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55-614: According to verse historian Mikhail Gasparov , the French alexandrine developed from the Ambrosian octosyllable, by gradually losing the final two syllables, then doubling this line in a syllabic context with phrasal stress rather than length as a marker. The earliest recorded use of alexandrines is in the Medieval French poem Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne of 1150, but the name derives from their more famous use in part of

110-508: A classical alexandrine context and forming no more than one quarter of the alexandrine lines written during this time. Passages of classical alexandrines were still written by these poets, as for example this rimes croisées quatrain by Charles Baudelaire : La très-chère était nue, | et, connaissant mon cœur, Elle n'avait gardé | que ses bijoux sonores, Dont le riche attirail | lui donnait l'air vainqueur Qu'ont dans leurs jours heureux | les esclaves des Maures. My most darling

165-436: A complete contemporary history of his countrymen. Realism also appears in the works of Alexandre Dumas, fils . Many of the novels in this period, including Balzac's, were published in newspapers in serial form, and the immensely popular realist "roman feuilleton" tended to specialize in portraying the hidden side of urban life (crime, police spies, criminal slang), as in the novels of Eugène Sue . Similar tendencies appeared in

220-814: A historical-philosophical point of view. In 1999, Gasparov was awarded the Andrei Bely Prize for his essay collection Notes and excerpts ( Russian : Записи и выписки ). Gasparov was also a poet. He published translations of classical and modern European poetry, yet only one of his own poems was published during his lifetime. Gasparov was a member of the editorial board of Literary Monuments ( Russian : Литературные памятники ) book series, journals Journal of Ancient History ( Russian : Вестник древней истории ), Literary Research ( Russian : Литературоведение ), Elementa (United States), and Rossica Romana (Italy). Mikhail Gasparov published about 300 articles, translations and other works, including

275-565: A leading "decadent" and rebel against naturalism), Edmond de Goncourt and his brother Jules de Goncourt , and (in a very different vein) Paul Bourget . An attempt to be objective was made in poetry by the group of writers known as the Parnassians —which included Leconte de Lisle , Théodore de Banville , Catulle Mendès , Sully-Prudhomme , François Coppée , José María de Heredia and (early in his career) Paul Verlaine —who (using Théophile Gautier 's notion of art for art's sake and

330-660: A literary critic, showed romantic expansiveness in his hospitality to all ideas and in his unfailing endeavour to understand and interpret authors rather than to judge them. Romanticism is associated with a number of literary salons and groups: the Arsenal (formed around Charles Nodier at the Arsenal Library in Paris from 1824-1844 where Nodier was administrator), the Cénacle (formed around Nodier, then Hugo from 1823–1828),

385-894: A number of poets like Tristan Corbière , Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud who had fought against poetic conventions and suffered social rebuke or had been ignored by the critics. But with the publication of Jean Moréas Symbolist Manifesto in 1886, it was the term symbolism which was most often applied to the new literary environment. The writers Stéphane Mallarmé , Paul Verlaine , Paul Valéry , Joris-Karl Huysmans , Arthur Rimbaud , Jules Laforgue , Jean Moréas , Gustave Kahn , Albert Samain , Jean Lorrain , Rémy de Gourmont , Pierre Louÿs , Tristan Corbière , Henri de Régnier , Villiers de l'Isle-Adam , Stuart Merrill , René Ghil , Saint-Pol-Roux , Oscar-Vladislas de Milosz , Albert Giraud , Emile Verhaeren , Georges Rodenbach and Maurice Maeterlinck and others have been called symbolists, although each author's personal literary project

440-486: A profound loss for aspects of the pre-revolutionary world in a society now dominated by money and fame, rather than honor. Key ideas from early French Romanticism: Romanticism in England and Germany largely predate French romanticism, although there was a kind of "pre-romanticism" in the works of Senancour and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (among others) at the end of the 18th century. French Romanticism took definite form in

495-533: Is apparent in his fantastic The Temptation of Saint Anthony and the baroque and exotic scenes of ancient Carthage in Salammbô . In addition to melodramas, popular and bourgeois theater in the mid-century turned to realism in the "well-made" bourgeois farces of Eugène Marin Labiche and the moral dramas of Émile Augier . From the 1860s on, critics increasingly speak of literary " Naturalism ". The expression

