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Chateaubriand—Critic of the French Renaissance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Carlos Lynes Jr
Carlos Lynes Jr*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

As a critic of French letters, Chateaubriand desired above all to inaugurate a new literature which, rejecting the eighteenth century of the philosophes, would rejoin the fruitful tradition of the golden age that had produced such masters as Bossuet and Racine. His aim was no uninspired copying of seventeenth-century forms, but rather the creation of fresh masterpieces informed with the Christian, dualistic conception of man's nature which had been disregarded by the anti-religious eighteenth-century followers of French classicism. New elements from the national and Christian heritage were to be introduced, but the essential was to be the revival of what Chateaubriand judged to be the true spirit of the grand siècle.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , June 1947 , pp. 422 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947

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References

1 Chateaubriand's personal conception of the seventeenth-century masters influenced a whole century's attitude toward these writers. Cf. my article, “Chateaubriand, Revitalizer of the French Classics,” Romanic Review, xxxi (1940), 355-363, and my book on Chateaubriand as a Critic of French Literature (Baltimore, 1946).

2 Génie du Christianisme, IIe partie, livre i, chapitre 5, in Œuvres complètes de Chateaubriand (Paris: Ladvocat, 1826-1831), xii, 32-33. All quotations from Chateaubriand's writings in this article are to this edition, except for the Essai sur la littérature anglaise, the Mémoires d'outre-tombe, and the Correspondance générale.

3 Ibid., 33-34.

4 Ibid., iii.iii.5, in Œuvres, xii, 37-38.

5 Ibid., ii.iv.3, in Œuvres, xii, 180.

6 Chateaubriand cited Ronsard on rare occasions, notably in the Mémoires d'outre-tombe (Paris: Garnier, n.d.), i, 413. Marcellus tells us in his Chateaubriand et son temps (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1858), p. 71, that the Mémoires d'outre-tombe reflect what Chateaubriand called his reading “à bâtons rompus,” and that at the time of writing this page he had just leafed through the poetry of Ronsard for distraction. But in the Études historiques (Œuvres, vter, 426-427), Chateaubriand mentions the “école artificielle et boursoufflée de Ronsard,” and in the Essai sur la littérature anglaise, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Didot, 1843), v, 52, he criticizes the poet for his affectation: “Ronsard est à sa manière une espèce de Shakespeare, non par son génie, non par son néologisme grec, mais par le tour forcé de sa phrase.”

7 Œuvres, vii, 279.

8 Etudes historiques, in Œuvres, vter, 393.

9 Ibid., 250-256.

10 Ibid., 256-257.

11 Ibid., 263.

12 Essai sur la littérature anglaise, p. 63.

13 Ibid., 52-53.

14 Ibid., 65. This judgment coincided with that of La Harpe in his Lycée, ou cours de littérature ancienne et moderne (Paris: Impr. de Crapelet, chez Lefèvre, libraire, 1816), iv, 30-43.

15 Cf. Pierre Villey, Rabelais et Marot (Paris: Champion, 1923), pp. 334-335.

16 Cited by Raymond Naves, Le Goût de Voltaire (Paris: Garnier, 1938), p. 346.

17 Cited by Villey, op. cit., p. 335.

18 Ibid., p. 335.

19 Ibid., p. 335.

20 Cited by Naves, op. cit., p. 346.

21 Ibid., pp. 346-347.

22 Éléments de littérature (Paris: Verdière, 1825), i, 525.

23 Lycée, ou cours de littérature ancienne et moderne, iv, 43-44.

24 Villey, op. cit., p. 335.

25 Essai sur les révolutions, in Œuvres, ii, 325.

26 Génie, iii,iii,4, in Œuvres, xiii, 37-38. The other works mentioned are La Boétie, Traité de la servitude volontaire; Montaigne, Essais; Charron, Traité de la sagesse; Bodin, République, and the writings in favor of the Ligue.

