history of French Poetry

LYRIC POETRY

THE origins of French lyric poetry are obscure,1 and even
the specimens of mediæval literature preserved to us do
not represent the early forms. We hear, but do not know
much, of primitive satirical or religious songs. It is surmised
that the lyric matter is largely derived from the early spring
festivities, or celebrations of the renouveau called the chants de
mai, of which, indeed, we have actual descendants in the popular
May-day festivals and crownings of the May-queen known to
children of today. It was suggested by Gaston Paris that in
remote days spring songs and dances became popular among
the maidens and married women who, indulging for a brief
period in harmless and playful Saturnalia, sang of love and eman­
cipation from convention and restraint, perhaps with a freedom
of speech which might seem surprising to those who forget the
absence of reticence in olden times and the somewhat similar
nature cult in the songs of the Athenian rural celebrations
portrayed in the Acharnians of Aristophanes. These songs of
spring, or reverdies, developed, if the theory is well founded, as a
combination of dances and songs of May and calls to love by
girls. Perhaps in some borderland between north and south,
in Poitou or Limousin, in the vicinity of those districts where
courtly life and love were to have their home, these songs
gradually acquired a more aristocratic form and thus gave rise
to the great outburst of courtly lyric poetry of the south, the
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1 As in the case of epic and of romance the theories concerning the
origins of lyric poetry may be found summarised in Voretzsch Einfüh­
rung, Chap. V.

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Publication Information: Book Title: A History of French Literature. Contributors: C. H. Conrad Wright - author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1912. Page Number: 41.