SOURCE: Hoffman, Edward J. “Prose.” In Alain Chartier: His Work and Reputation, pp. 138-98. New York: Wittes Press, 1942.

[In the following essay, Hoffman offers a critical overview of Chartier's prose works, providing an analysis of his reputation among critics, comparisons to other writers, and an assessment of his influence.]

Chartier's reputation as a prose writer did not fluctuate as much as his reputation as a poet. While his stately and eloquent prose once elicited the most unbridled enthusiasm, today, when it is still highly esteemed, one sees that enthusiasm tempered somewhat by a critical analysis of its style and an examination of its qualities in the light of literary history. It is found to sin on the side of over-emphasis, of declamation and of pedantry. On the other hand, Chartier's contribution to the development of French prose as a medium of serious expression is universally recognized and there is no one to contest his position as one of the founders of literary style in France.

His early critics placed no restrictions on their admiration. In their testimonials one finds Alain most often commended by the title, of broadest connotation for medieval rhetoricians, namely Orator, by which they referred not merely to the oratorical qualities of his prose. And when they heard this new-found eloquence supported by patriotic, moral and religious considerations of the highest order, their enthusiasm for the author rose to new heights. He became, in their eyes, an “excellent orateur.”¹ Octovien de Saint-Gelays thought him to be full of rhetoric, “clerc excellent, orateur magnifique.”² Jean Lemaire de Belges deemed him a “noble poëte et orateur.”³ Similarly, Clément Marot, who held Chartier in high regard both as a poet and prose writer,⁴ referred to him as “le trèsnoble orateur.”⁵ Jean Bouchet, yielding to nobody in admiration for Chartier's talents, extolled his “très haulte matière” and believed him to be “des orateurs français le chartier.”⁶ It was Bouchet also who related in detail how the author-secretary had been kissed by the Dauphine on account of the “bons mots, & vertueuses paroles”⁷ that had come from his lips. Then, as if to justify this enviable tribute, he cited the works which made it possible: “Ledit Charretier avoit fait son quatrilogue, qui est un petit œuvre digne de grand' recommandation. Depuis il fit un œuvre plus excellent, qui est le charroy de foy, & Esperance …”⁸ Finally, Etienne Pasquier found in him an even greater prose writer than a poet (“grand poëte de son temps, et encore plus grand orateur”⁹), an opinion readily deduced from an examination of his Espérance¹⁰ and Quadrilogue, two works which he left behind as an everlasting monument to his mind and which contributed in a large measure to the refinement of the French language.¹¹

It was indeed Chartier's language that so appealed to these admirers. Pierre Fabri found it “elegant et substancieux”¹² to an unsurpassed degree; Geofroy Tory, “moult seigneurial & heroïque.”¹³ And to these qualities Pasquier added “la bonne liaison de paroles et mots exquis” joined with “la gravité des sentences,” all of which made their author comparable with Seneca.¹⁴ The virtues of Alain's prose were held to be such that a hundred years after his death, he was honored with the title of “Father of French eloquence.”¹⁵

One is again faced with the need of reducing the contents of the Du Chesne edition to conform, this time, with the prose works that are genuinely Chartier's. The reduction may not be quite so radical as is the case for his verse but it is substantial. Of the six works in French prose that introduce the 1617 edition, it is highly probable that only two are to be attributed to Chartier. The Histoire de Charles VII has long since been restored to its rightful author, Gilles le Bouvier, called Berry.¹⁶ The two short pieces, Généalogie des roys de France and Description de la Gaule are mere fill-ins introduced by Pierre le Caron inasmuch as they are not to be found in any authentic manuscript.¹⁷ As for the Curial, there is a strong possibility that Chartier wrote the original Latin and not the French which is its translation.¹⁸ That would leave only two works, the same ones mentioned above by Bouchet and Pasquier, Le Quadrilogue invectif and Le Traité de l'Espérance. Any effort to analyze Chartier's prose on the basis of the contents of the Du Chesne edition—such as Eder's Syntaktische Studien zu Alain Chartiers Prosa¹⁹—would necessarily be incorrectly colored and as premature as was Hannapel's formalistic study of Alain's Poetik.²⁰ It is a fact of considerable significance for Alain Chartier's reputation that he wrote only two, perhaps three, works in French prose.

The Curial is a brilliant satire on court life. For it Alain was able to draw on the rich source of his personal experience. The Quadrilogue invectif is an allegorical debate between France and her three estates, composed soon after the infamous Treaty of Troyes, with each blaming the other for the misfortunes which had befallen the land. As for the Traité de l'Espérance, it is a weighty philosophical tract—in the style of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy—full of high religious and moral considerations. Although there is a six-year interval between them and although they present certain fundamental differences in conception and execution, the last two works have much in common. They offer the same traditional and medieval aspects in form: both are dream-vision allegories, full of the customary symbols and personifications. In content, both stem from a loyal citizen's tragic contemplation of his country's occupation by a foreign enemy, its collapse and complete disintegration; they both arise from the passionate desire to discover and analyze the causes for that condition, to eliminate them and find the means of bringing about a regeneration. The Quadrilogue is a vital, patriotic writing. It has political implications since Chartier espouses the cause of the disinherited Dauphin Charles. In it he favors the common people; he attacks the nobility, but only in its military functions; the clergy is relatively spared. The Espérance is the more philosophical work. Its attacks, rising above the plane of personal recriminations, increase in vigor as they become more general. One is surprised at the blistering criticism of the church and its dissolute representatives; the third estate comes in for its share of reproof on account of its instability and “méconnaisance de Dieu”; for its shortcomings the nobility is vehemently condemned as a class.²¹

It would be difficult to determine whether the high esteem in which Chartier's prose was held by his early admirers was due more to its manly, noble and patriotic sentiments or to the manner in which these sentiments were conveyed. Undoubtedly style played a part equally as important as substance. A new eloquence, that found its roots in a conscious imitation of Seneca and Cicero, coupled with a display of erudition—reflected at every turn in examples taken from authors of antiquity—these are the features of Chartier's presentation which were most novel and most appealing.

Alain made no secret of his humanism. We shall see how, in his Quadrilogue, he referred to himself as a “lointaing immitateur des orateurs,”²² meaning the authors of ancient Latin and Greek literature. That he had a thorough knowledge of their writings²³ is manifest in his constant citations. His own Latin works, such as the Dialogus familiaris amici et sodalis super deploratione Gallicae calamitatis,²⁴ contain numerous references to Seneca, Lucretius, Livy, Vergil, Ovid, Sallust and others.²⁵ He cites them also in his French works. At one point in the Traité de l'Espérance he enumerates a group of authors whose writings he recommends to the reader as helping to clarify the contemporary internal situation in France. The list includes “Omer, Virgile, Tite Live, Orose, Troge Pompee, Justin, Flore, Valere, Stace, Lucan, Jule Celse, etc.”²⁶ Chartier was particularly attracted to the “rommaines escriptures”²⁷ of historians such as Valerius Maximus, Livy and Seneca whose accounts furnished him with all the great examples of sacrifice for the res publica. They were the source book of his political eloquence.²⁸

Chartier's prose, grave, sententious, periodic, was probably most influenced by Seneca whose rhetoric he admired and attempted to imitate.²⁹ This imitation of Senecan rhetoric was inaugurated by Alain and it led to a certain Latinized eloquence in French. The impetus toward such a style of writing, which subsequently became so characteristic of the national literature and which is a sign of the coming Renaissance, may be attributed to our author.³⁰ Pierre Fabri deserves credit for having recognized in Alain Chartier the first master of French prose,³¹ but it was Etienne Pasquier who pointed out the relationship between the Latin author and Chartier. After citing a number of “belles sentences” from the Espérance, he draws this conclusion:

Et une infinité d'autres belles sentences, desquelles il est si confit de ligne en ligne, que je ne le puis mieux comparer qu'à l'ancien Seneque Romain.³²

This comparison was unqualifiedly accepted twenty years later by Chartier's editor, André Du Chesne.³³

Alain Chartier's French prose writings are, then, more limited than formerly supposed. Only two works may be attributed to him and possibly a third. Unlike the bulk of his poetry, they are the earnest writings of a moralist-reformer, whose style, frankly modeled on the Latins, especially Seneca, presages the Renaissance.

1. LE QUADRILOGUE INVECTIF³⁴

Chartier's greatest claim to fame as a prose writer rests upon this eloquent patriotic writing. It assumes the form of a four-part debate (the participants being France and her three estates—nobility, clergy and common people) and, by laying bare internal dissensions that had made the land an easy prey to the enemy English, constitutes a stirring appeal for unity behind the Dauphin to save the realm from complete disaster and ruin.

The work is dedicated to the entire nation, royalty, nobility, clergy and commoners, by “Alain Charretier, humble secretaire du roy nostre sire et de mon tresdoubté seigneur monseigneur le regent …”³⁵ He asserts the divine origin and sustenance of the nobility (“divine providence”). God grants His gifts and takes them away, he goes on, in a manner which is incomprehensible to the mind of man. Whole realms and principalities undergo mutations of fortune. Just as children are born, grow to man's estate and then decline to old age and death, just so do realms have their beginning, their period of growth and their decline. And he is reminded of cities now reduced to a mere shadow of their former grandeur:

Ou est Ninive, la grant cité qui duroit trois journees de chemin? Qu'est devenue Babillone, qui fut edifiee de matiere artificieuse pour plus durer aux hommes, et maintenant est habitee de serpens? Que dira l'en de Troye la renommee et la tresriche, et de Ylion, le chastel sans per dont les portes furent d'ivoire et les columpnes d'argent, et maintenant a paine reste le pié des fondemens que les haulx buissons forcloent de la veue des hommes?³⁶

And what has become of Thebes, once the most densely populated city in the world, and Lacedæmon, the source of our laws, and Athens, fountain of wisdom, Carthage the strong, and Rome the majestic, which, as Lucan once said, crumbled of its own weight.³⁷ The human being is too small, his span of life too brief to enable him to comprehend the judgment of God, and he imputes to fortune what is God's just vengeance for one's faults.

When, therefore, in the year 1422, the author contemplated the plight of his nation, torn asunder by an invading king, who gloried in his victim's shame, and by internal strife, he concluded that the hand of the Lord was upon France.³⁸ Alain turned to the Scriptures and read, among others, the third chapter of Isaiah, which made him realize that what was happening was a sign of divine wrath. And so, moved by compassion, in an effort to recall to each one his duties, he composed a small tract and named it Quadrilogue “pour ce que en quatre personnages est ceste œuvre comprise,” adding the word invectif “en tant qu'il procede par maniere d'envaïssement de paroles et par forme de reprendre.”³⁹

He tells how one morning at dawn he was suddenly awakened by thoughts of the sad fortune which had invaded the once glorious land of France. He thought how the fateful battle (of Agincourt) had stripped the nation of its noblest flower and his mind turned to the days when France was strong, disciplined, united and prosperous. He wondered whether such cruel punishment had not been visited upon her more by her sins than by the enemy's prowess.

So thinking, with mind hovering between hope and despair, he dozed off until the morning. During that time he had a vision. Upon a stretch of fallow soil he perceived a Dame of majestic bearing. She was sad and in tears and clearly seemed to have fallen from a position of higher honor. Her long, golden hair was unkempt and a crown sat awry upon her head, as if about to fall. She wore a cloak that must once have been wonderful in its design and rich material inlaid with precious stones but which now was torn and faded. Near her stood a palace which seemed tottering because of neglect and which threatened to collapse because of the winds and the rains. The Lady is, of course, the personification of France and the emblems on her mantle represent the three orders. As she looked about her, with doleful mien, she perceived three of her children: one, wearing armor, stood erect, pensive and troubled; the second, in long vestments, seated on the side, silent and thoughtful; the third in common dress, lying on the ground, plaintive and languorous. It is not difficult to see that they symbolize the orders of society: the knight, the cleric and the peasant.

France addresses them in a forceful and eloquent reproach for their cowardice, their dissolute customs, their sloth and their ingratitude which, causing them to neglect their duties of defense, have brought their nation to the brink of collapse. Where is their love of native land to prompt them to defend it before the enemy? They are unnatural indeed who, rather than expose themselves to peril, would yield and give up their homeland. No labor is too great if it is in the interest of the land of one's birth. Common beasts whose instinct moves them to defend their homes are more to be praised than they. And she cites historical examples of homeland defense among the Trojans and Scythians. Her own children are her real enemies, she complains, since instead of sustaining her against those who wage external war, they seek her destruction through selfish desire and ill-conceived ambition. Such words may appear harsh, she adds, but not so harsh as the circumstances warrant.⁴⁰

She chides them for seeking their enemy's defeat through prayers and wishes instead of deeds boldly executed. There can be no substitute for hard work if one would restore public liberty. True chivalry from knighthood, prudence from clerics and counselors, constancy and loyalty from the French people, these are qualities never more sorely needed than at present. Never were they more absent than now.

Pluseurs de la chevalerie et des nobles crient aux armes, mais ilz courent a l'argent; le clergé et les conseilliers parlent a deux visaiges et vivent avecques les vivans; le peuple veult estre en sceurté gardé et tenu franc, et si est impacient de souffrir subgection de seigneurie.⁴¹

Such is the corruption of the three estates. The knights especially have preferred to lead a soft life, one of ease and luxury. Indulgence has served only to subvert their courage by undermining all desire for work and exertion. Scipio Africanus, Hannibal, Alexander, all guarded carefully against the infiltration of such a condition among their warriors as they went on to ever greater conquests. French knighthood, on the contrary, thinks only of its pleasures and its comfort. Very well then, she exclaims bitterly, let them go right on living as they do!

Querez, querez, François, les exquises saveurs des viandes, les longs repoz empruntez de la nuit sur le jour, les oultraiges des robes et des joyaulx sans garder difference des estaz ne des degrez a ceulx a qui ilz appartiennent, les blandices et delices feminins! Endormez vous comme pourceaux en l'ordure et vilté des horribles pechiez qui vous ont mis si prés de la fin de voz bons jours! Estoupez voz oreilles a toutes bonnes amonicions, mais ce sera par tele condicion que tant plus y demourrez et plus approuchera le douloureux jour de vostre exterminacion, et en pourrez tant user et si longuement vous y aouiller que trop en avoir prins vous en fera souffreteux a tousjours.⁴²

What sort of people are they who wittingly descend to their doom? Why do they not learn the reasons for their enemy's victories, the enemy who is deterred from his fixed purpose of maintaining a siege or holding a field neither by the ice of winter, nor the scarcity of food, nor pestilential disease, nor the long labor of bearing arms. France exhorts her children to courage. Why live in mortal fear of the English? They are not better equipped than the French, and besides, it is the French who are more numerous. Fortune will not favor the enemy forever. What distinguishes him is his courage; the French have only a multitude of sins.

This lament, pronounced with bitterness and sarcasm, was accompanied by a stream of tears. A long silence followed, after which the peasant, lying on the ground, plaintive and languorous “tant actaint de mal que nulle vertu ne lui estoit demouree, si non la voix et le cry,”⁴³ undertook to make the first reply.

France's complaints are entirely justified, he admits, but blame for existing conditions cannot be placed upon his shoulders. And he proceeds to paint an eloquent picture of his misery and despair, a condition so desolate that it can be relieved only by death!