550-436: Is imprecise, and was frequently used disparagingly to characterize authors whose chosen subject matter was taken from the working classes and who portrayed the misery and harsh conditions of real life. Many of the "naturalist" writers took a radical position against the excesses of romanticism and strove to use scientific and encyclopedic precision in their novels (Zola spent months visiting coal mines for his Germinal , and even

605-530: Is linked to the development of science (especially biology), history and the social sciences and to the growth of industrialism and commerce. The "realist" tendency is not necessarily anti-romantic; romanticism in France often affirmed the common man and the natural setting, as in the peasant stories of George Sand , and concerned itself with historical forces and periods, as in the work of historian Jules Michelet . The novels of Stendhal , including The Red and

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660-525: Is perfectly metrical, and the rule of alternation of rhymes is followed. The result is somewhat analogous to the Pindarics of Abraham Cowley . Two of the most famous works written in vers libres are Jean de La Fontaine 's Fables and Molière 's Amphitryon . Vers libéré was a mid-to-late-19th-century extension of the liberties begun to be taken by the Romantics with their embrace of

715-409: The alexandrin ternaire . The liberties taken included the weakening, movement, and erasure of caesurae, and rejection of the rule of alternation of rhymes. Although writers of vers libéré consistently continued to use rhyme, many of them accepted categories of rhyme which were previously considered "careless" or unusual. The alexandrine was not their only metrical target; they also cultivated

770-574: The Roman d'Alexandre of 1170. L. E. Kastner states: From about the year 1200 the Alexandrine began to supplant the decasyllabic line as the metre of the chansons de geste , and at the end of the thirteenth century it had gained so completely the upper hand as the epic line that several of the old chansons in the decasyllabic line were turned into Alexandrines... These early alexandrines were slightly looser rhythmically than those reintroduced in

825-1034: The Gorky Institute of World Literature , the Russian State University for the Humanities , and the Russian Language Institute in Moscow . In 1992 Gasparov was elected a full member of the Russian Academy of Science . In 1995, Mikhail Gasparov was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation . In 1997, he shared the Little Booker Prize with Aleksandr Goldstein for their publications analysing Russian literature from

880-604: The New York City punk scene in the 1970s). The infernal images of the prose poem Les Chants de Maldoror by Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont would have a similar impact. The crisis of language and meaning in Mallarmé and the radical vision of literature, life and the political world in Rimbaud are to some degree the cornerstones of the "modern" and the radical experiments of Dada , Surrealism and Theatre of

935-591: The Second Republic (1848–1852), the Second Empire under Napoleon III (1852–1871), and the first decades of the Third Republic (1871–1940). French literature enjoyed enormous international prestige and success in the 19th century. The first part of the century was dominated by Romanticism , until around the mid-century Realism emerged, at least partly as a reaction. In the last half of

990-450: The 16th century. Significantly, they allowed an "epic caesura" — an extrametrical mute e at the close of the first hemistich (half-line), as exemplified in this line from the medieval Li quatre fils Aymon : However, toward the end of the 14th century, the line was "totally abandoned, being ousted by its old rival the decasyllabic"; and despite occasional isolated attempts, would not regain its stature for almost 200 years. The alexandrine

1045-535: The 20th century. Naturalism is most often associated with the novels of Émile Zola in particular his Les Rougon-Macquart novel cycle, which includes Germinal , L'Assommoir , Nana , Le Ventre de Paris , La Bête humaine , and L'Œuvre (The Masterpiece) , in which the social success or failure of two branches of a family is explained by physical, social and hereditary laws. Other writers who have been labeled naturalists include: Alphonse Daudet , Jules Vallès , Joris-Karl Huysmans (later

1100-464: The Black and The Charterhouse of Parma , address issues of their contemporary society while also using themes and characters derived from the romantic movement. Honoré de Balzac is the most prominent representative of 19th century realism in fiction. His La Comédie humaine , a vast collection of nearly 100 novels, was the most ambitious scheme ever devised by a writer of fiction—nothing less than

1155-426: The alexandrine, but just as the alexandrine was chief among lines, it is the chief target of these modifications. Vers libres (also vers libres classiques , vers mêlés , or vers irréguliers ) are found in a variety of minor and hybrid genres of the 17th and 18th century. The works are composed of lines of various lengths, without regularity in distribution or order; however, each individual line

