In this cycle are also included Gerard de Roussillon, Hugues Capet, Macaire (wherein occurs the famous episode of the Dog of Montargis), and Huon de Bordeaux, which latter supplied Shakespeare, Wieland, and Weber with some of the dramatis personae of their well-known comedy, poem, and opera.  We must also mention what are often termed the Crusade epics, of which the stock topics are quarrels, challenges, fights, banquets, and tournaments, and among which we note les Enfances de Godefroi, Antioche, and Tudela’s Song of the Crusade against the Albigenses.

The third great cycle is known as Matiere de Rome la grand, or as the antique cycle.  It embodies Christianized versions of the doings of the heroes of the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Thebais, Alexandreid, etc.  In their prose forms the Roman de Thebes, Roman de Troie, and Roman d’Alexandre contain, besides, innumerable mediaeval embellishments, among others the first mention in French of the quest for the Fountain of Youth.

Later on in French literature we come across the animal epic, or Roman du Renard, a style of composition which found its latest and most finished expression in Germany at the hands of Goethe, and the allegorical epic, Le Roman de la Rose, wherein abstract ideas were personified, such as Hope, Slander (Malebouche), Danger, etc.

There are also epic poems based on Le Combat des Trente and on the doings of Du Guesclin.  Ronsard, in his Franciade, claims the Franks as lineal descendants from Francus, a son of Priam, and thus connects French history with the war of Troy, just as Wace, in the Norman Roman de Rou, traces a similar analogy between the Trojan Brutus and Britain.  Later French poets have attempted epics, more or less popular in their time, among which are Alaric by Scuderi, Clovis by St. Sorlin, and two poems on La Pucelle, one by Chapelain, and the other by Voltaire.

Next comes la Henriade, also by Voltaire, a half bombastic, half satirical account of Henry IV’s wars to gain the crown of France.  This poem also contains some very fine and justly famous passages, but is too long and too artificial, as a whole, to please modern readers.

The most popular of all the French prose epics is, without dispute, Fenelon’s Telemaque, or account of Telemachus’ journeys to find some trace of his long-absent father Ulysses.

Les Martyrs by Chateaubriand, and La Legende des Siecles by Victor Hugo, complete the tale of important French epics to date.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 7:  See the author’s “Legends of the Middle Ages.”]

THE SONG OF ROLAND[8]

Introduction. The earliest and greatest of the French epics, or chansons de geste, is the song of Roland, of which the oldest copy now extant is preserved in the Bodleian Library and dates back to the twelfth century.  Whether the Turoldus (Theroulde) mentioned at the end of the poem is poet, copyist, or mere reciter remains a matter of conjecture.