Je suis comme l'asne qui soustient fardel importable et si suis aguillonné et batu pour faire et souffrir ce que je ne puis. Je suis le bersault contre qui chascum tire sajettes de tribulacion. Haa, chetif douloureux, dont vient ceste usance qui a si bestourné l'ordre de justice que chascun a sur moy tant de droit comme sa force lui en donne. Le labour de mes mains nourrist les lasches et les oyseux et ilz me persecutent de fain et de glaive. Je soustien leur vie a la sueur et travail de mon corps et ils guerroient la moye par leurs outraiges dont je suys en mendicité. Ilz vivent de moy et je meur pour eulx. Ilz me deussent garder des ennemis, helas, helas, et ilz me gardent bien de menger mon pain en sceurté. Comment auroit homme en ce party pacience parfaite, quant a ma persecution ne peut on reins adjouster que la mort. Je meur et transiz par default et necessité des biens que j'ay gaignez; Labeur a perdu son esperance, Marchandise ne treuve chemin qui la puisse sauvement adrecier. Tout est proye ce que le glaive ou l'espee ne defend, ne je n'ay autre esperance en ma vie sinon par desespoir laissier mon estat pour faire comme ceulx qui ma despoille enrichit, qui mieulx ayment la proye que l'onneur de la guerre.⁴⁴

It is not a war that is being waged but “une privee robberie, ung larrecin habandonné,” a systematic campaign of pillaging undertaken by knights to despoil him in the guise of fighting an enemy. “The armies are called together and the standards raised against the enemy,” he cries, “but the exploits are against me for the destruction of my poor goods and my wretched life. The enemy is fought with words and I am fought with deeds.”⁴⁵ Fields, laid waste, are fit only to harbor wild beasts; the security of the home has been lost and one's very life has been endangered; the benefits of one's labors are reaped by others. With only the prospect of famine and continued affliction, it would be better to die.

Je vif en mourant, voiant la mort de ma povre femme et de mes petis enfans et desirant la mienne, que tant me tarde que je la regrete chascun jour, comme cellui qui couroux, fain et defiance de confort, mainent douloureusement a son derrenier jour.⁴⁶

Continuing his address, the peasant says that if only the enemy were made to suffer somewhat from these bold feats of which the knight perpetually boasts, his own lot would be easier to bear. But to suffer on, without any good resulting from imposed want and privation, leads but to loss of courage and patience. In olden times, the rights of the common people were safeguarded against the ruling classes and the power of nobles. Reaffirming his innocence and declaring that he is not to blame for the grief whose burden he bears, the peasant calls upon God to end his insufferable existence.

To this serious indictment the knight attempts to reply in a lengthy rebuttal in which he disclaims responsibility. He contends that it is the common people who are to blame since they are forever dissatisfied and reflect that state of mind in everlasting grumbling and dissension. They can suffer neither the ease of peace nor the hardships of war. It is they, through their past faults, who are responsible for war, yet they refuse to suffer its outcome. They failed to appreciate their treasured possessions of peace and prosperity when they still had them. Thus, desiring only mutation, they seek and often covet what is most harmful to them. The true cause of the enemy's successes is, the knight maintains, “legiere foy muable” and the “petite loiaulté” on the part of the commoner.⁴⁷

And what suffering is endured by those who actually participate in war! Sleepless nights, hunger and thirst are their constant companions as they go through wind and rain, burdened with armor and with nothing over their heads but the sky. They often lose their horses, even their castles, place their lives in danger and not infrequently meet death. Many have sold their lands to serve their country and have afterward fallen into poverty. In the meantime burghers and canons spend their time either counting their money or eating and sleeping, when they do not shout for the others to drive out the enemy.⁴⁸

The knight confesses that there are a number of those belonging to his class who do not act from pure motives of nobility and sacrifice. On the contrary, they do not care who rules over them so long as their own wealth and security are left undisturbed. They are the ones

… qui plus mectent avant de plaintes et de murmures, et tant y a, dont je me tays, qu'il ne chault a plusieurs qui tiengne la seigneurie, mais quilz soient prouchains des proufiz et loing des pertes, et plus choisiroient desavouer leur naturel seigneur pour garder et accroitre leurs richesses que souffrir perte pour demourer en loiauté.⁴⁹

The people complain of taxes. But taxes are levied for their protection. They greedily consent to accept the benefits of security and are willing for others to expose themselves to peril and hardship. The knight's lot is not a simple one. His income is insufficient to meet expenses in war and it often happens that the prince does not collect enough from his people to pay him. It is proper for all to share in the common adversity.

As for pillaging, the knight's lands are no more exempt than the peasant's, and, all things considered, the scales of justice are pretty evenly balanced:

… ainsi, se tout estoit pesé a juste balance, les travaulx et les perilz que nous souffrons, les fraiz, despenses et dommaiges que nous soustenons, et de l'autre costé les maulx que nous faisons, nous n'aurions mendre part de la douleur du peuple qui crie sur nous.⁵⁰

The knight suggests—somewhat speciously—the possibility that many an outrage has been committed on the land by the common people who masquerade as knights. And it is the people again who can be blamed for disastrous defeats since it is they who goad the army on with irrational demand for speedy victory. The unfortunate battle of Agincourt, for whose result recklessness may well be blamed, has taught a severe and lasting lesson.⁵¹ The knight concludes his counter-accusations with citations (culled from Roman history) to prove the necessity for temporizing. Finally he expresses the hope that hardships will cease along with dissension.

The peasant and the knight reply in turn, each vigorously refuting the other's insinuations and allegations, each disclaiming responsibility for existing conditions. The upper classes are blamed for their “pechiez et desordonnance,”⁵² the common people for their presumption and lack of moderation.

As the debate becomes more and more quarrelsome and words become tinged with hate, the cleric who, until then, has listened in silence, speaks up, assuming the rôle of arbiter. Argument and recrimination are useless, he says. In order to extricate oneself from a critical situation, all factions must pull together in a common effort.⁵³ In such a case, dissension can be suicidal.

O guerre d'ennemis et division d'amis, discords de royaumes et batailles civilles et plus que civilles au dedans des cités et des seigneuries, par vous est mis le joug de servitute sur les treshaultes puissances, par vous est donné a cognoistre aux hommes mortelz que sur eulx regne Dieu immortel, qui l'orgueil de leur fier povoir peut reprimer et asservir a mendre de soy et la vanité de leurs grans habondances chastier et ramener a indigence et necessité.⁵⁴

In order to wage war successfully in defense of his country, a prince must be assured of three things: wisdom, revenue and obedience. Wisdom must be supported by loyalty. This is a quality which, in recent years, has not been too evident.

… on a peu veoir, en pou de jours, ung prince [i. e., the Dauphin Charles] en joune aage esloignié par fureur et sedicion de la maison royal dont il est filz et heritier, guerroyé de ses ennemis, assailli de glaive et de parolles de ses propres subgiez, doubteusement obey du sourplus de son peuple, delaissié de ses aides principaulx ou il se devoit fier, despourveu de tresor, encloz de forteresses rebellans, et qui bien a tout comparé et remembré les tristours des choses de ce temps jusques a ores …⁵⁵

One must have faith and stick with constancy to the ship of state though it be momentarily tossed about on troubled waters. Unlimited funds are needed to wage war successfully. Sacrifice is necessary and one must not seek to grow rich at the expense of a needy state, for to do so renders one unworthy of public service.⁵⁶ Roman history abounds in examples of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, just as it offers brilliant instances of obedience, discipline and cases of severe punishment for neglect of duty. And the cleric continues to point out flaws in the attitude and conduct of French chivalry, the rectification of which is essential for the regeneration of France.

The entire sermon, while purportedly delivered by an impartial judge, is directed principally at the nobility. The cleric more than once indicates his compassion for the common people who are made to suffer on account of the other's shortcomings.⁵⁷ The knight senses the import of his address and, in a final reply, asserts that in the matter of obedience and discipline the proper example should be set by those in high places.

France concludes the debate. She pleads for harmony among her children.

… l'affection du bien publique peut estaindre voz desordonnances singulieres, se les voulentez se conjoingnent en ung mesme desir de commun salut et en souffrant leur fortune et les ungs vers les autres gardent pacience, peut a tous ensemble venir ce bon eur que chascum veult querir par divers remedes.⁵⁸

In order that the discussion be a source of profit to all concerned and that each learn his lesson, the author is called upon to set it down in writing. That will be his contribution since he is physically unsuited to bear arms. France addresses him, saying,

“Tu, qui as ouye ceste presente disputacion faicte par maniere de quadrilogue invectif, escry ces parolles afin qu'elles demeurent a memoire et a fruit. Et puis que Dieu ne t'a donné force de corps ne usaige d'armes, sers a la chose publique de ce que tu pués, car autant exaulça la gloire des Rommains et renforça leurs couraiges a vertu la plume et la langue des orateurs comme les glaives des combatans.”⁵⁹

Thereupon the characters disappeared and Alain awoke. He was more than pleased to carry out the orders of France since, to his mind, the Quadrilogue was less in the nature of a reproach than a call for unity and co-operation.

The Quadrilogue is, by common acclaim, Chartier's best work. A “sad inventory” of France's shame and misery, a “crushing accusation”⁶⁰ of the privileged classes, it is also undoubtedly his most important work. It is the one before which one feels least hesitancy in applying the word “masterpiece.”⁶¹

Like other writings by Alain, the Quadrilogue has two facets, being possessed of both traditional and novel aspects. In its conception and execution it distinctly faces the past. The dream-vision framework, with its attendant allegory, is a purely medieval device.⁶² So too is the “debate,” with its accompanying display of erudition (e. g., the Clergy's sermon), its pedantry and its tendency toward prolixity. These are features which set the medieval “dialogue” off in a poor light as a literary genre when compared with the type of “dialogue” developed during the Renaissance period.⁶³

Likewise, the general theme, that of lamentations on war, was not new with Chartier. The Hundred Years War had been in progress long enough before our author's time to warrant the belief that the plight of the common people, who were most grievously affected, and the expression of their lamentations were already reflected in the writings of historians, moralists and people of letters. One finds sufficient corroborative evidence of this idea in the sermons of Jean Gerson and in certain poems of Christine de Pisan⁶⁴ among others.

To offset the conventional characteristics are qualities which must have aroused further admiration in Chartier's contemporaries and which commend the Quadrilogue more particularly to the modern reader. These are his deep-seated sincerity, humanity and patriotism, translated by a lofty and sustained eloquence that, in turn, had been nurtured by a study of Latin authors. These qualities remove the work from its medieval setting and raise it to the highest level of fifteenth-century French prose.⁶⁵

The concept of patriotism is not usually associated with medieval writers. The word itself, which did not come into the language until later, or the idea which it represented, was characterized in the fifteenth century by narrow particularism and did not, therefore, have the meaning that it carries today. It evoked the idea of loyalty to one's own province or the city of one's birth.⁶⁶ It is true that a certain duty to the state had always been a part of chivalric code but the obligation was not specific and it was one over which personal and family honor undoubtedly took precedence.⁶⁷ It was for Chartier to give the idea broader meaning. Prompted by the internal difficulties that his country was experiencing, the loyal citizen evolved the concept in his mind and in his writings. In this respect he was in advance of his time.

He employed the word patria in his Latin works but patrie is nowhere to be found in the French. The idea is contained in such locutions as “pays de vostre nativité,” “la seigneurie soubz laquelle Dieu vous fait naistre et avoir vie” and “l'amour naturelle du païz.”⁶⁸ Duty toward one's patria is expressed in a twofold proposition. First, nature obliges one to save and protect the land of his birth. Second, no labor is too great if it is in defense of the homeland, the land which sustains one in life and receives him in death.⁶⁹

Coupled with the patriotic idea is a political one. Chartier conceived of the patria only as a static body. It required a head to give it meaning, force and direction. Firmly convinced that the hereditary monarchy—incidental to being ordained by God⁷⁰—was the most practical form of government,⁷¹ he believed quite naturally that leadership of the patria should be placed in monarchy's titular representative, the king. Loyalty to the national cause dictated allegiance to the Dauphin Charles. And so, having pleaded for a united nation, on moral grounds alone, Chartier proceeded to hold up the figure of the Dauphin and to rally that nation around him as the most effective means of combatting the enemy, attaining victory and re-establishing a prosperous peace. Thus, in the sense that it was not meant to be purely rhetorical, the Quadrilogue was unlike most contemporary writings which decried the ravages of war. Chartier advanced a specific plan of action: union behind the Dauphin. Viewed in this light, the work, in addition to being a significant patriotic writing, becomes a political document of the first importance and constitutes, as has justly been said a “stirring piece of prose propaganda.”⁷²

Gaining him perhaps even more renown than the sentiments contained within the Quadrilogue is the style in which they are expressed. One is immediately impressed with its imitation of Latin authors. Chartier, who was pleased to call himself a “lointaing immitateur des orateurs”⁷³ made no secret of his enthusiastic admiration for their writings. He was unable to rid himself of certain defects which were then part of all serious French prose and his style therefore manifests, to a degree, the same tiresome tendencies of declamation practiced to excess, of diffusion and prolixity and of pedantry. On the other hand, it shows unmistakable evidence of the author's contact with classic prose writers such as Seneca, Cicero, Livy and others. Antithesis and periodic sentence structure are the features he may have admired most; they certainly are the lessons he learned best. Chartier practices antithesis—so typical of Seneca—between words, he counterbalances ideas and images in a symmetrical fashion for the evident purpose of creating a heightened dramatic effect. Sententiousness is a resultant characteristic. In imitation of the long Ciceronian periods, his sentences are fluid, well rounded and often rhythmic and harmonious. “Eloquent” is the word that best describes them. Chartier was able to impart to French prose, through his cultivation of the Latins, qualities that it had lacked until then, qualities of breadth, gravity, luster.⁷⁴ With him it reached heights scarcely attained before, heights which were to be equalled only with Bossuet many years later.⁷⁵ The Quadrilogue is truly “un beau morceau d'éloquence.”⁷⁶ Its prose gained for the author a long lasting reputation for excellence. Chartier became one of the founders of French literary style and the significant title of “père de l'éloquence française,” given to him in the sixteenth century, was no more than justice.

However the Quadrilogue's qualities may be analyzed, the fact remains that it was the most highly esteemed of Chartier's prose writings and that it enjoyed unusual success. The existence of more than forty manuscripts is expressive evidence of this success. Testifying also to its popularity are two translations, both done in the fifteenth century and both in manuscript form. About the first, in English, nothing is known except that it appears in a Bodleian manuscript along with Chartier's Curial, the latter most probably being William Caxton's 1484 version.⁷⁷ The second is a Castilian translation, El Quadrilogo inventivo [sic] de Alaym Carretero,⁷⁸ which may have been done for the Marqués de Santillana. It appears in the same volume as a discourse which had been translated specifically for the Marqués.⁷⁹ In any case, it is altogether likely that the latter was familiar with it, either in its original form or in the translation. His poem, Diálogo de Bías contra Fortuna (1448), the background of which is somewhat similar to that of the Quadrilogue, contains a passage that seems to be in imitation of a portion of Chartier's prose work.⁸⁰ The philosopher Bías speaks:

Qués de Nínive, Fortuna?
Qués de Thébas? … Qués de Athénas?
De sus murallas é almenas,
Que non paresçe ninguna?
Qués de Tyro é de Sydon
E Babilonia?
Que fué de Laçedemonia?
Ca si fueron, y non son!(81)

More striking than Santillana's evident imitation is a series of stanzas in Georges Chastellain's Complainte de Fortune (1477).⁸² Now, the ubi sunt theme and that on the mutations of fortune were quite commonplace in medieval literature⁸³ but the poem by Chastellain constitutes, in part, an actual paraphrase of Chartier. The succession of images and the verbal similarity remove all doubt in this respect. The wheel of fortune goes 'round, says the poet. Cities, once great, lie in ruin or are today but a pale reflection of their former grandeur.