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1210-535: The arch-realist Flaubert was famous for his years of research for historical details). Hippolyte Taine supplied much of the philosophy of naturalism: he believed that every human being was determined by the forces of heredity and environment and by the time in which he lived. The influence of certain Norwegian , Swedish and Russian writers gave an added impulse to the naturalistic movement. The novels and short stories of Guy de Maupassant are often tagged with

1265-411: The arts. French literature from the first half of the century was dominated by Romanticism , which is associated with such authors as Victor Hugo , Alexandre Dumas, père , François-René de Chateaubriand , Alphonse de Lamartine , Gérard de Nerval , Charles Nodier , Alfred de Musset , Théophile Gautier and Alfred de Vigny . Their influence was felt in theatre, poetry, prose fiction. The effect of

1320-515: The century, " naturalism ", " parnassian " poetry, and " symbolism ", among other styles, were often competing tendencies at the same time. Some writers did form into literary groups defined by a name and a program or manifesto. In other cases, these expressions were merely pejorative terms given by critics to certain writers or have been used by modern literary historians to group writers of divergent projects or methods. Nevertheless, these labels can be useful in describing broad historical developments in

1375-592: The developments in French literature during a dynamic period in French history that saw the rise of Democracy and the fitful end of Monarchy and Empire. The period covered spans the following political regimes: Napoleon Bonaparte 's Consulate (1799–1804) and Empire (1804–1814), the Restoration under Louis XVIII and Charles X (1814–1830), the July Monarchy under Louis Philippe d'Orléans (1830–1848),

1430-460: The end of the 19th century, and was "elevated to the status of national symbol and eventually came to typify French poetry overall". The classical alexandrine is always rhymed. The règle d'alternance des rimes (rule of alternation of rhymes), which was a tendency in some poets before the Pléiade, was "firmly established by Ronsard in the sixteenth century and rigorously decreed by Malherbe in

1485-416: The first five syllables, most frequently on the third; this frequently balanced four-part structure resulted in one of several monikers for the line: alexandrin tétramètre (in contradistinction to the trimètre or alexandrin ternaire described below). Often called the "classical alexandrine", vers héroïque , or grands vers , it became the dominant long line of French verse up to

1540-467: The great ¦ nitwit | alexandrin exemplifies the structure of the alexandrin ternaire , which preserves the medial caesura with a word break, but de-emphasizes it by surrounding it with two stronger phrase breaks after syllables four and eight: Although generally embraced by the French Romantics and Symbolists , the alexandrin ternaire remained a supplemental line, used within

1595-400: The label "naturalist", although he clearly followed the realist model of his teacher and mentor, Flaubert. Maupassant used elements derived from the gothic novel in stories like Le Horla . This tension between portrayal of the contemporary world in all its sordidness, detached irony and the use of romantic images and themes would also influence the symbolists (see below) and would continue to

1650-585: The main fields of Gasparov's academic research -- classical philology and Russian literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. 19th-century French literature#Romanticism French Language and Literature French literary history Medieval 16th century • 17th century 18th century • 19th century 20th century • Contemporary Literature by country France • Quebec Postcolonial • Haiti Franco-American Portals France • Literature French literature Wikisource 19th-century French literature concerns

1705-627: The monographs Fable in Antiquity ( Russian : Античная литературная басня , 1971), Modern Russian Versification ( Russian : Современный русский стих. Метрика и ритмика , 1974), Overview of the History of Russian Versification ( Russian : Очерк истории русского стиха: Метрика, ритмика, рифма, строфика , 1984), Overview of the History of European Versification ( Russian : Очерк истории европейского стиха , 1989). During his last years Gasparov

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1760-592: The movement were the austere and pessimistic Alfred de Vigny , Théophile Gautier a devotee of beauty and creator of the " Art for art's sake " movement, and Alfred de Musset , who best exemplifies romantic melancholy. All three also wrote novels and short stories, and Musset won a belated success with his plays. Alexandre Dumas, père wrote The Three Musketeers and other romantic novels in an historical setting. Prosper Mérimée and Charles Nodier were masters of shorter fiction. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve ,

1815-409: The natural world (i.e. elegies by lakes), and the common man; and the styles of lyricism, sentimentalism , exoticism and orientalism . Foreign influences played a big part in this, especially those of Shakespeare , Walter Scott , Byron , Goethe , and Friedrich Schiller . French Romanticism had ideals diametrically opposed to French classicism and the classical unities, but it could also express

