This was my first naive attempt to trace The Main Currents in Nineteenth
Century Literature.
The French poetry of the nineteenth century seemed to me to fall into
three groups: Romanticism, the School of Common Sense, the Realistic
Art. I defined them as follows:
I. What the French call _Romanticism_ has many distinguishing
marks. It is, firstly, a _break with Graeco-Roman antiquity_. It
therefore harks back to the Gallic, and to the Middle Ages. It is a
resurrection of the poets of the sixteenth century. But the attempt is a
failure, for Ronsard and the Pleiad [Footnote: The poets who formed the
first and greater Pleiad were, besides Ronsard, Dubellay, Remi, Belleau,
Jodelle, Dorat, Baif and Pontus de Thiard.] are also Greek-taught, are
Anacreontics. If we except the _Chanson de Roland_, there is no
original mediaeval literature that can be compared with the Icelandic.
For that reason the choice of subjects is extended from the Middle Ages
in France to the Middle Ages in other countries, for instance, Germany,
whence Victor Hugo derives his drama _Les Burgraves_. The poets
select foreign matter, Alfred de Vigny treats Chatterton and Musset
Italian and Spanish themes. Merimee harks back to the French Middle Ages
(The Peasant Rising), but as he there finds too little originality, he
flees, as a poet, to less civilised nationalities, Spaniards, South
Americans, Corsicans, Russians, etc.
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