activity the desire to wear the ultimate literary crown V. 4 inspired in the world of letters. In this respect, the present thesis stands as an incidental corrective to the nescience and contempt of many modern scholars. High on the list of the misconceptions surrounding the subject must be placed the erroneous belief that the epic poem led an extremely tenuous existence in the Age of Reason. R6my Saisselin claimed recently that "the Epic posed serious problems for eighteenth- century poets : so many, indeed, that only one tried his hand at it, and he is hardly read for that particular accomplishment. "1 Jasinski, too, has written of French literature between 1750 and 1780 that Ville* popee disparatt, nul n'osant rivaliser avec la Henriade. "2 Yet such assertions, however wildly they underestimate the incidence of epic composition in the period, at least demonstrate some awareness of the phenomenon, whereas the total silence in which manuals of French literary history are wont to pass over eighteenth-century epic may well betoken greater ignorance. Even the perfunctory dismissal of the genre in. a few scornful sentences - the kindest fate with which it can expect to meet - betrays a fundamental failure to appreciate eighteenth-century literary values and aspirations and constitutes a striking instance of how easily the tastes and 1. R. G. Saisselin, The rule of reason and the ruses of the heart: a philosophical dictionary of classical French criticism, critics, and aesthetic issues (Cleveland : Case Western Reserve University Press, 1970), p. 79. 2. R. Jasinski, Histoire de la 1ittgrature francaise. Nouvelle edition. 2 vols. (Paris : Nizet, 1965-66), II, 84. vi. preoccupations of any age can become distorted in subsequent critical opinion. But whatever the satisfaction to be gleaned from taking to task individual twentieth-century literary historians, this thesis derives from another and less censorious motive. It has as its aim to present a detailed study of the epic poem in the later eighteenth-century In France and thereby to fill a lacuna in the history of post-Renaissance French epic poetry. M. P. Hagiwara has examined the various treatises on epic poetry written during the sixteenth century and compared them with some of the poems composed at the same time? A chapter on its sixteenth- century antecedents is also included in R. A. Sayce's illuminating book 4 on seventeenth-century biblical epic. A former research student of his, David Maskell, has produced a comprehensive account of the 5 historical epic in both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nineteenth-century French epic poetry has been equally well served. 3. M. P. Hagiwara, French epic poetry in the sixteenth century theory and practice (The Hague : Mouton, 1972). 4. R. A. Sayce, The French biblical epic in the seventeenth century (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1955). S. D. Maskell, The historical epic in France 1500-1700 (Oxford University Press, 1973). vii. In 1936, Henri Guillemin published two works which were concerned with 6 the genre. H. J. Hunt's superb investigation into nineteenth-century epic? appeared shortly after and was later followed by Leon Cellier's 8 volume on the French romantic epic. The heroic epic poem during the Enlightenment, however, has been considerably less favoured by scholars and O. R. Taylor's exhaustive critical edition of Voltaire's 9 Henriade stands as the only major contribution in the field. The wealth of information it contains makes Professor Taylor's tome an indispensable tool for any researcher into eighteenth-century French epic but references to the latter part of the period are necessarily limited and are largely confined to determining the practical and theoretical influence of Voltaire's poem. In the critical history of post-Renaissance French epic poetry, the years following the publication of the Henriade therefore remain untreated in any modern study and the desirability of repairing such a significant omission hopefully becomes self-evident. The precise 6. H. Guillemin, Lamartine : Les Visions" (Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 1936) and Le "Jocelyn" de Lamartine (Paris : Boivin, 1936). 7. H. J. Hunt, The epic in nineteenth-century France :a study in heroic and humanitarian poetry from "Les Martyrs" to "Les Siecles Morts" (Oxford : Blackwell, 1941). 8. L. Cellier, L'6pop6e romantique (Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1954). 9. O. R. Taylor, ed. Voltaire : La Henriade, 2nd edition (Geneve2 Institut et Musse Voltaire, 1970). viii. delimitation of that literary period also appears largely to suggest itself, so that the specific dates which initiate and terminate this inquiry do not represent a wholly arbitrary choice. Alexis Piron's celebration of the French victory at Fontenoy in his Louisiade of 1745 marks the revival of epic in France after nearly two decades of silence10 and must obviously inaugurate this % survey. The decision regarding the chronological terminus ad quern, however, was taken with rather more difficulty, in that heroic epics in the eighteenth-century manner continued to appear well into the nineteenth century.