1870-459: The notion of the complete work of art (blending music, visuals and language) in the works of the German composer Richard Wagner also had a profound impact on these writers. Stéphane Mallarmé 's profound interest in the limits of language as an attempt at describing the world, and his use of convoluted syntax, and in his last major poem Un coup de dés , the spacing, size and position of words on

1925-536: The number of syllables, I forget about stanzaic structure." Mikhail Gasparov Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov ( Russian : Михаи́л Лео́нович Гаспа́ров , April 13, 1935 in Moscow – November 7, 2005 in Moscow) was a Russian philologist and translator , renowned for his studies in classical philology and the history of versification , and a member of the informal Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School . He graduated from Moscow State University in 1957 and worked at

1980-523: The page were important modern breakthroughs that continue to preoccupy contemporary poetry in France. Arthur Rimbaud 's prose poem collection Illuminations are among the first free verse poems in French; his biographically inspired poem Une saison en enfer (A Season in Hell) was championed by the Surrealists as a revolutionary modern literary act (the same work would play an important role in

2035-485: The port. Thus, seeing us all march | in league and with such favor, The fear melted away, | the throng becoming braver! The classical alexandrine was early recognized as having a prose-like effect, for example by Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay . This in part explains the strictness with which its prosodic rules (e.g. medial caesura and end rhyme) were kept; they were felt necessary to preserve its distinction and unity as verse. Nevertheless, several strategies for reducing

2090-405: The pursuit of the beautiful) strove for exact and faultless workmanship, and selected exotic and classical subjects which they treated with a rigidity of form and an emotional detachment (elements of which echo the philosophical work of Arthur Schopenhauer whose aesthetic theories would also have an influence on the symbolists). Modern science and geography were united with romantic adventure in

2145-460: The reading public at least — can be dated exactly: 1886; in this year, editor Gustave Kahn published several seminal vers libre poems in his review La Vogue , including poems by Arthur Rimbaud (written over a decade previously) and Jules Laforgue , with more following in the next years. Vers libre shed all metrical and prosodic constraints, such as verse length, rhyme, and caesura; Laforgue said, "I forget to rhyme, I forget about

2200-412: The romantic movement would continue to be felt in the latter half of the century in diverse literary developments, such as "realism", "symbolism", and the so-called fin de siècle "decadent" movement . French romanticism used forms such as the historical novel , the romance , the "roman noir" or Gothic novel ; subjects like traditional myths (including the myth of the romantic hero ), nationalism ,

2255-444: The romantic poet, and the world-weariness of the "mal du siècle", etc. Similar elements occur in the novels of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly . The poetry of Baudelaire and much of the literature in the latter half of the century (or " fin de siècle ") were often characterized as " decadent " for their lurid content or moral vision. In a similar vein, Paul Verlaine used the expression " poète maudit " ("accursed poet") in 1884 to refer to

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2310-566: The romantics often chose subjects from historic periods (the French Renaissance , the reign of Louis XIII of France ) and doomed noble characters (rebel princes and outlaws) or misunderstood artists (Vigny's play based on the life of Thomas Chatterton ). Victor Hugo was the outstanding genius of the Romantic School and its recognized leader. He was prolific alike in poetry, drama, and fiction. Other writers associated with

2365-461: The salon of Louis Charles Delescluze , the salon of Antoine (or Antony Deschamps ), the salon of Madame de Staël . Romanticism in France defied political affiliation: one finds both "liberal" (like Stendhal ), "conservative" (like Chateaubriand ) and socialist ( George Sand ) strains. The expression " Realism ", when being applied to literature of the 19th century, implies the attempt to depict contemporary life and society. The growth of realism

2420-806: The seventeenth." It states that "a masculine rime cannot be immediately followed by a different masculine rime, or a feminine rime by a different feminine rime." This rule resulted in the preponderance of three rhyme schemes, though others are possible. (Masculine rhymes are given in lowercase, and feminine in CAPS): These lines by Corneille (with formal paraphrase) exemplify classical alexandrines with rimes suivies : Nous partîmes cinq cents; | mais par un prompt renfort Nous nous vîmes trois mille | en arrivant au port, Tant, à nous voir marcher | avec un tel visage, Les plus épouvantés | reprenaient de courage! As five hundred we left, | but soon we gained support: To three thousand we grew | as we approached