Qu'est devenu no temps passé
Et les gens qui ont tant vescu?
Tous sont pourris en grant vilté.
Où est-ce que Nynive fu,
En laquelle y avoit maint fu?
Trois journées avoit de tour:
Or n'y a mais ne mur, ne tour.
Qu'est devenue Babylosne,
De matière artificieuse
La non pareille dessous le throsne
Faite par gent ingénieuse?
En ruyne très-ruyneuse
Elle est sans demeure de gens,
Et n'y habitent que serpens.
Où est Troye la renommée,
Et Ylion, chasteau sans per?
N'avoit porte, ne fust formée
De fin yvoir et net et cler;
Coulonne n'avoit, ne piler,
Ne fussent tout de fin argent:
A paine y pert le fondement.(84)

There pass in review Thebes, once densely populated, and Lacedæmon “dont les lois vinrent” and Athens, “flour de sapience” and Carthage, “la batelleresse” and Rome, of which Lucan has justly said

Son grant orgueil si le deçut
Que par pesanteur elle chut.(85)

This close similarity with the introduction of Chartier's Quadrilogue cannot be construed as mere coincidence.

Combining the elements of both a translation and an adaptation is a prose work written by some anonymous Scottish author in 1549 under the title The Complaynt of Scotlande vyth Ane Exortatione to the Thre Estaits to be Vigilante in the Deffens of Their Public Veil.⁸⁶ The imitation is self-evident. Like its French counterpart, it presents an analysis of the abuses of the estates together with an enumeration of their possible remedies. One may say that with internal conditions in Scotland toward the middle of the sixteenth century being strikingly like those which existed in France one hundred and thirty years before,⁸⁷ the author found Chartier's Quadrilogue a welcome and appropriate model, which he proceeded to adapt to his needs.⁸⁸ He borrowed both form and substance. Dame Scotia, seen in a vision, is remarkably similar to Dame France in physical appearance. She also is

ane lady of excellent extratione ande of anciant genolygie, makkand ane melancolius cheir for the grite violens that sche hed sustenit and indurit.⁸⁹

Her hair is disheveled, her crown awry and her cloak, containing symbols that represent the estates, falls in tatters from her shoulders. She exhorts her sons, “callit the thre estatis of Scotland,” to harmony and unity so that they may better defend themselves against the foreign enemy, the English. Not only do we find here resemblance in details of the allegory but there are a number of passages—amounting to some fifteen pages of the edition of 1549—that represent an actual translation from the French.⁹⁰ And so, the bitter feeling that frequently in the past united France and Scotland in a military bond against a common enemy led, on this occasion, to the “borrowing of a literary weapon for use in the same struggle.”⁹¹

Other works were inspired by the Quadrilogue. The conception of a poem by Robert Gaguin, Le Debat du Laboureur, du Prebstre et du Gendarme,⁹² derives from a knowledge of Chartier's work, which he must have admired. It was the general form rather than the ideas which Gaguin adopted, the situation in 1484, when the poem was written, being quite different from that of 1422. Yet, the unhappy state of the peasant remained similar enough to warrant repetition of the lamentations which Chartier had put into his mouth. Thus, in the expression of the Laboureur's sorrows, one finds a timely echo of the complaint of Le Peuple.⁹³ The character of the priest is uninfluenced by le Clergié but le Gendarme takes over some of the arguments of the knight in the Quadrilogue.

Still another literary imitation is the anonymous Complaincte du povre commun et des povres laboureurs de France.⁹⁴ Although it is less definitely so than Gaguin's piece, there is no doubt that it was inspired by the Quadrilogue, of which it has been termed “la suite et le complément naturel.”⁹⁵ It is a pathetic plea made by the plowman for aid and comfort, comprising thereby a further development of the peasant's lament. He writhes in the agony of hunger and despair, decrying a condition which has been brought on by pillaging and exploitation at the hands of all. If the Complaincte is more narrowly conceived than the Quadrilogue, the plea of the Laboureur, on the other hand, has broader scope than the one in Chartier's work. There the peasant issues his plea against injustices for which only the knights and, to a much lesser extent, the clergy, are held responsible. In the anonymous poem, the Laboureur directs his just complaint against numerous classes:

Prelatz, princes et bons seigneurs,
Bourgeois, marchans et advocatz,
Gens de mestier, grans et mineurs,
Gens d'armes et les trois Estatz …(96)

all of whom have subsisted upon his efforts. The tone is subdued, submissive and entreating, except in two instances. The plowman first asserts himself when he declares that he has ever been the support of those whose aid he now seeks. Should he go away, their entire structure would crumble:

Vous cherrez les jambes retraictes
Et au plus près de voz talons.
Sur vous tumberont les maisons,
Voz chasteaulx et voz tenemens.
Car nous sommes voz fondemens.(97)

Toward the close he issues the veiled threat that some day his oppressors may see their homes ablaze. There are limits to unrelieved suffering and misery.⁹⁸

The success of the Quadrilogue is thus evidenced by the numerous manuscripts, translations, imitations and adaptations of it. Finally, it is not only a political and literary writing of prime importance, it comprises a historical document as well. It presents a genuine and vivid eye-witness report of social conditions of the time together with the views of a contemporary observer—colored by sympathy for the Dauphin's cause—and has, as a result, prompted modern historians of the early fifteenth century, such as Du Fresne de Beaucourt and Petit-Dutaillis, to view it in the light of contemporary chronicles and pamphlets.⁹⁹

2. LE CURIAL¹⁰⁰

The shortest of three prose works, Le Curial is a reply to a request, made probably by Chartier's younger brother Guillaume, that the author use his influence to obtain for him a position in court. In an effort to dissuade the young man from such a purpose, Alain at once sets about to disillusion him and toward that end he bitterly attacks the court, its practices and its habitués, drawing upon his own rich experiences. It is only human nature, he says, to long for what one does not have, but to give up a haven of security and one's precious liberty for a heap of “misery” and “mortal servitude” is the height of folly. Courts are ever full of deceivers, bullies, flatterers and the like:

… I saye the that the courtes of hye prynces be neuer disgarnysshed of peple deceyuyng by fayr langage or feryng by menaces or stryuyng by enuye or corrupte by force of yeftes or blandysshyng by flaterers or accusyng of trespaces or enpesshyng & lettyng in somme maner wyse the good wyl of true men … And be thou certayn, that for thy vertue thou shalt be mocqued, and for thy trouthe thou shalt be hated or that thy dyscrecion shal cause the to be suspecte. For ther is nothyng more suspecte to euyl peple than them whom they knowe to be wyse and trewe … The abuses of the courte and the maner of the peple curyall or courtly ben suche that a man is neuer suffred tenhaunce hym self but yf he be corrumpable … Such be the werkes of the courte, that they that be symple ben mesprysed, the vertuous enuyed, and the prowde arrogaunts in mortel peryllis.¹⁰¹

The higher the position one attains in court, the greater is the danger of falling. And not the least disadvantage is that one must sacrifice sound and sober habits based on simple living.

Yf he be acustomed to ete soberly and at a certayn houre he shal dyne late, and shal soupe in suche facoun that he shal disacustomme hys tyme and his maner of lyuyng. Yf he haue be acustomed to rede and studye in bookes he shal muse ydelly alday, in awaytyng that men shal open the dore to hym, of the chambre or wythdraught of the prynce. Yf he loue the rest of his body, he shal be ennoyed [sic] now here nowe there as a courrour or renner perpetuell. Yf he wil erly goo to his bedde, and Ryse late at his playsir, he shal faylle thereof, for he shal wake longe and late and ryse ryght erly and that ofte he shal lese the nyght wythout slepyng. Yf he studye for to fynde frendshyp, he [i. e., friendship] shal neuer conne trotte so moche thurgh the halles of the grete lordes that he shal fynde her, but she holdeth her wythoute, and entreth not wyth ony. For she is moche better knowen by them that vsen her, whyche ben experte of reffuse [sic] throwen doun by fortune, than by them that entre ygnoraunt and not knowen her tornes.¹⁰²

Courtiers live at the command of others, eat irregularly and then gluttonously, sleep in vermin-infested beds, most often fully dressed. Aristotle and Diogenes refused high court honors in order to return to nature and enjoy the ordinary pleasures of life.

Honors and power in court are vain illusions since one must be careful of his every word, on guard in every step. One works laboriously, bends all effort to attain a lofty position: if he does, another may come along to deprive him of it. All effort is lost. Stay then within the freedom and tranquillity of your small house where you alone are lord and master.

Do you want an honest picture of court life? I can tell you this:

The halle of a grete prynce is comunely Infecte and eschaufed of the breeth of the peple. The vssher smyteth wyth hys Rodde vpon the heedes of them that ben there. Some entre by forse of threstyng, and other stryue for to resyste. Somme tyme a poure man meschaunt that hath to-fore be sore sette abacke, is further sette forth than an other. And the most fyers and prowde whom a man durste not tofore touche is put further aback, and is in more gretter daunger. There knoweth noman in certayn yf hys astate be sure or not. But who someuer it be, always he is in doubte of hys fortune.¹⁰³

And shall I tell you what the court really is?

The courte, to thende that thou vnderstande it, is a couente of peple that, vnder fayntyse of Comyn wele, assemble hem to gydre for to deceyue eche other. For ther be not many of them but that they selle, bye or eschange somtyme theyr rentes or propre vestementis.¹⁰⁴

I can tell you more about the life of a courtier, but if you still entertain illusions or false hopes, I doubt that you will be pleased to hear it.

And yf thou demandest what is the lyf of them of the courte, I answere the, brother, that it is a poure rychesse, An habundance myserable, an hyenesse that falleth, An estate not stable, A sewrte tremblyng, And an euyl lyf …¹⁰⁵

In honesty and sincerity, to you and others like you who have aspirations to court life, I therefore give this final advice:

Flee, ye men, flee, and holde and kepe you ferre fro suche an assemblee yf ye wyll lyue wel and surely and as peple wel assured vpon the Ryuage, beholde vs drowne by our own agreement. And mespryse our blyndeness that may ne wylle knowe our propre meschyef.¹⁰⁶

Prior to 1899, when the only known Curial was the French version, it was universally believed to be an original work by Alain Chartier. So, at least, was it ascribed in nearly all the manuscripts. That year, however, Heuckenkamp, in publishing two versions, a French and a Latin, advanced this hypothesis: that of the two the Latin was the original, that its author was a certain Italian humanist, Ambrosius de Miliis, and that Chartier may merely have been responsible for the translation into French.

Heuckenkamp founded this belief upon a Latin version of the work which he had discovered in the second volume of a collection published in 1724 by Martène and Durand, Amplissima Collectio.¹⁰⁷ The editors claimed to have copied it from a Tours manuscript believed by Heuckenkamp to have since been lost. It was listed in the collection under the title: “Epistolae LXXVI. Ambrosii de Miliis ad Gontherum. Dehortatur eum a curia” and appeared among correspondence between Ambrosius and Gontier Col. The manuscript mentioned its having been transcribed at Amboise, supposedly in 1435. A comparison between this text and the French clearly indicated to Heuckenkamp that the former was the original:

On ne saurait nier en comparant les deux versions du Curial que le texte latin, écrit dans un style concis et vigoureux, moulé d'après les meilleurs écrivains classiques et toutefois très personnel, n'offre pas une seule phrase qui n'ait l'empreinte de l'originalité, tandis que dans la version française plusieurs passages laissent deviner qu'ils ont été traduits sur un texte latin.¹⁰⁸

As for the author, Heuckenkamp stated categorically that it could not have been Chartier because of the “perceptible difference” in style he claimed to see between this piece and Alain's Latin epistolae. Moreover, the heading in the text revealed that its author was one Ambrosius de Miliis. He was an Italian humanist of the late fourteenth century and a protégé of Jean de Monstereul.¹⁰⁹ Alain Chartier's rôle may have been that of mere translator. Pursuing his hypothesis, Heuckenkamp judged the date of composition of the Latin text—if it be true that it is addressed to Gontier Col¹¹⁰—to be before 1393 when Col presumably became a curial. As for the French version, it was written, he believed, between 1395 and 1433, the probable date of Chartier's death.¹¹¹

The excellent new texts of the Curial were acclaimed by Gaston Paris the year of their publication.¹¹² The critic accepted Heuckenkamp's hypothesis about the authorship of the Latin version, adding that the text thereby lost all the autobiographical value which people had been wont to attribute to it. There was one correction. The manuscript from which the editors of the Amplissima Collectio copied the selection was not lost, as Heuckenkamp believed. It still existed, at Tours, under the number 978.

Had Paris examined this manuscript,¹¹³ he might not have been so prone to accept Heuckenkamp's theory. It is a collection, comprising 63 vellum folios, having been written during the first half of the fifteenth century. It includes correspondence between Ambrosius de Miliis and Gontier (probably Col). Sandwiched in among several of these letters is one, folio 56, relative to the life of courtiers. It begins: “Suades sepius et hortaris, vir diserte et carissime frater, ut tibi ad vitam curialem …” and is actually the Latin text of the Curial. However (and this is significant), there is no title and there is no name of author. These are pure invention on the part of Martène and Durand, who thought it to be, like the pieces surrounding it, part of a particular correspondence. Heuckenkamp, believing the manuscript to be non-existent, was misled by the statement of the editors. In addition, the manuscript specifies that it was written at Amboise, February 2, 1425.¹¹⁴ The date of 1435 mentioned in the Amplissima Collectio and repeated by Heuckenkamp is therefore an error.¹¹⁵ 1425 is a significant date since it offers a point d'appui: the Latin version must have been written before then.¹¹⁶

In the absence of formal attribution, the tract might still conceivably be ascribed to Ambrosius de Miliis on the basis of its inclusion among his letters. However, even this prop in support of Heuckenkamp's theory has been removed. Arthur Piaget¹¹⁷ has shown that Gontier Col, to whom the work is presumably addressed, was already actually a curial in 1380 and not first in 1393, as the editor maintained. Chronologically speaking, there was an error of thirteen years. And in 1380, it was not likely that Ambrosius was already in France since his patron, Jean de Monstereul, was not yet twenty years old. Furthermore, the name of Ambrosius is not found in a single manuscript of the Curial. Twenty manuscripts ascribe it to Chartier and nowhere is Alain mentioned as the mere translator of a letter by the other. Now, it is true, as Heuckenkamp maintains, that differences between the French and Latin texts point to the Latin as the original. But the conclusion to be drawn is quite different.

