French poetry

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French poetry (French: Poésie française) is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.

French prosody and poetics

The modern

metric lengths are the ten-syllable line (decasyllable), the eight-syllable line (octosyllable) and the twelve-syllable line (the so-called "alexandrin
").

In traditional French poetry, all permissible

h aspiré" counts as a consonant). When it falls at the end of a line, the mute "e" is hypermetrical (outside the count of syllables). (For more on pronunciation of French, see French phonology
).

The ten-syllable and 12-syllable lines are generally marked by a regular syntactical pause, called a "césure" (

cesura
):

  • The ten-syllable line is often broken into syntactical groups as 5-5, 4-6, or 6-4.
  • The alexandrine is broken into two six-syllable groups; each six-syllable group is called a "hémistiche".

In traditional poetry, the césure cannot occur between two words that are syntactically linked (such as a subject and its verb), nor can it occur after an unelided mute e. (For more on poetic meter, see

Poetic meter
.)

For example:

Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant
d'une femme inconnue et que j'aime et qui m'aime...

(Paul Verlaine, "Mon rêve familier", from Poèmes saturniens)

The verses are alexandrines (12 syllables). The mute e in "d'une" is pronounced and is counted in the syllables (whereas the mute e's at the end of "rêve", "étrange", "femme" and "j'aime"—which are followed by vowels—are elided and hypermetrical); the mute e at the end of "qui m'aime" is hypermetrical (this is a so-called "

feminine rhyme
"). No word occurs across the sixth to seventh syllable in both lines, thus creating the cesura.

The rules of classical French poetry (from the late 16th to the 18th century) also put forward the following:

  • the encounter of two unelided and awkward vowel sounds ("
    hiatus
    ") -- such as "il a à"—was to be avoided;
  • the alternance of masculine and
    feminine rhymes
    (a feminine rhyme ends in a mute e) was mandated;
  • rhymes based on words that rhymed, but that—in their spellings—had dissimilar endings (such as a plural in s or x and a singular word) were prohibited (this was the "rhyme for the eye" rule);
  • a word could not be made to rhyme with itself;
  • in general, "
    enjambement
    " (in which the syntax of a sentence does not finish at the end of a line, but continues on into the next verse) was to be avoided.

For more on rhymes in French poetry, see

Rhyme in French
.

Poetic forms
developed by medieval French poets include:

Other poetic forms found in French poetry:

History of French poetry

Medieval

Main article: Medieval French literature

As is the case in other literary traditions,

romances ("roman", such as the tales of King Arthur written by Chrétien de Troyes) were usually written in octosyllabic rhymed couplets
.

Medieval French lyric poetry was indebted to the poetic and cultural traditions in Southern France and

Provençal literature
.

By the late 13th century, the poetic tradition in France had begun to develop in ways that differed significantly from the troubadour poets, both in content and in the use of certain fixed forms. The new poetic (as well as musical: some of the earliest medieval music has lyrics composed in Old French by the earliest composers known by name) tendencies are apparent in the

rondeaux and other new secular forms of poetry and music (mostly anonymous, but with several pieces by Philippe de Vitry who would coin the expression Ars nova [new art, or new technique] to distinguish the new musical practice from the music of the immediately preceding age). The best-known poet and composer of ars nova secular music and chansons was Guillaume de Machaut. (For more on music, see medieval music ; for more on music in the period after Machaux, see Renaissance music
).

French poetry continued to evolve in the 15th century.

Christine de Pisan was one of the most prolific writers of her age; her "Cité des Dames" is considered a kind of "feminist manifesto". François Villon was a student and vagabond whose two poetic "testaments" or "wills" are celebrated for their portrayal of the urban and university environment of Paris and their scabrous wit, satire and verbal puns. The image of Villon as vagabond poet seems to have gained almost mythic status in the 16th century, and this figure would be championed by poetic rebels of the 19th century and 20th centuries (see Poète maudit
).

Renaissance

Main article: French Renaissance literature

Poetry in the first years of the 16th century is characterised by the elaborate sonorous and graphic experimentation and skillful word games of a number of Northern poets (such as

Anacreon) would profoundly modify the French tradition. In this respect, the French poets Clément Marot and Mellin de Saint-Gelais are transitional figures: they are credited with some of the first sonnets
in French, but their poems continue to employ many of the traditional forms.

