Landmarks in French Literature by Giles Lytton Strachey
page 16 of 173 (09%)
page 16 of 173 (09%)
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which begins, in effect, what may be called the distinctively _modern_
literature of France, differs in two striking respects from that of the Middle Ages. Both in their attitude towards art and in their attitude towards thought, the great writers of the Renaissance inaugurated a new era in French literature. The new artistic views of the age first appeared, as was natural, in the domain of poetry. The change was one towards consciousness and deliberate, self-critical effort. The medieval poets had sung with beauty; but that was not enough for the poets of the Renaissance: they determined to sing not only with beauty, but with care. The movement began in the verse of MAROT, whose clear, civilized, worldly poetry shows for the first time that tendency to select and to refine, that love of ease and sincerity, and that endeavour to say nothing that is not said well, which were to become the fundamental characteristics of all that was best in French poetry for the next three hundred years. In such an exquisite little work of art as his epistle in three-syllabled verse--'À une Damoyselle Malade', beginning-- Ma mignonne, Je vous donne Le bonjour, we already have, in all its completeness, that tone of mingled distinction, gaiety and grace which is one of the unique products of the mature poetical genius of France. But Marot's gift was not wide enough for the voluminous energies of the age; and it was not until a generation later, in the work of the _Pléiade_--a group of writers of whom RONSARD was the chief, and who flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century--that the poetical spirit of the French Renaissance |
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