… le texte français du Curial n'est pas d'Alain Chartier. Un inconnu a traduit le Tractatus de vita curiali, et sa traduction, qui eut beaucoup de succès, fit oublier le latin et passa pour être de Chartier lui-même.¹¹⁸

The inscription which is found in one of the early Latin manuscripts¹¹⁹ has more significance than Heuckenkamp tended to give it.¹²⁰ It corroborates Chartier's authorship of the original text:

Scribit magister Alanus Auriga suo fratri magistro Guillelmo Aurige, canonico parisiensi … de vita curiali tractatum.¹²¹

Contrary to Gaston Paris's belief, the Curial does have autobiographical value. It is to be placed side by side with another authentic writing, Le Traité de l'Espérance, which likewise contains a vigorous and personal attack against court life.¹²² Both reflect the existence that Chartier must have endured during those times when he was not occupied with some diplomatic mission. Besides, it is addressed to his brother, Guillaume, who later (1447) became Bishop of Paris. This fact is confirmed by the inscription in the manuscript just mentioned, written during his lifetime.¹²³ But there is additional certification in a 1464 Valenciennes manuscript¹²⁴ entitled Lettres de Jehan de Lannoy à Loys son fils which states the following:

Jay escript icy ensieuvant la coppie dune lettre que maistre Alain Caretier a aultrefois escript, touschant lestat de la court a son frere quy de present est evesque de Paris, de tres honorable et tres louable vie, quy lors desiroit par son moyen estre retenu a la court du roy, et maintenant est bien dautre volunte, comme saige et quy la court a bien experimente …¹²⁵

Compelling as its refutation would appear to be, there is a considerable number of critics who adhere to Heuckenkamp's hypothesis. Foremost among them is Louis Thuasne, who advances two interesting arguments in rebuttal of Piaget and in support of the idea of Chartier's authorship of the French Curial. The first is that in the poem Estrif de Fortune, written by Martin Le Franc in 1448, the character Vertu declares that “Alain Chartier, poète françois, nouvellement à mon plaisir descript a les miseres de la court.”¹²⁶ Were the Curial merely a translation, says Thuasne, Le Franc would probably have written “translaté” instead of “descript.” The second lies in a 1473 translation into Latin of the French version of the Curial by Robert Gaguin, important fifteenth-century churchman, diplomat and humanist. Gaguin, who was well acquainted with his period's literature and who knew Alain's brother Guillaume, expressly says so in his own introduction: “… in libellum Curialem Alani Quadrigarii prefacio.”¹²⁷

The second of these arguments carries more weight than the other, but it may be answered by a statement already noted, by Piaget,¹²⁸ namely that the French translation of Alain's original Tractatus de vita curiali enjoyed great success upon its appearance, obscured the original and was considered to be the work of Chartier himself. The Latin version had been so completely forgotten that even Gaguin, in 1473, did not suspect its existence and subscribed to the general idea that Alain Chartier was responsible for the popular version.¹²⁹ And this idea persisted until the appearance of Heuckenkamp's edition in 1899.¹³⁰

Gaguin's translation is the first overt sign of the Curial's popularity. There are a number of others, extending into the sixteenth century. There is, for instance, the version which had been “englysshed” by William Caxton for a “noble and vertuous Erle.”¹³¹ In 1511, Jean Lemaire de Belges paid homage to the excellence of the French version, believed by him to have been written by Alain, as he compared it with the Latin De miseria Curialium which had been composed in 1444 by Pope Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini) on the same subject.¹³² There is, of course, the separate edition published in 1582 by Daniel Chartier.¹³³ And finally we find portions of the work imitated—although Alain's name is not specifically mentioned—in the writings of two of his noted admirers, Octovien de Saint-Gelays and Jean Bouchet.¹³⁴

An attack against court life, in the Curial, while it may have been inspired by Chartier's own experience, was scarcely novel in literature. Nor are examples confined to France alone.¹³⁵ Prototypes are to be found as far back in the medieval period as the twelfth century as, for instance, in John of Salisbury's Polycraticus.¹³⁶ But there were others much closer to Chartier with which he may have been familiar. A good number of Deschamps' ballades touch upon the subject.¹³⁷ So does Philippe de Vitry's Dit de Franc-Gontier¹³⁸ which, like the ballades, dates from the second half of the fourteenth century. This piece was probably the inspirational source for Pierre d'Ailly's Combien est misérable la vie d'un tyrant, both of which were subsequently translated into Latin by Nicolas de Clamanges.¹³⁹ Clamanges further castigated the miserable existence of courtiers in two original letters addressed to Nicolas de Baye and to Jean de Monstereul.¹⁴⁰ And the latter, who, like Clamanges and Alain was king's secretary, pursued the same theme in a letter to Col and Manhac¹⁴¹ which, incidentally, appears along with Chartier's De Vita Curiali in Martène and Durand's Amplissima Collectio.¹⁴²

After Chartier's work, the theme of the disadvantages and evils of court life appeared in both French and Latin, as before. There is the De Miseria Curialium, written in 1444, by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini¹⁴³ on the same subject, a work which Jean Lemaire deemed inferior to Alain's tract. In 1473—the same year as Robert Gaguin's translation—there appeared under a significant title a piece by one Charles de Rochefort, L'Abuzé en court.¹⁴⁴ In some cases the work is directly traceable to Chartier's or, at least, was inspired by it. Thus, the fourth book of Octovien de Saint-Gelays' Séjour d'honneur (1489-1493) contains a description of court customs and it is clear that what the author set out to accomplish was to give poetic form to ideas expressed by Alain, in his Curial.¹⁴⁵ Octovien again took up the question of the trials of a courtier in his poem, Débat du Seigneur de court et du Seigneur des champs (1495c.).¹⁴⁶ Still another great admirer of Chartier, Jean Bouchet, a few decades later, turned to him for direct inspiration. There is a portion of a chapter in his Panegyric du Chevallier sans reproche, Louis de la Tremoille (1527)¹⁴⁷ which offers a case of verbal similarity. Bouchet wrote:

La Court est une humilité ambicieuse, une sobriété crapuleuse, une chasteté lubrique, une modération furieuse, une contenance supersticieuse, une diligence nuysible, une amour enuyeuse, une familièrté contagieuse … une habondance affamée, une haultesse misérable, ung estat sans seureté … mourante vie et une mort vivante … La Court faict de vertuz vice et de vice vertuz …¹⁴⁸

When only the French version of the Curial was known, it was the subject of the most laudatory criticism. Praised, translated and imitated by Chartier's successors, this, the shortest of his prose works, has been deemed by more modern critics to be the most perfect and the most concise as well.¹⁴⁹ The use of antithesis has been singled out, the “tour aiguisé de la phrase” and the conscious imitation of Seneca particularly commended. It was, in short, endowed with qualities which made it the best French prose of that time.¹⁵⁰

After Heuckenkamp's discovery, the French version merely basked in the reflected glory of the Latin original.¹⁵¹ The latter, by far the superior work, had to commend it the energetic brevity of its style and the simplicity of its composition.¹⁵² It had more literary merit than all its imitations because of “the verve of its language, the concision of its style and the energy of thought which is reflected in it.”¹⁵³

3. LE TRAITé DE L'ESPéRANCE¹⁵⁴

Le Traité de l'Espérance is Chartier's most considerable work. It is also one of his last. A course in Christian morals, it passes in review and discusses seriously many of the questions of the author's period on religion, the Church, politics and philosophy.¹⁵⁵ It is frankly modeled on Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, so universally admired by medieval poets and moralists,¹⁵⁶ and offers a combination of prose passages interspersed with verse, with the latter restricted to a minor rôle.¹⁵⁷

Chartier begins with the ubi sunt theme in which he tells of his regret for the olden days. After ten years of exile,¹⁵⁸ having endured much sorrow and suffered endless hardships, he came to read in the Chronicles of the founding of the once noble nation of France. So upright and so virtuous had been its leaders that the realm grew and prospered. Their powers also increased. They were honored, loved and feared. Even their distant descendants lived to enjoy the peace and security which they had ensured. Alain's youth, reflecting that happy state, was spent in composing gay trifles inspired by the poetic muse. But now, alas, his heart is sad. No joy can come from the contemplation of a land torn by strife and foreign war. A sorrow, seemingly everlasting, has changed the tune of his lyre and prematurely turned him into an old man.¹⁵⁹

As one stricken and deadened by grief, bewildered, “le visage blesme, le sens troublé, et le sang meslé ou corps,” he is approached by Mélancholie, an old disheveled creature, who takes him suddenly in her arms, covering his face and body with her cloak. She presses him tightly, shielding his eyes so that he can hardly see and carries him to the “logis d'enfermeté,” where she deposits him upon the bed of anguish and sickness.¹⁶⁰

In the process of dozing off, the author undertakes to describe the mechanism of sleep, not forgetting to call in the great authority, Aristotle. He tells us that “les quatre vertus sensuelles dedans l'omme que nous appellons sensitive, imaginative, estimative & memoire, sont corporelles & organicques,”¹⁶¹ thus indulging his scholastic tastes and, incidentally, arresting the principal action of the work.¹⁶²

In his sleep he sees three hideous women. They are Deffiance, Indignation and Desespérance, described in ugly detail. Each, in turn, addresses him. Indignation speaks first and scores the abuses, vanity, fickleness and folly that reign in the court of princes, attempting thereby to incite this model subject to acts of disloyalty. “If the court has failed to recognize your services and the ungrateful forgotten your good deeds,” she observes, “how do you hereafter expect to serve profitably the res publica and yourself?”¹⁶³ And she goes on to paint a highly uncomplimentary picture of the court. Truth, for one thing, is barred:

Souvienne toy que vie curial est de la nature des folles & dissoluës femmes, qui plus cherissent les derniers venuz, & giettent les bras ou coul plus ardamment à ceulx qui les pillent & diffament, que à ceulx qui trop les ayment, & servent.¹⁶⁴

The specialties of court life are ambition, vanity, envy and selfishness. Happy is the one who remains far away, for his will be the simple pleasures of the mind and heart, “plaisant occupation, honneste pouvreté, richesse de peu, seure leesse, desir a mesure, & content appetit.” Indignation cites a number of examples to show how loyalty and service have, in the past, been rewarded by the court. Seneca was put to death by Nero, Tullius Cicero decapitated by Antony, Demosthenes killed by the Athenians, and Boethius—yes, the author of the Book of Consolation—imprisoned by King Theodoric. Loyalty is therefore a fetish which can but lead to difficulty. It has already caused the author to suffer untold hardships. Diogenes was wise indeed to say that the man was happy who cared not who ruled the earth. So speaks Indignation.¹⁶⁵

Next comes Deffiance, deploring the affliction of the poor French people. The land is despoiled and a state of anarchy exists. “The countryside has been turned into a sea in which everyone rules to the extent of his physical force,” she says.¹⁶⁶ Soon there will be no food to fill the stomachs of city dwellers. The wisest counsel is to flee, just as did Antenor and Aeneas in another day. Remain, and misfortune will hound you no matter where you go. There is salvation only in flight for it seems that God has both forsaken and forgotten the people of France.

Finally Desespérance steps up and advises the author to end, by committing suicide, a miserable existence which threatens only to become worse. “You have already passed the prime of life and your nation's misfortunes have but begun,” she warns him.¹⁶⁷ Should he choose to live on, he will see his friends die, wealth stolen, fields laid waste, cities destroyed, the entire land despoiled and all reduced to common servitude. History is replete with examples of self-destruction. Witness Cato, Mithridates, Hannibal, Jugurtha, Nero, and, among the “weaker sex,” Lucretia, Dido and others. And she proceeds to paint a desolate picture of the nation:

La chevalerie de ton pays est perie et morte, les estudes sont dissipées, le Clergié est dispers, & vague, & opprimé: & la regle & moderation de honneste Ecclesiastique est tournée avecques le temps en desordonnance, & dissolution. Les citoiens sont despourveuz d'esperance, & descognoissans de seigneurie, par l'oscurté de ceste trouble nuée. Ordre est tournée en confusion, & Loy en desmesurée violence. Juste seigneurie & honneur deschiet, obeissance ennuie, patience fault, tout tombe, & fond en l'abisme de ruine, & de desolation.¹⁶⁸

It would be difficult indeed to conceive of a more desperate tableau of France's moral and physical plight. The writer's purpose would seem to be to present the worst possible picture—a task not too arduous, and one that could readily be achieved by painting from objective observation—so that the prospect of recovery and redemption will be the more attractive and desirable. In order to be able to prescribe a cure for a given pathological condition it is necessary to know precisely the causes which have brought it about. Chartier will therefore probe at length into the evils responsible for the nation's collapse and expose them to general view before offering proposals for their elimination.

And so our man will not destroy himself. Returning to allegorical symbols, we observe Dame Nature entering upon the scene, and anxious as ever to preserve a human life, calling upon Entendement, who has been asleep in a corner near the author, to guide her and lead the potential suicide back to the road of patience and courage, Entendement thereupon opens the gate of Alain's memory, long rusty with forgetfulness, and through it there enter at once three Ladies, together with “une tres-debonnaire & bien encontenancée Damoiselle.”¹⁶⁹

The scene will now be occupied, and for a long time, by Entendement and Foy, the first of the theological virtues represented by these Dames, with the former acting only as a foil to the other's explanations. We shall witness the exposition of religious truths as they are taught by the Holy Books and confirmed by the martyrs. We are told how kingdoms and principalities are established through divine consent and how the God-fearing prince leads his subjects along the path of virtue in a prosperous realm. When Entendement inquires why those who have no part in the administration of government are punished for the faults of the leaders, Foy replies that punishment is meted out to those who do not raise their voices in objection or who, through flattery or ambition, tacitly assent to maladministration.

The honor of the Church has been lessened through the ambition, venality and example of its dissolute representatives.

O saincte mere Eglise, tu fus fondee sur humilité, qui est la premiere pierre de l'edifice Jesus-Christ, & par humilité gardée sous la cremeur de Dieu, & eslevee en exaltation sur le monde. Maintenant par orgueil contre Dieu te fault tourner en depression sous les mondains. Tes ministres & predicateurs de Foy furent jadis en sang martirez. Et ils sont ades tirans d'argent, & negociateurs de la terre. La saincte conversation du Clergié esmeut pieça les couraiges des Princes, & des conquereurs à toy donner, & la dissolution des Clers enhardit ades chacun à leur tollir. …¹⁷⁰

The realm of France has so long been afflicted because her people remain obstinate in their sin, show contempt for the corrections of God, and, with their blasphemy,¹⁷¹ their voluptuous life and their ambition, have wandered far from the virtuous path of their progenitors. As long as their sins last, just so long will the wrath of God be visited upon them.

Where is the glory that once was France? At present there is only corruption. The nobility, descendants of those valiant men who raised the nation to a once exalted position, are now nourished on false ideas. The belief is shared by some that they were born to lead idle lives and be honored by the people, who exist only to serve their selfish needs.

Car ce fol langage court aujourd'huy entre les Curiaulx, que noble homme ne doit sçavoir les lettres, & tiennent à reprouche de gentillesse bien lire ou bien escrire. Las! qui pourroit dire plus grant folie, ne plus perilleux erreur publier? Certes à bon droit puet estre appellé beste, qui se glorifie de ressembler aux bestes en non sçavoir, & se donne loüange de son deffault. C'est trop oublié le privilege d'umanité pour vivre brutalement en ignorance. Car se homme a excellence sur les bestes par sçavoir, bien doit surmonter les autres hommes en science, qui sur les hommes a seigneurie. Si ne sçauroye reprendre celuy qui dit que le Roy sans lettres est un asne couronné. Par ainsi il ne faut douter que seigneurie et servitute sont establissement de loy raisonnable, non mie don de fortune. Et se tous sont egaux humainement quant à l'engendrer & au naistre, cil qui par la loy a preeminence de gouverner, doit avoir par exercite perfection de cognoissance …¹⁷²

In stressing the need of faith in God, Foy retires, leaving the scene to her sister, Espérance. Interruptions by Entendement become constantly fewer and Espérance assumes complete domination as she proceeds to explain the necessity for hope, citing its practicability and indicating, from the Bible and from history, the numerous instances of its maintenance. This portion constitutes a lengthy dissertation on theology and the philosophy of history, interpreted from the religious point of view.¹⁷³

Espérance proves by numerous historical examples that one must not lose courage or hope in the face of adversity. Great conquerors, goaded on to ever further conquest by greed and vanity, have had lots worse than their victims. Semiramis, desirous of extending her victories over India and Ethiopia, was killed by her own son. Hercules, Mithridates, Philip (who beset Greece and Macedonia), Alexander, Xerxes, Cyrus (whose head was cut off under the order of Queen Tomyris, and thrown into a bag filled with human blood, that he might, in the Queen's words, sate his thirst), and Hannibal—all ended badly. Seneca and Boccaccio are full of stories which tell of the final collapse of those who would over-extend themselves through lust or ambition. If more recent examples bear more weight, the memory of our elders can furnish them. They remember when Sicily was oppressed by its kings, Manfred and Conrad; there seemed to be no hope, until, that is, Charles d'Anjou came along and restored Sicily to its former state. And there are countless others. One may find consolation in the thought that the fame of one's enemies cannot be everlasting.

