French Poetry to 1700 (Critical Survey of Poetry)
Origins
The history of French poetry in the early centuries is in fact the history of French literature as a whole. Prose was not cultivated as a literary medium until the thirteenth century, and for centuries after that the poetic genres continued to predominate. It thus seems appropriate to begin this essay with a brief survey of the history of the French language and of the forces involved in the creation of the nation-state of France.
Before France, there was Gaul. The French language developed out of the popular form of Latin spoken in Gaul under the Roman...
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