Chansons de Geste and Historical Poems.—Northern France remains emphatically the native country of the chanson de geste; but, although in the south different social conditions, a more delicate taste, and a higher state of civilization prevented a similar profusion of tales of war and heroic deeds, Provencal literature has some highly important specimens of this class. The first place belongs to Girart de Roussillon, a poem of ten thousand lines, which relates the struggles of Charles Martel with his powerful vassal the Burgundian Gerard of Roussillon. The existing recension seems to have originated on the borders of Limousin and Poitou; but it is a recast of an older poem no longer extant, probably either of French or at least Burgundian origin. To Limousin also seems to belong the poem of Aigar and Maurin (end of the 12th century). Of less heroic character is the poem of Daurel and Beton (first half of the 13th century). Midway between legend and his tory may be classified the Provencal Chanson of Antioch, a mere fragment of which, 700 verses in extent, has been recovered in Madrid and published in Archives de l'Orient latin, vol. ii. This poem (see G. Paris, in Romania, xxii. 358), is one of the sources of the Spanish compilation La gran conquista de Ultramar. To history proper belongs the Chanson of the crusade against the Albigensians, which, in its present state, is composed of two poems one tacked to the other : the first, containing the events from the beginning of the crusade till 1213, is the work of a cleric named William of Tudela, a moderate supporter of the crusaders; the second, from 1213 to 1218, is by a vehement opponent of the enterprise. The language and style of the two parts are no less different than the opinions. Finally, about 1280, Guillaume Ane lier, a native of Toulouse, composed, in the chanson de geste form, a poem on the war carried on in Navarre by the French in 1276 and 1277. It is an historical work of little literary merit. All these poems are in the form of chansons de geste, viz. in stanzas of indefinite length, with a single rhyme. Gerard of Roussillon, Aigar and Maurin and Daurel and Beton are in lines of ten, the others in lines of twelve syllables. The peculiarity of the versification in Gerard is that the pause in the line occurs after the sixth syl lable, and not, as is usual, after the fourth.
Narrative Poems.—We possess but three Provencal romances of adventure : Jaufre (composed in the middle of the 13th cen tury and dedicated to a king of Aragon, possibly James I.), Blan din of Cornwall and Guillem de la Barra. Connected with the romance of adventure is the novel (in Provencal novas, always in the plural), which is originally an account of an event "newly" happened. Some of those novels which have come down to us may be ranked with the most graceful works in Provencal litera ture ; two are from the pen of the Catalan author Raimon Vidal de Besahl. One, the Castia-gilos (the chastisement of the jealous man), is a treatment, not easily matched for elegance, of a fre quently-handled theme—the story of the husband who, in order to entrap his wife, takes the disguise of the lover whom she is ex pecting and receives with satisfaction blows intended, as he thinks, for him whose part he is playing ; the other, The Judgment of Love, is the recital of a question of the law of love, departing con siderably from the subjects usually treated in the novels. Mention may also be made of the novel of The Parrot by Arnaut de Car cassonne, in which the principal character is an eloquent parrot, who assists the amorous enterprises of his master. Novels came to be extended to the proportions of a long romance. Flamenca, which belongs to the novel type, has still over eight thousand lines, though the only ms. of it has lost some leaves both at the beginning and at the end. This poem, composed in all probability in 1234, is the story of a lady who by very ingenious devices, not unlike those employed in the Miles gloriosus of Plautus, eludes the vigilance of her jealous husband. No book in mediaeval litera ture betokens so much quickness of intellect or is so instructive in regard to the manners and usages of polite society in the 13th century. From the south of France the novel spread into Cata
lonia, where we find in the 14th century a number of novels in verse very similar to the Provencal ones, and into Italy, where in general the prose form has been adopted.
Didactic and Religious Poetry.—The more important works are: Daude de Prades (early century), Auzels cassadors, one of the best sources for the study of falconry; a translation by Rai mon d'Avignon (about A.D. I200) of Rogier of Parme's "Surgery" (Romania, x. 63 and 496) ; the Boethius poem (unfortunately a mere fragment) already mentioned as one of the oldest documents of the language, and really a remarkable work; an early (12th century?) metrical translation of the famous Disticha de moribus of Dionysius Cato (Romania, xxv. 98 and xxix. 445). More original are some compositions of an educational character known under the name of ensenhamenz, and, in some respects, com parable to the English nurture-books. The most interesting are those of Garin le Brun (12th century), Arnaut de Mareuil, Arnaut Guilhem de Marsan, Amanieu de Sescas. Their general object is the education of ladies of rank. Of metrical lives of saints we possess about a dozen (see Histoire litteraire de la France, vol. xxxii.), among which two or three deserve a particular attention: the life of Sancta Fides (A. Thomas and E. Hoepffner's editions), written early in the 12th century ; the life of St. Enimia (13th century), by Bertran of Marseilles (C. Brunel's edition) and that of St. Honorat of Lerins by Raimon Feraud (about 1300), which is distinguished by variety and elegance of versification. but it is almost entirely a translation from Latin. Lives of saints (St. Andrew, St. Thomas the Apostle, St. John the Evangelist) form a part of a poem, strictly didactic, which stands out by reason of its great extent (nearly 35,00o verses) and the somewhat original conception of its scheme--the Breviari d'amor, a vast encyclo paedia, on a theological basis, composed by the Minorite friar Matfre Ermengaut of Beziers ca. 1288-1300.
Drama.—The dramatic literature of southern France con sists of mysteries and miracle plays seldom exceeding two or three thousand lines, which never developed into the enormous dramas of northern France, whose acting required several consecutive days. Generally those plays belong to the 15th century or to the i6th. Still, a few are more ancient and may be ascribed to the 14th century or even to the end of the 13th. The oldest appears to be the Mystery of St. Agnes (edited by Bartsch, 1869), written in Arles. Somewhat more recent, but not later than the beginning of the 14th century, is a Passion of Christ (not yet printed) and a mystery of the Marriage of the Virgin, which is partly adapted from a French poem of the 13th century (see Romania xvi. 71). A manuscript, discovered in private archives (printed by Jeanroy and Teulie, 1893), contains not less than 16 short mysteries, three founded on the Old Testament, 13 on the New. They were written in Rouergue and are partly imitated from French mys teries. At Manosque (Basses Alpes) was found a fragment of a Lulus sancti Jacobi, inserted in a register of notarial deeds (printed by C. Arnaud, Marseilles, 1858). The region comprised between the Rhone and the Var seems to have been particularly fond of representations of this sort, to judge by the entries in the local records (see Romania xxvii. 40o). At the close of the 15th and the beginning of the i6th centuries many mysteries were played in that part of Dauphine which corresponds to the present department of Hautes-Alpes. Five mysteries of this district, com posed and played somewhere about i5oo (the mysteries of St. Eustace, of St. Andrew, of St. Pons, of SS. Peter and Paul and of St. Anthony of Vienne), have come down to us, and have been edited by Abbe Fazy (1883), the four others by Canon P. Guillaume (1883-1888). The influence of the contemporary French sacred drama may to some extent be traced in them.