Conforte toy en ce, & pense que le bruit de tes ennemis n'est pas perdurable, quant souvent apres tous les effors de l'outrage humain, les violans exurpateurs d'autruy region sont confondus & aneantis, & la terre ou par aller remaint aux anciens habiteurs. Mesmement le plus de fois si peu de preu demeure aux conquereurs, que ils degastent leurs puissances, & consument leurs forces; & par leurs violences les assaillis se exercitent aux armes, tant qu'ils apprennent de leurs ennemis à eux deffendre, & à recouvrer la victoire sur les vainqueurs. Si en ont finablement les deffendeurs prouffit & discipline, & les envaysseurs dommage de ruine …¹⁷⁴

Espérance continues to discuss problems of a purely theological character. She stresses the need for prayer and explains the significance of sacrifices and mass, coming quite naturally to the subject of priests. Their corruption has already been roundly scored by Foy. Espérance returns to the attack, singling out for particular criticism the often assailed institution of celibacy which the Latin Church imposed upon priests:

Or fut il pieça fait un nouvel statut en l'Eglise Latine, qui dessevra l'ordre du sainct mariage d'avec la dignité de Prestrise souz couleur de purté & chasteté sans souilleure. Maintenant court le statut de concubinage au contraire, qui les a attraits aux estats mondains, & aux deliz sensuels & corporels … Que a apporté la constitution de non marier les Prestres; sinon tourner et eviter legitime generation (pour convertir)¹⁷⁵ en advoultrise, & honneste cohabitation d'une seule espouse en multiplication d'escande¹⁷⁶ luxure.

In the face of these horrors, Alain Chartier visions the Antichrist, lurking in the not too distant future.¹⁷⁷

The Traité de l'Espérance closes with this attack. Since the rôle of Charité is not fulfilled, the work is evidently incomplete. This is a fact certified by one of the numerous manuscripts,¹⁷⁸ which concludes with the statement, “Explicit l'Exil, autrement l'imparfait, de maistre Alain Chartier.” It finds further confirmation in a tribute offered by Jean Bouchet to the Espérance, as follows:

Regardez bien la treshaulte matiere
Du dict Chartier, si elle estoit entiere:
Trouverez vous aucun grec ou latin
Si vous veillez dessus tard et matin,
Qui ait de Foy mieulx dit en rithme et prose
Ne d'Esperance, ainsi qu'il le propose …(179)

Furthermore, the usual peroration is lacking.¹⁸⁰

Bouchet was not the only one who found the Espérance worthy of praise. We have seen Robert Gaguin, who executed a Latin translation of Chartier's Curial and composed his Débat du laboureur, du prestre et du gendarme in imitation of the Quadrilogue invectif, borrowing further from Alain for certain portions of his poem, Le Passe temps d'oysiveté.¹⁸¹ Jean Lemaire de Belges could find no better way of strengthening his thesis in support of the French national church than by citing extensively from a passage of the Espérance which attacks the principle of celibacy among priests.¹⁸² But by far the greatest tribute was paid toward the close of the sixteenth century by Etienne Pasquier, who devoted an entire chapter of his Recherches de la France¹⁸³ to the “golden words and fair maxims of Maistre Alain Chartier,” in the course of which were cited a generous number of “belles sentences,” all culled from the Espérance.¹⁸⁴ And their gravity, their style were deemed to be such that Pasquier did not hesitate to compare their author, that “great orator,” with the ancient Roman, Seneca.¹⁸⁵ Two decades later, André Du Chesne, Chartier's editor, accepted this tribute as dictum, adding that as a literary work the Espérance was “the most excellent and most learned ever devised by him,” that it was

particulierement remplie de si grande doctrine, & comblée de tant de riches sentences & mots dorez, que par elle seule il semble avoir merité le titre honorable & glorieux de Pere de l'Eloquence françoise et d'être mis en parangon avecques l'ancien Seneque de Rome.¹⁸⁶

Le Traité de l'Espérance would today be appreciated for qualities other than those which made it so highly regarded several centuries ago. Pithy maxims, a generous display of erudition (“doctrine”), and a lofty style appealed to Chartier's contemporaries, to say nothing of the form of the work itself, in which these features were expressed. There is no need to stress the medieval aspects of the Espérance, with its fastidious dream-vision framework, its accompanying allegory, its too frequent personification and its constant recourse to scholastic devices in argumentation. They are characteristics—defects if one will—common to most literary efforts since the Roman de la Rose, common also to serious works inspired by the philosophical treatise of Boethius.¹⁸⁷ They are the stamp which dates the work. As for the prose-verse combination, that is not only typical of the Consolatio, it is a literary genre that enjoyed great favor in the fifteenth century, and Chartier's Espérance stands in the tradition of similarly composed writings of Christine de Pisan before him and Martin Le Franc, Le Roi René, Guillaume Alexis, Pierre Michault, Jean Molinet and others later on.¹⁸⁸

What makes it a significant work is that Chartier's own sentiments, all too often submerged by the convention that governed poetry, and even prose, are allowed here to pierce the surface, formalized though the genre conveying them may be. Energetic attacks on a corrupt and dissolute clergy, the arraignment of an entire people for “ignoring the teachings of God,” vigorous assaults on an irresponsible and slothful nobility have their source in profound emotions aroused by a deep sense of religion and patriotism. They are the emotions which call forth a true eloquence. The gravity and the pungency of the onslaught upon the disintegration of clerical discipline, the liberties assumed in his forthright criticisms, have caused Chartier to be placed among the precursors of the great reformers of the following century.¹⁸⁹ To the modern critic, then, the Traité de l'Espérance has to commend it neither its “doctrine” nor its “belles sentences,” but a crusading spirit, implemented by forceful, oratorical prose (stripped of ornamental rhetoric), and an eloquence born of sincerity and genuine sympathy, all put to the service of a high moral purpose: the regeneration of a stricken, prostrate nation.

One may, on this occasion, subscribe with little reserve to the comprehensive and eloquent conclusion of Mr. Champion:

Tel est ce grand et inachevé monument que Me Alain consacra à l'Espérance, bourré de théologie, chargé de textes, lourd de sentences de ses maîtres, les anciens, de considérations morales et politiques d'une haute portée, de la lecture des chroniques, où le jargon de l'Ecole, les syllogismes alternent avec de délicieux cantiques dans lesquels survit le poète, mais un poète qui résume maintenant les prophètes, l'Ancien et le Nouveau Testament; au demeurant, un bien étrange poème en prose, avec des mouvements d'une éloquence directe, des invocations, écrit sous le double courant qui entraînait Alain Chartier du désespoir mortel à l'espérance céleste. Sa prolixité, son plan géométrique nous rebute aujourd'hui. Mais l'Espérance doit retenir notre attention comme un monument très rare, d'un art souvent magnifique, qu'il convient d'admirer comme un morceau d'une étrange cathédrale.¹⁹⁰

Notes

1. Les Erreurs du jugement de la belle dame sans mercy. This must be one of the earliest references to Chartier's qualities as a prose writer, having been written shortly after his Belle dame. See Piaget, Romania, XXXIII (1904), 191.

2. Le Séjour d'honneur, Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 12783, fol. 125 ro. Cited by Du Chesne in his preface.

3. Traicté de la difference des schismes … Œuvres, pub. by J. Stecher, Louvain, 1882-1891, vol. III, p. 355. In another work (Le Temple d'honneur et de vertu), evoking the memory of several “renommez orateurs, hystoriens et poetes,” Lemaire does not fail to include the name of “Allan Charretier” (Œuvres, vol. IV, p. 231).

4. “Le bien disant en rithme et prose Alain” (Complaincte de … Preud'homme in Œuvres complètes, pub. by P. Jannet, Paris, 1873-1876, vol. II, p. 270).

5. Elégie XVI, Œuvres, vol. II, p. 36.

6. Le Temple de bonne renommée, Paris, 1516, ff. LXII vo.; LIX ro.-vo.

7. Les Annales d'Aquitaine, Poitiers, 1644 ed., p. 252.

8. Idem. The last two sentences are additions of the 1644 edition.

9. Les Recherches de la France, Paris, 1596, p. 265 vo.

10. Pasquier actually wrote Curial although he had the other work in mind. On the reasons for confusion in title, see my analysis of the Curial, notes 1 and 34.

11. Pasquier uses “polisseure.” See the Amsterdam, 1723, ed., vol. I, p. 762.

12. Le Grand et vray art de pleine rhétorique, 1521 ed., reproduced by A. Héron, Rouen, 1889, vol. I, p. 11.

13. Champ Fleury. Reproduction phototypique de l'édition princeps, 1529, ed. by G. Cohen, Paris, 1931, fol. iiii ro.

14. Recherches, 1596 ed., p. 267 ro.

15. Alain is mentioned by Guillaume Cretin among his “tres eloquentz precepteurs et recteurs” (“La Chronique française de Gu. Cretin,” by H. Guy, Revue des Langues romanes, XLVII, 1904, 393) … Ch. Sorel (La Bibliothèque françoise de M …, Paris, 1667, p. 251) and Piaget (Grande Encyclopédie, Paris, X, 1890, 816) both say that Pasquier was responsible for the title. G. Paris (Esquisse historique de la littérature française au moyen-âge, Paris, 1907, p. 219) states that the seventeenth century gave it to him. These assumptions are all incorrect. The first mention was actually made by Pierre Fabri (Grand et vray art …) when, in giving a prose illustration of what he termed “declamation by apostrophe,” he said:

    “O mort mortellement cruelle! pourquoi as-tu pris maistre
    Alain Charetier, le pere de l'eloquence françoyse.”

    (Vol. I, p. 72)

    In 1524 Bouchet repeated the epithet as he related for the first time the story of Margaret of Scotland's kiss:

    “Marguerite … qui fort aymoit les Orateurs de la langue vulgaire, & entre autres Maistre Alain Charretier, qui est le pere d'Eloquence Françoise …”

    (Annales d'Aquitaine, p. 252)

16. Du Chesne, pp. 1-252. Appendix B, note 26.

17. Du Chesne, pp. 253-260. Cf. Piaget, Le Miroir aux dames, p. 25.

18. The Curial will, however, be included in my presentation and analysis of Chartier's French prose writings. There are a number of compelling reasons for this: there are still sharp differences of opinion as to Alain's authorship of the Latin version; the latter, relatively recently discovered, has not contributed to shape the history of his reputation whereas the other did; finally, there is at least one critic who believes that the title of “Father of French eloquence” was bestowed upon him because of the popular version of the Curial (Stecher, Œuvres de Jean Lemaire de Belges, vol. IV, p. 381, note 2).

19. Würzburg, 1889.

20. See my introduction to Chartier's poetry. Another linguistic study is Höpfner's Die Wortstellung bei Alain Chartier und Gerson, Grimma, 1883, based almost exclusively on prose works. Höpfner does not include the Histoire de Charles VII in his analysis.

21. It is interesting to note how Chartier's concern for the welfare of the state prompted him to express opinions and even propose changes which, if adopted, would tend to cut through class distinction. For instance, in the Quadrilogue, he proposed the utilization of peasants to fill the depleted ranks of chivalry, in imitation of the Romans:

    “… s'ilz avoient perdu des chevaliers, ilz en establissoient de nouveaux et mettoient sus des gens de tous estas, mesmes des serfs, et les apprenoient et faisoient exerciter aux armes, et par la cure et ordonnance qu'ilz y mettoient s'en aidoient en leurs batailles et devenoient vaillans et hardiz …”

    (Droz edition, Paris, 1923, p. 28)

    In the Débat patriotique he dared to say that the children of poor classes often rise to heights through native ability and diligence. In the Espérance he stated that people are born equal and that the title of nobility imposed certain positive obligations before it conferred any rights. Chartier's prime concern lay in the rehabilitation of the nation. Toward that end he advocated using all its resources, even to the extent of breaking down class distinction and prejudice. It is hardly likely that the nobility relished this phase of the attack.

22. Droz, p. 1.

23. He knew the Greeks, Homer, Aristotle, Demosthenes, through Latin translations of Dares Phrygius, Nicole Oresme, Boccaccio, etc.

24. Edited by G. Rosenthal, Halle, 1901.

25. On the copy of Sallust owned by Chartier upon which he placed his signature (“famosi olim, nunc autem de libris Alani Aurige de Baiocis”), see L. Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1874, vol. II, p. 353.

26. Du Chesne, Œuvres, p. 362.

27. Droz, op. cit., p. 49.

28. A number of examples will be cited in the analyses of the Quadrilogue and Espérance.

29. “… surtout Chartier imite Sénèque, et s'essaie, parfois avec bonheur, à en trouver la brièveté nerveuse et le trait.” (G. Lanson, Hist. de la lit. française, 23rd ed., 1931, p. 167.) “Il aiguise l'antithèse, presse la sentence, à la manière de Sénèque.” (Lanson, L'Art de la prose, Paris, 1911, p. 23.)

    Seneca is said to have influenced Chartier's ideas also:

    “Il lui empruntera l'idée de la constance, de la maitresse de soi-même, du mérite de la vertu en soi, et surtout de l'effort. Comme Sénèque, Me Alain fera l'éloge de la pauvreté. Il dira ce que nous devons à la chose publique. Sa morale en un mot sera celle des stoïciens, si proche d'ailleurs des idées chrétiennes.”

    (Champion, Histoire poétique du XVe siècle, vol. I, p. 7)

30. Cf. G. Saintsbury (A Short History of French Literature, Oxford, 1897, p. 141): “The Latinising tradition of Alain Chartier appears strong in Jean Lemaire.”

    A number of early sixteenth-century testimonials pay tribute to Alain's temperate imitation of the Latin in his French prose. The author of the Instructif de la seconde rhétorique, which serves as an introduction to the Jardin de Plaisance (Vérard's 1501 edition, reproduced in facsimile, Paris, S. A. T. F., 1910) observes, apropos of a vice called “innovation,” that Chartier did not exaggerate the use of words and expressions “sur le latin escumez.” (fol. III vo.-IV ro.) In one of Sagon's replies to his literary enemy, Clément Marot, he accuses him of borrowing indiscriminately from the Latin, quite unlike maistre Alain (Rabais du caquet de Fripelippes … in Œuvres de Clément Marot, pub. by Lenglet Dufresnoy, La Haye, 1731, vol. IV, p. 452). The same criticism is leveled at Marot by Jacques Peletier du Mans (L'Art poétique d'Horace, Paris, 1545, p. 8 vo.) who similarly holds Alain up as a model. Finally, Geofroy Tory, who sneeringly scored the exaggerated tendency of Latinizing, terming it “verbocination latiale” (Champ Fleury), held Chartier's literary ability in high esteem and could not, therefore, have thought that he sinned in that respect.

31. See above, note 15.

32. Recherches de la France, 1596 ed., p. 267 ro.

33. Œuvres, Preface, p. a iiii vo.