The new direction of poetry is fully apparent in the work of the humanist

Joachim Du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard
.

Around Ronsard, Du Bellay and

muses
akin to romantic passion, prophetic fervor or alcoholic delirium.

The forms that dominate the poetic production of the period are the

Remy Belleau's poem praising the oyster), the "blason
" of the female body (a poetic description of a body part), and propagandistic verse.

Several poets of the period—Jean Antoine de Baïf (who founded an "Académie de Poésie et Musique" in 1570),

poetic meters; these experiments were called "vers mesurés" and "prose mesuré" (for more, see the article "musique mesurée
").

Although the royal court was the center of much of the century's poetry,

Pernette du Guillet, Olivier de Magny and Pontus de Tyard. Scève's Délie, objet de plus haulte vertu - composed of 449 ten syllable ten line poems (dizains) and published with numerous engraved emblems - is exemplary in its use of amorous paradoxes and (often obscure) allegory
to describe the suffering of a lover.

Poetry at the end of the century was profoundly marked by the civil wars: pessimism, dourness and a call for retreat from the world predominate (as in Jean de Sponde). However, the horrors of the war were also to inspire one Protestant poet, Agrippa d'Aubigné, to write a brilliant poem on the conflict:Les Tragiques.

Classical French poetry

Main articles:
French literature of the 18th century

Because of the new conception of "l'honnête homme" or "the honest or upright man", poetry became one of the principal modes of literary production of noble gentlemen and of non-noble professional writers in their patronage in the 17th century.

Poetry was used for all purposes. A great deal of 17th- and 18th-century poetry was "occasional", written to celebrate a particular event (a marriage, birth, military victory) or to solemnize a tragic occurrence (a death, military defeat), and this kind of poetry was frequent with gentlemen in the service of a noble or the king. Poetry was the chief form of 17th century theater: the vast majority of scripted plays were written in verse (see "Theater" below). Poetry was used in satires (Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux is famous for his "Satires" (1666)) and in epics (inspired by the Renaissance epic tradition and by Tasso) like Jean Chapelain's La Pucelle.

Although French poetry during the reign of Henri IV and Louis XIII was still largely inspired by the poets of the late

hiatus, sentences clauses spilling over into the next line "enjambement", neologisms
constructed from Greek words, etc.). The later 17th century would see Malherbe as the grandfather of poetic classicism.

Poetry came to be a part of the social games in noble salons (see "salons" above), where

Marinism
in Italy) -- the use of highly metaphorical (sometimes obscure) language, the purification of socially unacceptable vocabulary—was tied to this poetic salon spirit and would have an enormous impact on French poetic and courtly language. Although "préciosité" was often mocked (especially in the later 1660s when the phenomenon had spread to the provinces) for its linguistic and romantic excesses (often linked to a misogynistic disdain for intellectual women), the French language and social manners of the 17th century were permanently changed by it.

From the 1660s, three poets stand out. Jean de La Fontaine gained enormous celebrity through his Aesop inspired "Fables" (1668–1693) which were written in an irregular verse form (different meter lengths are used in a poem). Jean Racine was seen as the greatest tragedy writer of his age. Finally, Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux became the theorizer of poetic classicism: his "Art poétique" (1674) praised reason and logic (Boileau elevated Malherbe as the first of the rational poets), believability, moral usefulness and moral correctness; it elevated tragedy and the poetic epic as the great genres and recommended imitation of the poets of antiquity.

"Classicism" in poetry would dominate until the pre-romantics and the French Revolution.

From a technical point of view, the poetic production from the late 17th century on increasingly relied on stanza forms incorporating rhymed couplets, and by the 18th century fixed-form poems – and, in particular, the sonnet – were largely avoided. The resulting versification – less constrained by meter and rhyme patterns than Renaissance poetry – more closely mirrored prose.[1]

Nineteenth-century

Main article:
French literature of the 19th century

French poetry from the first half of the century was dominated by Romanticism, associated with such authors as Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, and Gérard de Nerval. The effect of the romantic movement would continue to be felt in the latter half of the century in wildly diverse literary developments, such as "realism", "symbolism", and the so-called fin de siècle "decadent" movement (see below). Victor Hugo was the outstanding genius of the Romantic School and its recognized leader. He was prolific alike in poetry, drama, and fiction. Other writers associated with the movement were the austere and pessimistic Alfred de Vigny, Théophile Gautier a devotee of beauty and creator of the "Art for art's sake" movement, and Alfred de Musset, who best exemplifies romantic melancholy.