27 Essai sur la littérature anglaise, p. 69.

28 Ibid., p. 69.

29 The relationship to Michelet is not entirely clear because the date of composition of this passage is not known with certainty. It appears again in the Mémoires d'outre-tombe (Paris: Garnier, n.d., ii, 192-193) in a section which Chateaubriand tells us was written in 1822 and revised in 1845, but the nature of the passage and the style make it appear to have been written later than 1822. It is likely that it was written for the Essai sur la littérature anglaise in 1836 and then inserted in the Mémoires d'outre-tombe. Thus Michelet—one of Chateaubriand's own disciples, in a sense, since Les Martyrs had given rise to the new history—may have inspired the older writer and influenced his style. Michelet's early works—the Précis de l'histoire moderne (1827) and the Précis de l'histoire de France jusqu’à la révolution (1833), as well as the first volumes of the Histoire de France (which began to appear in 1833, though the eloquent volumes on the Renaissance were not published until 1855-1856)—probably had some influence upon Chateaubriand's style, at least. Even his general conception of Rabelais may have been influenced by Michelet's lectures, for, as Villey reminds us (op. cit., p. 336): “Dès 1834 Michelet le présente aux élèves de l’École Normale tel qu'il le montrera un quart de siècle plus tard dans son histoire de France (1857): il est ‘l'Homère des Valois,’ ‘aussi grand que Shakespeare moins le côté gracieux.’ ‘Aristophane et Rabelais’ sont les ‘deux choses gigantesques de la litérature’.”

30 Cf. Jacques Boulenger, “Rabelais à travers les âges,” Revue des livres anciens, ii (1917), 34.

31 Ibid.

32 Essai sur la littérature anglaise, p. 32.

33 Ibid., pp. 134-135.

34 Donald M. Frame, Montaigne en France, 1812-1852 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940).

35 Ibid., p. 230.

36 Cf. Essai sur les révolutions, in Œuvres, ii, 325. Cf. also Correspondance générale de Chateaubriand (Paris: Champion, 1912-1924), i, SO; also Génie, m, iii, 4, in Œuvres, xiii, 37-38.

37 Génie, iiii.iii.4, in Œuvres, xiii, 61. Frame (pp. cit., p. 79) exaggerates in placing Chateaubriand among those who made Montaigne a “Catholic apologist” merely because: “In his Défense du Génie du Christianisme Chateaubriand quotes from Montaigne's defense of Sebond's book, which he compares with his own.”

38 In an edition published in London in 1771, with the Coste notes. The other two works were those of Amyot and Brantôme.

39 Cf. Mélanges littéraires, in Œuvres, xxi, 408-409.

40 Marcellus, Chateaubriand et son temps, p. 98.

41 Essai sur les révolutions, in Œuvres, i, 39, note A.

42 For a full discussion of Chateaubriand's own attitude toward Tasso, see Chandler B. Beau, Chateaubriand et le Tasse (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1934).

43 Mémoires d'outre-tombe, v, 39, and vi, 283-84. Cf. also Montaigne, Journal de voyage (Paris: Les Œuvres Représentatives, 1932), p. 155, and Essais (Paris: Alcan, 1930-1931), ii, 318-319.

44 Mémoires d'outre-tombe, v, 37-38.

45 Cf. Journal de voyage, p. 183.

46 Ibid., pp. 179-180.

47 Mémoires d'outre-tombe, v, 37.

48 Ibid., v, 37-38. Cf. Journal de voyage, p. 166.

49 Cf. Mlle Noli, Les Romantiques français et l'Italie (Dijon: Imprimerie Bernigaud et Privat, 1928), pp. 11-12.

50 Cf. Pierre Villey, Les “Essais” de Montaigne (Paris: Malfère, 1932), p. 87.

61 Mémoires d'outre-tombe, v, 57. Cf. Journal de voyage, p. 155.

52 Mémoires d'outre-tombe, v, 57.

53 For the text of this description, see Correspondance générale, i, 154-157, and on its literary interest, see Pierre Jourda, L'Exotisme dans la littérature française depuis Chateaubriand (Paris: Boivin, 1938), pp. 92-94.

54 Mémoires d'outre-tombe, vi, 333. Cf. Journal de voyage, p. 127.

55 Mémoires d'outre-tombe, v, 238.