34. Edited in 1923 by Mlle E. Droz, Alain Chartier—Le Quadrilogue invectif in Les Classiques français du moyen-âge. The edition is based on MS 126 of the Bibl. Nat. (ff. 191-209), which includes two other pieces by Chartier (Le Traité de l'Espérance and the Latin Dialogus familiaris …) and which was described by P. Paris in his Manuscrits françois de la Bibliothèque du Roi (Paris, 1836, vol. I, pp. 231-233). Manuscripts of the Quadrilogue are numerous, approximating 40. It had been twice published before the appearance of the first edition of Chartier's collected works. The first was 1474c. (Brunet, vol. I, p. 1815. Proctor, An Index to the Early Printed Books in the British Museum, Part 1 (3), no. 8728, p. 633, offers no date but suggests a different place and printer than Brunet. Droz (p. X) accepts the date as in the latter and the rest of the data as in Proctor. Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, vol. VI, no. 6568, pp. 431-432, follows Proctor but presents the date of 1478c.) The British Museum copy of this edition concludes with these words: “Cy finist le quadrilogue de maystre alain charretier dist et apelle la deploraction du royaulme de france.” The same explicit is found in a fifteenth-century Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 1129. The second early edition was printed 1477c. at Bruges. The Bibliothèque Nationale contains a copy of this edition.

    In Du Chesne (in which the text of the earlier editions was collated with that of the Du Puy manuscript), the Quadrilogue occupies pp. 402-454.

    The work is frequently referred to as the Quadriloge.

35. Droz, p. 1.

36. Ibid., p. 3.

37. For direct imitations of this portion of the Quadrilogue by George Chastellain and the Marqués de Santillana, see below.

38. Soon, at the deaths of the English and French kings, Henry VI, then ten months old, was to be crowned king of France in the cathedral of Notre Dame. The Duke of Bedford's regency was to be solemnly consecrated in Paris before a body consisting of the president of Parlement, the Bishop of Paris, the rector of the University and representatives of the clergy and nobility (Lavisse, Histoire de France, Paris, 1902, vol. IV, Part 2, p. 1).

    The four years leading up to the date of Chartier's Quadrilogue were among the darkest in the nation's history. The madness of Charles VI did not contribute to heal the rift that had split France into two violently opposed factions, Armagnacs and Burgundians. The latter had entered into an open alliance with the English. As Henry V besieged Normandy in 1418 (Rouen held out for six months before capitulating) the Burgundians invaded Paris, driving out the Dauphin and his Armagnac supporters who then retired to Bourges. The following year, Jean Sans Peur, titular head of Burgundy, was assassinated in the capital, an act which only strengthened the coalition with the English while outlawing the Dauphin Charles. On May 21, 1420, the Treaty of Troyes was signed, epitomizing the moral degradation and complete collapse of France. Henry V became heir to the French throne and was allowed to keep the provinces that he had conquered. Civil war continued throughout 1420 and 1421, characterized by plunder and massacres. The lot of Parisians was especially severe; there was misery and poverty. The Bourgeois de Paris tells how hungry wolves came to the capital during the night and unearthed the dead (Journal, ed. by A. Tuetey, Paris, 1881, p. 154). It was in this atmosphere that Chartier wrote his Quadrilogue.

39. Droz, p. 5. One sometimes finds appended as subtitle these words: “contre les prétentions d'Edouard III, Roi d'Angleterre.” (See J. Lelong, Bibliothèque historique de la France, Paris, 1719, item 7340, p. 372; Lenglet Dufresnoy, Méthode pour étudier l'histoire, Paris, 1729, vol. IV, p. 62 and various encyclopedia articles which evidently borrowed it from Lelong.) This obvious misstatement may be explained as follows: in the early editions the Quadrilogue is regularly followed by a piece called Généalogie des rois de France, which purports to prove that Edward III's claims to the French throne were unfounded. The 1529 Du Pré edition follows the same sequence (ff. CXI ro. et seq.). However, in this edition, the title Quadrilogue appears, through a typographical error, over pages which contain the Généalogie. Hence, the subtitle of the latter selection was erroneously applied to the other. Lelong was among the first to be taken in by this error.

40. Ibid., p. 11.

41. Ibid., p. 12.

42. Ibid., p. 14.

43. Ibid., p. 17.

44. Ibid., p. 18. One of the most frequently cited passages of the Quadrilogue. Gaston Paris believes it justified the title of “Père de l'éloquence française” given to Alain (Esquisse historique de la littérature française au moyen-âge, Paris, 1907, p. 219).

45. Ibid., pp. 18-19.

46. Ibid., p. 19.

47. Ibid., p. 25.

48. Ibid., p. 26.

49. Ibid., pp. 26-27.

50. Ibid., p. 30.

51. 7,000 Frenchmen were killed by the English; 1500 were taken prisoner (Droz, op. cit., p. 61, note).

52. Droz, p. 33.

53. “… ains fault tirer au collier et prendre aux dens le frain vertueusement” (p. 40).

54. Ibid., pp. 41-42.

55. Ibid., pp. 42-43. In January, 1420, Charles VI forbade the inhabitants of Paris to obey the Dauphin, accused of complicity in the assassination of Jean Sans Peur. “Et a proprement considerer, ledit Charles s'est rendu indigne de nostre succession et de toute aultre honneur et dignité et ne doit avoir aide, secours ne confors; ains doivent estre touz contre luy, car ainsi l'a il voulu …” (Ibid., pp. 67-68).

56. “… qui se veult enrichir avecques ung prince necessiteux et accroistre trop grandement sa substance et son estat des biens de cellui qui peu en a pour la sienne sauvre monstre par sa privee affection que son couraige est indigne de service publique.” (Ibid., p. 47)

57. Through its repeated and detailed expression of these shortcomings, the Quadrilogue gives “clear and ordered evidence of chivalric decadence in France.” (R. L. Kilgour, The Decline of Chivalry, Cambridge, Mass., 1937, p. 218. The work is analyzed at length from this point of view: p. 201 et seq.)

58. Droz, p. 58.

59. Ibid., pp. 58-59. The sense of this final citation is to be compared with a statement made concerning Alain Chartier at the close of the eighteenth century. In Les Soirées littéraires (J. M. L. Coupé, Paris, 1799, vol. XV, p. 169) one reads the following:

    “Cet homme estimable, et qui fit beaucoup d'honneur à la Normandie, sa patrie, avoit choisi de préférence la profession des armes [!]. Ce genre de vie ne l'empêcha pas de suivre la carrière des lettres. Il donna même des leçons de poésie, d'éloquence, de philosophie au college de Navarre, où le vaillant capitaine ne rougissoit pas d'être professeur.”

    Although Coupé does not indicate the source of this startling information nor tell what edition he had before him as he analyzed portions of Alain's work, it seems clear that he was grossly misled through an erroneous interpretation of Du Chesne. The editor had said (Preface, p. a iiii), speaking of the University of Paris, which, at the beginning of the fifteenth century enjoyed great authority: “Car les armes ne l'empêchoient point encore d'enseigner, comme elles le firent depuis.” Of course, it was the university which was not prevented from teaching, not Alain Chartier.

60. Ch. Lenient, La Satire en France au moyen-âge, Paris, 1893, p. 241.

61. “De tous les ouvrages d'Alain Chartier, il n'en est pas de plus sincère; il n'en est pas de plus digne d'admiration … que … ce chef-d'œuvre de la prose éloquente française qu'est le Quadrilogue.” (Champion, Histoire poétique, vol. I, p. 32.) “… son meilleur ouvrage et le chef-d'œuvre de la prose française.” (Ibid., p. 6)

62. For a repetition of these features in the Traité de l'Espérance, see my analysis of this work. See my introduction to Chartier's poetry for the use of the débat in verse.

63. The question has been studied by Ch. S. Baldwin (Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice, N. Y., 1939, pp. 42-43) who underscores the purely rhetorical character of the genre as practiced during the fifteenth century and before. The discussion is on a broad plane so that neither Chartier nor the Quadrilogue is mentioned. It must therefore be assumed that this prose work is not exempted from the general classification. We shall soon see that it is possessed of qualities of patriotism and eloquence which place it on an equal footing with most “dialogues” produced during the Renaissance.

64. E. g., Lamentations sur les maux de la guerre civile, Livre de paix, Epître à Isabeau de Bavière, etc. One may mention also the Complanctus bonorum Gallicorum, a poem by Robert Blondel, written about the same time as the Quadrilogue and consequently inspired by the same circumstances. For other writings of similar tendency see Droz (p. V) and Siciliano (François Villon et les Thèmes poétiques du moyen-âge, Paris, 1934, p. 3, note 3).

65. “The invective carries the writer above his allegorical and abstract trappings and the sincerity of his emotions makes him burst into really eloquent passages.” (C. H. C. Wright, A History of French Literature, N. Y., 1912, p. 122.)

66. L. Thuasne, Roberti Gaguini Epistole et Orationes, Paris, 1903, vol. I, p. 160.

67. Kilgour, The Decline of Chivalry, p. 214.

68. Droz, p. 10. In his Latin Epistola to the Univ. of Paris, written in 1420, Chartier had used the term “natalemque locum.”

69. Idem. Chartier is considered to have given the most complete expression to the idea of national sentiment during the crisis of the Hundred Years War and his Quadrilogue has been called “un des premiers monuments de notre éloquence nationale et patriotique.” (G. Guibal, Histoire du sentiment national pendant la guerre de cent ans, Paris, 1875, pp. 335, 341.) Kilgour significantly treats our author in a chapter entitled “Alain Chartier—The Patriot” (op. cit., pp. 195-225).

70. Droz, p. 1.

71. It permitted concentration of power in a single individual, which made for unity. In his Traité de l'Espérance (Du Chesne, p. 315, variant), Democratie is described as “gouvernement populaire, en confusion & sans ordre.” In view of existing chaos and the state of near-anarchy which had been brought on by endless civil and foreign war, the idea of unity had become with Chartier almost an obsession.

72. R. Mohl, The Three Estates in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, N. Y., 1933, p. 73. The Quadrilogue has been described as a political pamphlet: “On répandit dans les provinces une espèce de pamphlet politique.” (H. Martin, Histoire de France, Paris, 1840, vol. VII, p. 3); “Une brochure politique, la première sans doute qui ait paru en France.” (Puymaigre, “Alain Chartier et les désastres de la France au XVe siècle,” Revue du Monde catholique, XXXIV, 1872, 216.) Chartier himself has been called a “violent pamphleteer” (Droz, p. V).

    Other political writings by Chartier, likewise urging the cause of national unity and the Dauphin are the Latin Epistola written to the University, another Latin work, De detestatione belli gallici et suasione pacis (both in Du Chesne, pp. 490-492, 478-487), the Lay de Paix and the Débat patriotique.

73. Droz, p. 1.

74. G. Paris, Esquisse historique …, p. 219.

75. The name of Bossuet is evoked on several occasions in connection with Chartier's prose style. See Champion, Histoire poétique …, pp. 33 and 161, note 1; also L. Charpennes, La Belle dame sans merci (Paris, 1901), p. 6. From the standpoint of prose style, Alain's name is also often associated with that of Guez de Balzac.

76. Droz, p. VI.

77. Catalogi Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleiani-Codices Rawlinsoniani A., Oxford, 1862, p. 358, MS 338. The editor adds: “An English translation of the Quadrilogue … possibly identical … exists in Univ. Coll. MS 85.” I have been unable to locate the catalogue which describes this latter manuscript.

78. British Museum MS Eg. 1868, ff. 191-238. See P. de Gayangos, Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Spanish Language in the British Museum, London, 1875, vol. I, p. 10.

79. M. Schiff, La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane. Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, fasc. 153, Paris, 1905, p. 372.

80. Supra, note 3.

81. Obras de Don Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana, pub. by A. de los Ríos, Madrid, 1852, p. 161. About the background of the Spanish poem, De los Ríos says: “era este poema un saludable antídoto contra las discordias y tribulaciones que conturbaban á Castilla …” (P. LXXXVII.) … For other relations between Santillana and Chartier, see my analysis of the Belle dame sans mercy, note 100, and “Reputation,” under 1449.

    Of less definite value than the above, but interesting nevertheless, is a citation from another Castilian poet, one Martinez de Medina, whose writings bear the somber reflection of the calamitous times in which he lived (El Cancionero de Jean Alfonso de Baena, pub. by Fr. Michel, Leipzig, 1860: a monument of Castilian literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries). He deplores the absence of peace and justice. Weeping France shows her grief and misfortune, says he in one of his writings (Preguntas de Gonçalo Martines de Medina). If God shows no pity for Castile, it will succumb under more evils than France herself.

    “La cuytada Françia con muy triste cara,
    Nos muestra sus cuytas, dolor é gemido …”

    (El Cancionero …, vol. II, p. 32)

    Compare this with the description of tearful and doleful France in the introduction of the Quadrilogue. One critic (Puymaigre, “Alain Chartier et les désastres de la France au XVe siècle,” p. 216) speaks of the sensation caused in Spain by the misfortunes of France. Perhaps, he adds, Martinez recalled the sorrow expressed by Alain Chartier on the misfortunes of his time.

82. Œuvres de Georges Chastellain, pub. by K. de Lettenhove, Bruxelles, 1866, vol. VIII, pp. 325-326.

83. Siciliano, François Villon …, Paris, 1934.

84. Œuvres, p. 325.

85. Ibid., p. 326.

86. Edited by J. A. H. Murray, London, Early English Text Society, Extra Series XVII, 1872.

87. “… the barons, unawed by any superior, assumed prerogatives of more than sovereign power, the ecclesiastical dignitaries stretched their pretensions to unparalleled limits, while the body of clergy revelled in the grossest depravity, only equalled by the capacity with which they plundered the miserable commons.” (Murray, loc. cit., p. IX; cited by Mohl, The Three Estates in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, p. 167.)

88. The Complaynt offers a considerable development over the Quadrilogue, containing more than 180 pages. It is thus between three and four times the length of the other. But see W. A. Neilson, “The Original of The Complaynt of Scotlande,” Journal of German Philology, I (1897), 411-430.

89. Murray, loc. cit., p. 68. Cf. the Quadrilogue (p. 6):

    “… une dame dont le hault port et seigneury maintien signifioit sa tresexcellente extraction, mais tant fut dolente et esplouree que bien sembloit dame decheue de plus hault honneur que pour lors son estat ne demonstroit.”

90. Neilson, loc. cit., p. 141 The author of the article presents evidence by juxtaposing the English and French texts in question. Du Chesne is used for the French.

91. Idem. Neilson maintains (p. 411) that the Quadrilogue had been produced shortly after the coronation of Henry VI of England as king of France. This is, of course, incorrect. It was written in 1422, before the death of Henry V. … Incorrect dates have been advanced by G. Mancel (Alain Chartier. Etude bibliographique et littéraire, Bayeux, 1849, p. 33: 1427), and Joret-Desclosières (Un Ecrivain national … Paris, 1899, p. 13: 1425).

92. L. Thuasne, Roberti Gaguini Epistole et Orationes, Paris, 1903, vol. II, p. 321 et seq. It will be seen later that Gaguin translated into Latin the French version of Chartier's Curial and imitated portions of his Traité de l'Espérance. These are facts which seem to justify Thuasne's statement (p. 321) that Alain “semble avoir exercé sur son esprit l'action la plus appréciable.”

93. “Le souvenir d'Alain Chartier se montre en particulier dans les doléances du Laboureur [stanzas I-X] où l'on trouve comme un écho des plaintes du Peuple …” (Idem.) Thuasne feels that the adaptation avoids the “prolixité et l'emphase souvent fatigante de son modèle.”