By the middle of the century, an attempt to be objective was made in poetry by the group of writers known as the

aesthetic theories
would also have an influence on the symbolists).

The naturalist tendency to see life without illusions and to dwell on its more depressing and sordid aspects appears in an intensified degree in the immensely influential poetry of Charles Baudelaire, but with profoundly romantic elements derived from the Byronic myth of the anti-hero and the romantic poet.

The poetry of Baudelaire and much of the literature in the latter half of the century (or "

decadent" for their lurid content or moral vision. In a similar vein, Paul Verlaine used the expression "poète maudit" ("accursed poet") in 1884 to refer to a number of poets like Tristan Corbière, Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud who had fought against poetic conventions and suffered social rebuke or had been ignored by the critics. But with the publication of Jean Moréas "Symbolist Manifesto" in 1886, it was the term symbolism
which was most often applied to the new literary environment.

The writers

Emile Verhaeren, Georges Rodenbach and Maurice Maeterlinck and others have been called symbolists, although each author's personal literary project was unique.[2]

From a technical point of view, the Romantics were responsible for a return to (and sometimes a modification of) many of the fixed-form poems used during the 15th and 16th centuries, as well as for the creation of new forms. The sonnet however was little used until the Parnassians brought it back into favor,[3] and the sonnet would subsequently find its most significant practitioner in Charles Baudelaire. The traditional French sonnet form was however significantly modified by Baudelaire, who used 32 different forms of sonnet with non-traditional rhyme patterns to great effect in his Les Fleurs du mal.[4]

Twentieth-century

Main article:
French literature of the 20th century

Guillaume Apollinaire radicalized the Baudelairian poetic exploration of modern life in evoking planes, the Eiffel Tower and urban wastelands, and he brought poetry into contact with cubism through his "Calligrammes", a form of visual poetry. Inspired by Rimbaud, Paul Claudel used a form of free verse to explore his mystical conversion to Catholicism. Other poets from this period include: Paul Valéry, Max Jacob (a key member of the group around Apollinaire), Pierre Jean Jouve (a follower of Romain Rolland's "Unanism"), Valery Larbaud (a translator of Whitman and friend to Joyce), Victor Segalen (friend to Huysmans and Claudel), Léon-Paul Fargue (who studied with Stéphane Mallarmé and was close to Valéry and Larbaud).

The First World War generated even more radical tendencies. The

Baudelaire) and promoted an anti-bourgeois philosophy (particularly with regards to sex and politics) which would later lead most of them to join the communist party. Other writers associated with surrealism include: Jean Cocteau, René Crevel, Jacques Prévert, Jules Supervielle, Benjamin Péret, Philippe Soupault, Pierre Reverdy, Antonin Artaud (who revolutionized theater), Henri Michaux and René Char
. The surrealist movement would continue to be a major force in experimental writing and the international art world until the Second World War.

The effects of surrealism would later also be felt among authors who were not strictly speaking part of the movement, such as the poet Alexis Saint-Léger Léger (who wrote under the name Saint-John Perse), the poet Edmond Jabès (who came to France in 1956 when the Jewish population was expelled from his native Egypt) and Georges Bataille. The Swiss writer Blaise Cendrars was close to Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, Max Jacob and the artists Chagall and Léger, and his work has similarities with both surrealism and cubism.

Poetry in the post-war period followed a number of interlinked paths, most notably deriving from surrealism (such as with the early work of

language poetry
movement.

Important French and Francophone poets

Middle Ages

(includes both trouvères and troubadours)

Sixteenth century

Seventeenth century

Eighteenth century

Nineteenth century

Twentieth century

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Morier, p.385.
  2. ^ For more on the symbolist poets, see Huston and Houston.
  3. ^ Morier, 385. Vigny wrote no sonnets; Hugo only wrote 3.
  4. ^ Monier, 390-393. Morier terms these sonnets faux sonnets, or "false sonnets"

References

External links
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