2475-529: The spirit of the Revolution, but the production of Victor Hugo 's Hernani in 1830 marked the triumph of the romantic movement on the stage (a description of the turbulent opening night can be found in Théophile Gautier). The dramatic unities of time and place were abolished, tragic and comic elements appeared together and metrical freedom was won. Marked by the plays of Friedrich Schiller ,

2530-400: The strictness of the verse form have been employed over the centuries. Although used in exceptional cases by some 17th-century French poets, Victor Hugo popularized the alexandrin ternaire (also referred to as trimètre ) as an alternative rhythm to the classical alexandrine. His famous self-descriptive line: J'ai disloqué | ce grand ¦ niais | d'alexandrin I dislocate |

2585-483: The theatrical melodramas of the period and, in an even more lurid and gruesome light, in the Grand Guignol at the end of the century. Gustave Flaubert 's great novels Madame Bovary (1857)—which reveals the tragic consequences of romanticism on the wife of a provincial doctor—and Sentimental Education represent perhaps the highest stages in the development of French realism, while Flaubert's romanticism

2640-649: The use of vers impair — lines with an odd, rather than even, number of syllables. These uneven lines, though known from earlier French verse, were relatively uncommon and helped suggest a new rhythmic register. Vers libre is the source of the English term free verse , and is effectively identical in meaning. It can be seen as a radical extension of the tendencies of both vers libres (various and unpredictable line lengths) and vers libéré (weakening of strictures for caesura and rhymes, as well as experimentation with unusual line lengths). Its birth — for

2695-446: The whole the symbolists did not stress moral or ethical ideas. In poetry, the symbolist procedure—as typified by Paul Verlaine —was to use subtle suggestion instead of precise statement ( rhetoric was banned) and to evoke moods and feelings by the magic of words and repeated sounds and the cadence of verse (musicality) and metrical innovation. Some symbolists explored the use of free verse . The use of leitmotifs, medieval settings and

2750-594: The works of François-René de Chateaubriand and Benjamin Constant and in Madame de Staël 's interpretation of Germany as the land of romantic ideals. It found early expression also in the sentimental poetry of Alphonse de Lamartine . The major battles of romanticism in France were in the theater. The early years of the century were marked by a revival of classicism and classical-inspired tragedies, often with themes of national sacrifice or patriotic heroism in keeping with

2805-456: The works of Jules Verne and other writers of popular serial adventure novels and early science-fiction. The naturalist tendency to see life without illusions and to dwell on its more depressing and sordid aspects appears in an intensified degree in the immensely influential poetry of Charles Baudelaire , but with profoundly romantic elements derived from the Byronic myth of the anti-hero and

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2860-763: Was actively engaged in publishing the collected works of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam . On April 10, 2005, three days before his seventieth birthday , he was baptized according to the Russian Orthodox rite . He died on November 7, 2005 and was buried next to his mother at the Miusskoye Cemetery in Moscow. Commemorating Mikhail Gasparov, the Russian State University for the Humanities organises annual conferences dedicated to

2915-448: Was bare | but she knew my desire So her bright jewels she wore, | her tinkling chains, her treasure: Such an air of command | in her golden attire, Like to a Moor's slave girl | in the days of her pleasure. These three similar terms (in French vers libres and vers libre are homophones ) designate distinct historical strategies to introduce more prosodic variety into French verse. All three involve verse forms beyond just

2970-471: Was resurrected in the middle of the 16th century by the poets of the Pléiade , notably Étienne Jodelle (tragedy), Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (narrative), Jean-Antoine de Baïf (lyric), and Pierre de Ronsard . Later, Pierre Corneille introduced its use in comedy. It was metrically stricter, allowing no epic caesura: Typically, each hemistich also holds one secondary accent which may occur on any of

3025-451: Was unique. The symbolists often share themes that parallel Schopenhauer's aesthetics and notions of will, fatality and unconscious forces. The symbolists often used themes of sex (often through the figure of the prostitute), the city, irrational phenomena (delirium, dreams, narcotics, alcohol), and sometimes a vaguely medieval setting. The tone of symbolism is highly variable, at times realistic, imaginative, ironic or detached, although on

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