94. Published with Enguerran de Monstrelet's Chronique by L. Douëtd'Arc, Paris, 1892, vol. VI, pp. 176-190.

95. Lenient, La Satire en France au moyen-âge, p. 244.

96. P. 176.

97. P. 179. Cf. Le Quadrilogue in which Le Peuple says:

    “Le peuple si est membre notable d'un royaume, sans lequel les nobles ne le clergé ne pevent suffire a faire corps de police ne a soustenir leurs estas ne leur vie …”

    (Droz, p. 21; cited by Lenient, op. cit., p. 244)

98. Any temptation to ascribe the Complaincte to Alain Chartier is dispelled by this threat of civil violence.

99. It is cited, passim, by Beaucourt in his Histoire de Charles VII (1881, vol. I) and by Petit-Dutaillis in Lavisse's Histoire de France (vol. IV, Part 2) … “Alain Chartier, qui dans son Quadrilogue invectif, a sondé d'un œil si clairvoyant et avec un si noble patriotisme les abimes de la situation.” (Beaucourt, op. cit., p. 412, note)

100. The most recent and best edition is that by F. Heuckenkamp, issued in 1899 (Le Curial. Texte français du XVe siècle avec l'original latin, Halle). The editor lists and describes no fewer than fifteen manuscripts of the French version, six of which are in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale. (Not mentioned by Heuckenkamp as containing the Curial are: Moulins, 26, fol. 35 and Bibl. Nat. fr. 5339, fol. 6, in which the piece in question is preceded by a false title. Two additional manuscripts are cited by Piaget—Romania, XXX, 45-46, note—one in the Oxford Bodleian Library and the other in Turin. For a general criticism of Heuckenkamp's choice of manuscripts, see Piaget, loc. cit.) In addition, he lists the text included in Pierre le Caron's editio princeps of Chartier's collected works (1489) and Du Chesne's 1617 text (pp. 391-401: “Le Curial fait par Maistre Alain Chartier. Lequel il envoya à ung sien Compaignon qui avoit voulenté de venir en Cour.”) together with its variants (actually from the Du Puy manuscript, Bibl. Nat. fr. 1727, fol. 172, vo., separately listed by Heuckenkamp). The Latin version, standing opposite the French, is based on five manuscripts, three of which belong to the Bibl. Nat., plus the text of a sixth (Tours, 978) whose contents were known indirectly to him, through a copy (infra). Relationships between all the texts are carefully established and Heuckenkamp offers conjectures on the source of what he considers to be the French translation (p. XXVI). A separate edition of the French version was issued by Daniel Chartier in 1582, but the editor merely reproduced the old gothic editions. (Le Curial de Maistre Alain Chartier, Paris. The entire first portion of the text is actually Chartier's Traité de l'Espérance. The Curial proper follows, pp. 97 vo.-104.)

101. The Curial made by maystere Alain Charretier. Translated thus in Englyssh by William Caxton. 1484. (Text collated with the French original—from Du Chesne—by Paul Meyer and edited by F. J. Furnivall in the publications of the Early English Text Society, Extra Series, No. LIV, London, 1888. The above quotations are on pp. 3-5.) The French—no longer universally conceded to be the original—and Latin versions, from the edition by Heuckenkamp, are presented for comparison. The whole question of the authorship of these versions will be reviewed below.

     “… je te dy que les cours des grans princes ne sont jamez desgarnies de gens par beaux langaiges decepvens, ou par force de dons corrompans, ou par envie contendans, ou par menaces espoentans, ou par flatterie blandissans, ou par delisces allechans, ou par quelque aultre maniere le bon voloir des prudhommes enpeschans … Et soyes certain, ou que ta vertu t'y fera mocquier, ou que ta verité t'y fera haÿr, ou que ta discretion t'y rendera suspect; car il n'est riens tant desplaisant a malvaises gens que ceulx qu'il congnoissent estre vertueux, saiges et lëaux … Les abus de la court et la maniere des gens curiaux sont telz que jamez hommes n'y est souffert durer sans estre corrumpu, ou n'y est souffert soy eslever s'il n'est corrumpable … Telz sont les ouvraiges de court, que les simples y sont mesprisez, les vertueux enviez et les arrogans orgueilleux en perilz mortelz.”

     (Heuckenkamp, pp. 7, 9)

     “Non enim desunt in curiis, qui vel composito sermone seducant, vel palpent muneribus, livore contendant, minis absterreant, adulatione blandiantur, deliciis illaqueent et quaquaversum hominis mentem penetrent … Aut enim tua virtus ridiculosum te faciet, aut odiosum tua veritas, aut te suspectum reddet tua circumspecta discretio. Nichil enim iniquis est suspectius, quam provida aequitas … Aulicus abusus et curialis mos est ut neminem aut incorruptum relinquat curia aut incorruptibilem diu patiatur extolli …

     Sic sunt curie opera, ut in pusillanimes spretum, in virtuosos livorem, in arrogantes mortis periculum provocent.”

     (pp. 6, 8)

102. Caxton, pp. 7, 8.

     “S'il a acoustumé de menger sobrement et a droicte heure, il disnera tart et souppera en telle faczon, qu'il desacoustumera son temps et sa maniere de vivre. A il acoustumé de lire et d'estudier es livres, il musera oyseux toute l'adjournee en attendant que l'on luy euvre l'uys du retraict du prince. S'il ayme le repos de son corps, il sera envoyé decza et dela comme ung coureur perpetuel. S'il vieult couscher tost et lever tard a son plaisir, il fauldra qu'il veille bien tard et se lieve matin et qu'il passe souvent les nuyz sans dormir. S'il se estudie a y trouver amitié, jamais elle ne scet troter par les salles des grans seigneur, ainçoys elle se tient dehors et n'y entre avec aucun. Car elle est trop mieulx recogneue par ceulx qui en yssent, expers des ruses de fortune, que par ceulx qui y entrent ignorans ses tours bestournez”

     (Heuckenkamp, pp. 11, 13)

     “… sobrius conviva et tempestivus cibi moderator esse didicit, sero prandebit, conticinio cenabit, esus potusque modum et tempus dissuescet; libris vacare solet apertis clauso diversorio; in tedio otiosus extra hostiolum tota die vagabitur; quietem amat, agitatus viator semper cursitabit; sompnos suaves querit, noctes insompnes vigiliis et anxietate prolixiores aget; amicitie studet, illa pallatiorum limina calcare nescit, foris expectat et cum nemine ingreditur, obliviosa est intrantibus, egressis agnoscenda recolitur.”

     (pp. 10, 12)

103. Caxton, pp. 12-13.

     “La salle d'ung grant prince est communement infaicte et reschauffee de l'alaine des gens, l'uissier y donne de sa verge sur les testes de ceulx qui y sont, les ungs y entrent par force de bouter et les autres estrivent a y resister. Aucunes foiz se treuve plus avant porté ung pouvre meschant qui durement en a esté paravant rebouté, et le plus fier et orgueilleux, a qui homme n'osoit paravant toucher s'en treuve aucunesfoiz le plus esloigné et en plus grant danger. Ilec ne scet homme au certain si son estat y est seur ou non, mais quoy que soit, tousjours est il en doubte de sa fortune.”

     (Heuckenkamp, pp. 21, 23)

     “Stringitur latus populi concussu, calet anhelitu potentis aula. Lictoris virga quatitur humile caput, humero toto ingredi contendunt invicem pellentes, vicibusque versis. Nuper repulsus propius astat, et nunc assistens superbus satelles procul remotus prudens obmutescit. Illic ambiguus fortune status mentis quietem possidere nescit, sed pendent semper dubia vota.”

     (pp. 20, 22)

104. Caxton, p. 13.

     “La court … est ung couvent de gens qui soubz faintise du bien commun se assemblent pour s'entretromper; car il n'y a gueres de gens qui ne vendent achaptent ou eschangent aucunesfoiz leurs rentes ou propres vestemens.”

     (Heuckenkamp, p. 23)

     “Est virorum conventus, qui se ad invicem decipiendum, boni communis simulatione, communicant. Viri pectora, metallum, annonam et vestem venditione et emptione commutant.”

     (p. 22)

105. Caxton, p. 14.

     “Et se me demandes que c'est que vie curialle, je te respons, frere, que c'est une pouvre richesse, une habandance miserable, une haultesse qui chiet, ung estat non estable, une seurete tremblant et une morvieuse vie …”

     (Heuckenkamp, p. 23)

     “Quaeris igitur quid sit curialis vita: opulenta vita miseriis, copiosa egestas, celsitudo caduca, status instabilis, tremens securitas, moribunda vita …”

     (p. 22)

106. Caxton, p. 14.

     “Fuyez, hommes vertueux, fuyez et vous tenez loing de telle assemblee si vous voulez bien et sainctement vivre, et comme gens bien asseurez sur le rivaige nous regardez noyer de nostre gre mesmes et mesprisez nostre aveuglerie qui ne peut ou ne viult cognoistre nostre propre meschef.

     (Heuckenkamp, p. 25)

     “Fugite, viri fortes, state procul, si vos bene beateque vixisse delectat et, velut in littore tuti, nos sponte naufragantes despicite.

     (p. 24)

     In the Du Chesne edition, p. 401, we find, by way of conclusion, four lines of Latin verse, taken from the Du Puy manuscript:

     “Curia dat curas, ergo si tu benè curas
     Vivere securè, no sit tibi curia curae.
     Curia curarum genitrix, nutrixq., malorum
     Iniustis iustos, inhonnestis aequat honestos.”

     It is unlikely that Chartier was responsible for these lines.

107. Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicum dogmaticorum moralium, amplissima collectio, Parisiis, col. 1459 et seq.

108. P. XXVIII.

109. Heuckenkamp's information concerning Ambrosius de Miliis came from Antoine Thomas's Latin thesis—De Joannis de Monsterolio Vita et Operibus, Parisiis, 1883.

110. Toward the end, the editor suffered a change of heart and supposed that the Curial might have been addressed to the Franc Gontier of Philippe de Vitry's poem (p. XLV).

111. P. XXXV.

112. Romania, XXVIII (1899), 483-484.

113. Catalogue général des manuscrits des Bibliothèques publiques de France, vol. XXXVII (2), Tours, pp. 702-703.

114. “Actum Ambasie, die secunda februarii, anno Domini millesimo quadringentesimo vicesimo quinto.”

115. Piaget (Romania, XXX, 1901, 47) and Champion (Histoire poétique, vol. I, p. 52) who followed him, make the same error.

116. The date of 1427, offered by Droz (Le Quadrilogue invectif, p. VIII) is therefore not founded.

117. Romania, XXX (1901), 46.

118. Ibid., p. 47.

119. Bibl. Nat. MS lat. 5961, ff. 58 vo.-66.

120. P. XI.

121. Fol. 58 vo. None of the other Latin manuscripts ascribes the work to Chartier. Piaget notes (loc. cit., p. 48) that an attribution similar to the one in 5961 is found in two manuscripts: Douai 767 and Vienna 3391. The texts of these, however, are French.

122. Du Chesne, pp. 266-267. See also my analysis of the work. The attack in the Espérance is more virulent and bitter.

123. “… nunc vero parisiensi episcopo.”

124. No. 304.

125. An article by J. Mangeart published in the Echo de la Frontière (May 17, 1853) calls attention to this citation. Mangeart, who later became head librarian of Valenciennes, subsequently reproduced it in his Catalogue … des manuscrits de Valenciennes, Paris, 1860, p. 664.

     The Curial has been considered to have been addressed variously to Jean Chartier, author of the Grandes Chroniques de Saint-Denys who, incidentally, was not related to Alain (P. Paris, Les Manuscrits françois de la Bibliothèque du Roi, Paris, 1848, vol. VII, p. 251; Wm. Blades, The Biography and Typography of William Caxton, N. Y., 1882, p. 297) and to Alain's youngest brother, Thomas (Delaunay, Etude sur Alain Chartier, p. 109).

126. Thuasne, Roberti Gaguini Epistole et Orationes, Paris, 1903, vol. II, p. 202. See also Piaget, Martin Le Franc, prévôt de Lausanne, Lausanne, 1888, pp. 190-191. The citation is from the Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 1150, fol. 226 ro. … As for the date implied by the word “nouvellement” and its significance, see “Biography: Epitaph,” note 35.

127. Thuasne, op. cit., p. 201. A little later on we read: “Alani igitur Quadrigarii libellus Curialis (hoc enim nomine auctor illum suus inscripsit) …” (p. 206)

128. Supra, note 19.

129. Thuasne, “Le Curial d'Alain Chartier et la traduction de Robert Gaguin,” Revue des Bibliothèques, Paris, 1901, p. 14.

130. There are a few mentions of the possibility that Chartier might have written the two versions. One is by Vallet de Viriville, in 1854, in an article which appeared in the Nouvelle Biographie Générale, Paris, X, 23. After mentioning the Curial, he adds: “une traduction française par l'auteur lui-même d'une lettre latine adressée à son frère.” Another mention to the same effect is by Puymaigre, “Alain Chartier et les désastres de la France au XVe siècle,” Revue du Monde catholique, XXXIV, 1872, 211.

     Subscribing to Heuckenkamp's theory about the Latin authorship of the Curial, in addition to Gaston Paris and Louis Thuasne, are the following: L. Charpennes (La Belle dame sans merci, Paris, 1901, p. 2), G. Gröber (Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, Strassburg, 1902, vol. II, Part 1, p. 1104. A recent re-edition of this work, by S. Hofer, restores the Latin work to Chartier: Gustav Gröber Geschichte der mittelfranzösischen Literatur, Berlin, 1937, vol. II, p. 50), A. Molinier (Les Sources de l'histoire de France, Paris, 1904, vol. IV, p. 259), H. Guy (“Le Séjour d'honneur d'Octovien de Saint-Gelays,” Revue d'hist. lit. de la France, XV, 1908, 216), C. H. C. Wright (A History of French Literature, N. Y., 1912, pp. 121-122), J. Huizinga (The Waning of the Middle Ages, London, 1924, p. 119).

     Sharing Piaget's view—which appears to be the correct one—are Thomas (Romania, XXXIII, 1904, 393-394, note 2), Champion (Histoire poétique … vol. I, p. 52, note 3), Doutrepont (Jean Lemaire de Belges et la Renaissance, Bruxelles, 1934, p. 169), Coville (Gontier et Pierre Col et l'humanisme en France, Paris, 1934, p. 120, note 1) and others.

     A fairly concise survey of the “question of the Curial” is presented by A. Le Duc, Gontier Col and the French Pre-Renaissance, N. Y., 1918, pp. 65-68.

131. Furnivall, The Curial made by maystere Alain Charretier … p. 1. See above, note 2. Although there are errors, some traceable to misreadings, others to manuscripts and still others to misunderstandings, the translation “cannot be pronounced to be wanting in force and intelligence.” (P. VIII)

132. Stecher, Œuvres, Louvain, 1891, vol. IV, pp. 381-382. In a letter to a certain Jean de Marnix, Lemaire wrote: “… je vous envoye le double du Curial que maistre Alain Chartier composa jadiz sur ceste matière, lequel vault autant ou mieulx que celui du pape Pye.”

133. Supra, note 1. The Curial is appended to the Espérance but gives its name to the entire edition. The error of calling the Espérance, Curial, was common from the earliest editions (except those of Le Caron) to that of Galliot du Pré in 1529. therefore, when Etienne Pasquier, in his Recherches (Paris, 1596, p. 265 vo.) paid high tribute to the “Curial” (“… grand Orateur, comme on peut voir par son Curial …”), it was actually the Espérance that he had in mind, a fact proved by the citations made later on. Champion is unwarranted in listing Pasquier's chapter as a testimonial to the Curial's popularity (Histoire poétique, vol. I, p. 56).

134. These will be considered below.

135. Furnivall, op. cit., pp. VI-VII: Duke Touchstone in As You Like It; Belisarius in Cymbeline, etc. For examples in Italy and Spain, see Heuckenkamp, pp. XL-XLI. It might be mentioned here that curial was the term for “courtier.” Although courtisien is to be found in French as early as the fourteenth century, curial was replaced by courtisan only in the sixteenth, mainly under the influence of Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano (cf. translations by Jacques Colin d'Auxerre and Mellin de Saint-Gelays).

136. Thuasne, Roberti Gaguini, vol. II, p. 203, note.

137. Œuvres complètes, pub. by Queux de Saint-Hilaire, Paris, S. A. T. F. See vol. V (1887), Balade DCCCCXLIII (pp. 159-160): “Sur tous maulx qui regnent en chascune court”; no. DCCCCLXVIII (pp. 202-203): “Des perilz qui sont a suir la court”; no. MXVII (pp. 284-285): “Le bon sens n'est pas à la cour”; no. MXVIII (pp. 285-286): “Il fait bon d'être loin de la cour”; no. MXXI (pp. 289-290): “Conseil de fuir la cour”; no. MXXX (pp. 303-304): “Cupidité des gens de cour,” etc.

138. Montaiglon et Rothschild, Recueil de poésies françoises, 1875, vol. X, p. 198.

139. Le Duc, Gontier Col and the French Pre-Renaissance, p. 67.

140. Thuasne, op. cit., p. 203, note.

141. Idem. See also Le Duc, op. cit., p. 67.

142. Vol. II, col. 1398.

143. This work appears together with Chartier's in the British Museum, item 10 of the Harleian MS 1883—the basic manuscript used by Heuckenkamp to edit the Latin version of the Curial—and in Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 8757, item 16, immediately after the other.

144. Erroneously attributed by Heuckenkamp (p. XLIII) and others to René d'Anjou. See G. Paris, Romania, XXVIII, 484.

145. H. Guy, Histoire de la poésie française de la Renaissance, Paris, 1910, vol. I (L'Ecole des Rhétoriqueurs), p. 145. See also, by Guy, “Le Séjour d'honneur d'Octovien de Saint-Gelays,” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, XV (1908), p. 216. Octovien who mentions Alain specifically and praises him highly in the first book of the Séjour also borrowed from his Espérance.

146. H. J. Molinier, Essai biographique et littéraire sur Octovien de Saint-Gelays, Rodez, 1910, pp. 163-168.

147. Pub. by Michaut and Poujoulat in Nouvelle Collection de Mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France, Paris, 1854, vol. IV, p. 415. The chapter is entitled: “D'aulcunes misères des gens de Court.”

148. Guy, asserting (“Le Séjour d'honneur …” p. 216, note 5) that this comes straight from Chartier's Curial, adds that it was taken by Chartier from the Roman de la Rose in which a similar series of antitheses serves to define love.

149. Delaunay, Etude sur Alain Chartier, p. 107.

150. Ibid., p. 168.

151. Champion, Histoire poétique, vol. I, pp. 56-57.

152. Heuckenkamp, p. XXXVIII.

153. Ibid., p. XLIII.

154. Du Chesne, pp. 261-390: L'Espérance ou Consolation des Trois vertus, c'est à savoir Foy, Espérance & Charité. Pierre le Caron's editions of the collected works, in which it is the first entry, refer to it in the tables of contents as follows: “Du premier livre est traittie de l'exil de maistre alain Chartier.” It is followed by Le Curial. Jean Lemaire de Belges, in 1511, having the occasion to refer to this work, consequently calls it L'Exil (see below, note 25). In all the later gothic editions of Chartier, and also in Galliot du Pré's 1529 issue, as in the only separate edition of the work which has appeared (published by Daniel Chartier in Paris, 1582), it is called Le Curial, although the piece properly known by that name is appended to it. Most of the manuscripts call it L'Espérance and Pierre Fabri, in his Grand et vray art de pleine rhétorique (Paris, 1521) does likewise. (See the reproduction of this edition published by Héron, Rouen, 3 vols., 1889-1890.) The Catalogue des manuscrits français describes the Bibl. Nat. MS 126 as including three pieces by Chartier: Le Quadrilogue invectif (used by Mlle Droz to prepare her edition in 1923), Dialogus familiaris and, on fol. 218, Le Curial. Actually, the last selection, without title in the manuscript, is the Espérance. (This manuscript is similarly described by P. Paris in his Manuscrits françois de la Bibliothèque du Roi, Paris, 1836, vol. I, pp. 231-233.)

     The work of clearing the path preparatory to establishing a definitive edition of the Espérance was undertaken in 1904 by K. Moldenauer: Zur Ueberlieferung des “Livre de l'Espérance” von Alain Chartier, Greifswald. This effort was analogous to that of Kussmann for the Livre des quatre dames. Both authors prepared their dissertations under the guidance of Heuckenkamp, who had issued a critical edition of Le Curial (both Latin and French versions) five years earlier. Moldenauer's interest lay only in the outer form of the work. He lists the various editions and manuscripts, makes an effort to evaluate some and establish relationships among them, Of the twenty-seven manuscripts mentioned (one of these Bibl. Nat. fr. 6796 does not contain the Espérance) only ten were available (including eight in the Bibl. Nat.) and these he collated with the text of the Du Chesne edition in the “Textprobe und Varianten-Apparat” portion of the thesis … Moldenauer omits mention of two manuscripts which include the Espérance: one is in the Bibl. Nat. fr., nouvelles acquisitions 6535 (L'Exil de mestre Alain Chartier); the other, the only complete manuscript of a work by Alain Chartier in the United States, is a sixteenth-century vellum copy in the Pierpont Morgan Library in which it is listed as number 438. It bears the title Le Triomphe de l'Espérance. (See S. de Ricci and W. J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, New York, 1937, vol. II, p. 1448.)

155. Delaunay, Etude sur Alain Chartier, p. 125.

156. Hœpffner, Œuvres de Guillaume de Machaut, Paris, S. A. T. F., 1911, vol. II, p. XIX: “C'est là que s'inspirent les poètes et les moralistes qui se proposent d'entretenir leur public des désastres causés par Fortune et de lui apprendre à supporter ses coups redoutables.” The Bulletin du bibliophile et du bibliothécaire (Paris, 1893, pp. 104-105) describes a fifteenth-century manuscript sold at the Librairie Techener for 500 francs. It consists of two parts, the first being a French translation of Boethius' Latin work and the second the text of Chartier's Espérance. The Bibl. Nat. MS fr. nouv. acq. 6535, the fifteenth-century manuscript mentioned above, is similarly constituted, the first portion being Jean de Meun's poetic version in French of the Consolatio.

157. Out of a total of 4571 lines, only 505, or roughly one ninth, are written in verse. The figures are Moldenauer's (op. cit., p. V).

158. “Ou dixiesme an de mon dolent exil”

     is the first line. It effectively dates the work: 1428. Many dates have been proposed for the Espérance, ranging, with few omissions, from 1420 to 1439. Thus—1420: offered by a Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 12435, according to which the Espérance was “composé … environ l'an mil quatre cens vingt, regnant le roy Charles sixiesme.” 1424: Puymaigre (“Alain Chartier et les désastres de la France au XVe siècle,” Revue du Monde catholique, 1872, p. 223) and Bédier & Hazard (Histoire de la littérature française illustrée, Paris, 1923, vol. I, p. 91). Between 1425 and 1428: Joret-Desclosières (Un Ecrivain national au XVe siècle, Alain Chartier, Paris, 1899, pp. 120-122) and Doutrepont (Jean Lemaire de Belges et la Renaissance, Bruxelles, 1934, p. 170. On p. 356, the date becomes 1429). 1429: Petit de Julleville (Hist. de la lit. française, Paris, 1896, vol. II, Part 2, p. 371). 1433: Bijvanck (Spécimen d'un essai critique sur les œuvres de Fr. Villon, Leyde, 1882, p. 132, note 1). 1437: Du Chesne (Œuvres, p. 581. In the preface, p. a iiii vo., the date is 1439). 1438: Delaunay (Etude sur Alain Chartier, pp. 95-96) and Charpennes (La Belle dame sans merci, Paris, 1901, p. 8) … However, it was in 1418 that the English overran Normandy and the Burgundians drove the Dauphin Charles, his retinue and his Armagnac followers out of Paris (May 29). Gontier Col and Jean de Monstereul, secretaries under Charles VI, are believed to have been murdered by the Burgundians in that year (Le Duc, Gontier Col and the French Pre-Renaissance, New York, 1918, p. 3). It therefore marked the inception of Alain's “exile.” A circular letter signed in Bourges by the Dauphin on June 19, 1418, is countersigned by Alain (Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, Paris, 1881, vol. I, p. 95). 1428 as the year of the Espérance was first proposed in 1854 by Vallet de Viriville (Nouvelle Biographie Générale, vol. X, article on Chartier). Substantiated by Beaucourt in 1869 (Les Chartier, Caen, p. 16), it has since been accepted by modern critics such as Piaget (Romania, XXX, 1901, pp. 40-41), Champion (Histoire poétique, vol. I, p. 135) and others.

159. “Douleur me fait par ennuy qui trop dure,
     En jeune aage vieillir malgré nature.”

     (Du Chesne, p. 263)

     He was at the time about forty-three years old. A little later on in this work he has one of the characters say to him: “Ton aage tourne ja vers declin …”

160. Idem.

161. Ibid., p. 264. It has been said that these lines were imitated by François Villon toward the close of his Lais. (Bijvanck, Spécimen d'un essai critique sur les œuvres de François Villon, pp. 129-130.)

162. Chartier at this point inserts one of his finest passages in verse. He seems to find the lyric form a natural outlet for emotion that is incited by particularly elevated thoughts. The interludes, as a result, take on a tone that is almost biblical. (Delaunay, op. cit., p. 171.) They are generally apostrophes, addressed sometimes to God, sometimes to royalty, etc. In this instance, Chartier speaks to the human race:

     Chetive creature humaine,
     Née à travail & à paine,
     De fraelle corps revestuë
     Tant es foible & tant es vaine,
     Tendre, passible, incertaine,
     Et de legier abbatuë:
     Ton penser te devertuë
     Ton fol sens te nuit & tuë,
     Et à non sçavoir te maine.
     Se des cieux n'es soustenuë
     Que tu ne peuz vivre saine.

     (Du Chesne, p. 264)

     Passages such as this are rare. Together with the opening lines, it is, I believe, the ranking poetry selection in the whole work.

163. Ibid., p. 266.

164. Ibid., p. 267.

165. This unfavorable picture of the court is to be placed alongside the other, presented likewise by Chartier, in Le Curial.

166. “Les pays champestres sont tournez à l'estat de la mer, où chascun a tant de seigneurie comme il a de force.” (Du Chesne, p. 271)

167. “Ton aage tourne ja vers declin, & les malheurtez de ta nation ne font que commencer.” (Ibid., p. 274)

168. Ibid., pp. 275-276.

169. Ibid., p. 279. We are not here told who these characters are, but two of them, Foy and then Espérance, will dominate the scene for the remainder of the work. We can guess that the third, who has no rôle, is the remaining theological virtue, Charité. As for the damoiselle, we have no clue, since there is no further mention of her. Does she stand for the Church, Grace, Reason? (Delaunay, Etude sur Alain Chartier, p. 177)

170. Ibid., p. 305. The clergy, which was spared in the Quadrilogue, comes in for its full share of criticism in this work. Chartier will return to the attack later.

171. “O François, François! vous avez par une damnee & accoustumee blaspheme despité le nom de celuy à qui tout genoil se doit flechir, & il vous a par l'usance de sa Justice mis en blasme, & en reprouche des nations, & fait ployer vos corps, & encliner vos testes devant vos enemis.”

     (Ibid., p. 319)

172. Ibid., p. 316. This vigorous attack on the nobility continues the one launched in the Quadrilogue invectif.

173. Delaunay, op. cit., p. 193.

174. Du Chesne, p. 365. There is a passage in a poem by Robert Gaguin, Le Passe temps d'oysiveté, which may be a direct imitation of these lines:

     “Car on voit par experience
     Que nulle gent sur autre regne,
     Que tantost, en grant deffidence,
     Le vaincu ne treuve sa renne,
     Et son courage ne reprengne,
     Tant qu'il recœuvre liberté.
     Fait de guerre n'est point arté.”

     (Thuasne, Roberti Gaguini Epistole et Orationes, Paris, 1903, vol. II, pp. 414, 491)

     This poem was written toward the close of 1489, in England, where Gaguin had been sent on a diplomatic mission to effect a peace treaty and an alliance with Henry VII. The Passe temps is a dialogue between the author and an Englishman on peace and war. One may also cite the lines:

     “De vieux exemples assés;
     Mais les nouveaux ont plus de foy.”

     as following a passage in the Espérance (Du Chesne, p. 365: “Veux-tu derechief exemples de plus fresche & nouvelle memoire?”) in which Alain Chartier had developed the same idea (Thuasne, pp. 405, 482).

175. Omitted by Du Chesne but included in all the old editions and in the Pierpont Morgan manuscript (fol. 95 ro.).

176. This is obviously a false reading. All the other sources present a form of eschauldee.

177. Du Chesne, pp. 388-389. In his Traicté de la difference des schismes et des conciles de l'Eglise, written in 1511, Jean Lemaire de Belges energetically defends the French national church against the attacks of Pope Julius II. He transcribes this entire passage from the Traité de l'Espérance which he uses as a source of great authority to sum up and conclude his own treatise (Œuvres, pub. by Stecher, Paris, 1885, vol. III, p. 355. The editor was under the impression that Chartier had written a Latin tract, De Exilio, which Lemaire translated into French. See Notice, 1891, vol. IV, p. LXIX).

178. Bibl. Nat. fr. 1642, fol. 54.

179. Italics mine. Le Temple de bonne renommée … Paris, 1516, fol. LXII vo. Cited by Piaget, Romania, XXX (1901), p. 39, note 2; also H. Gillot, La Querelle des anciens et des modernes en France, Paris, 1914, p. 40.

180. Delaunay, op. cit., p. 201.

181. See above, note 21.

182. See above, note 24.

183. Paris, 1596, pp. 265 vo.-267 ro.

184. Pasquier states (p. 265 vo.) that he is citing from the Curial. This error was probably induced by his consulting the faulty editions of Chartier's works put out by Du Pré in 1529 and before, in which it is actually, and erroneously, called Le Curial. See above, note 1.

185. Elsewhere, Pasquier cites this work of Chartier as an example of the refinement (“polisseure”) undergone by French as a language during the Middle Ages (Œuvres, 1723 ed., Amsterdam, vol. I, p. 762).

186. Œuvres, p. a iiii vo. That this high opinion was not shared by all the critics who followed and that the Chartier-Seneca comparison was considered exaggerated is obvious from a reading of Guillaume Colletet's biography of Alain Chartier.

187. It is well to remember that Jean de Meun, co-author of the first, was also responsible for an important translation of the Consolatio philosophiae into French. See above, note 3.

188. Christine de Pisan, L'Epître d'Othéa à Hector and La Lamentation; Le Franc, L'Estrif de fortune et de vertu; René, Le Livre du cuer d'amours espris; Michault, La Danse aux aveugles and Le Doctrinal du temps présent; Alexis, Le Martyrologue des faulses langues; Molinet, Le Trône d'honneur, Le Naufrage de la Pucelle and La Ressource du petit peuple; Charles de Rochefort, L'Abuzé en court, etc. The revival which this genre enjoyed may have been brought about by the early chante-fable, Aucassin et Nicolette. (See Doutrepont, Jean Lemaire de Belges et la Renaissance, Bruxelles, 1934, pp. 355-356.)

189. Nouvelle Biographie Générale, X (1854), 20.

190. Histoire poétique, vol. I, pp. 148-149.