French Renaissance literature:

Classicism and seventeenth century French literature

The 17th century produced the great academies and coteries of French literature. The elegant, controlled aesthetic of French classicism was the hallmark of the age. The great writers vary enormously in their attitudes and interests but share a style that is lucid, polished, and restrained.

They were, as a group, chiefly concerned with observing the subtleties of human behaviour. Their works display qualities that have become permanently identified with the best French writing: wit, sophistication, imagination, and delight in debate.

Pierre Corneille

Corneille (June 6, 1606 – October 1, 1684) was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine.

17th century theatre

He has been called “the founder of French tragedy” and produced plays for nearly 40 years. In the sixteenth century, the French Renaissance developed alongside the continuation of medieval theater and especially the morality play.

While ancient theater was re-introduced during the sixteenth century, it was not until the seventeenth century and the work of Corneille and Racine that the ancient tragedies would serve as models for French dramatists. They would go back beyond Christian models to Greek antiquity to re-introduce the ideas and characters of that pre-Christian, Hellenic world.

The works of Corneille represent most fully the ideal of French so-called "classical" tragedy. The laws to which this type of tragedy sought to conform were not so much truth to nature as the principles which the critics had derived from a somewhat inadequate interpretation of Aristotle and of the practise of the Greek tragedians.

These principles concentrated the interest of the play upon a single central situation, in order to emphasize which, subordinate characters and complicating under-plots were avoided as much as possible. There was little or no action upon the stage, and the events of the plot were narrated by messengers, or by the main characters in conversation

with confidantes. By 1629 the French theater was moving away from the exuberant baroque style of the early 17th century toward a dramaturgy based on the theatrical precepts of Aristotle and his commentators since the Renaissance.

The general rules included the famous principle of "three unities" (time, place, and action), according to which a play must present a single coherent story, taking place within one day in a single palace or at most a single city.

They also included the principles of theatrical verisimilitude (the events presented must be believable) and of bienséance (standards of "good taste" must be followed to avoid shocking the audience). These three major precepts structured the great classical theater of the following decades in France.

Le Cid

The most famous of Corneille’s plays was the tragicomedy ‘Le Cid’, first produced in Paris, probably late in November, 1636. The famous soldier, Diègue, had served King Fernand of Castile faithfully and well. In his old age he was rewarded with the coveted position of tutor to the young Prince.

Since Gomez, Count of Gormaz, although considerably younger, had been scarcely less conspicuous for personal bravery and crafty generalship, he had believed that he would be chosen for this mark of honor. In his bitter disappointment he not only refuses to sanction the marriage of Diègue's son, Roderick, to his daughter, Chimène, but offered deadly insult to Diègue by a blow to the face.

Since Diègue was too infirm to wield a sword in defense of his honor, it fell to Roderick's lot to avenge his father in a duel from which he emerged victorious. Knowing that by killing Chimène's father, he had sacrificed all hope of winning her, Roderick begged the girl to kill him.

Although filial love and duty had impelled her to demand vengeance from the King, she could not kill the man she loved for obeying the dictates of honor. Meanwhile, since Roderick had made himself subject to arrest by a duel which the King had forbidden, Diègue persuaded his son secretly to head a band of trusty followers and to ambush the Moors who even at the moment were about to attempt a surprise attack.

So well did Roderick acquit himself that even the two Sultans, captives of his prowess, acclaimed him Cid, the highest honor they could conceive. After this additional proof of loyalty and bravery, the King could do no less than forgive his young subject.

Chimène, however, still insisted on revenge. At length the King permitted her to name her other suitor, Sancho, to avenge her father in single combat with Roderick, naming her hand as the winner's reward.

Roderick's assurance that he would offer no resistance to death at the hands of her chosen champion, finally forced from Chimène the reluctant admission that only a sense of filial duty had impelled her to insist on vengeance.

She begged him to rescue her from a hateful marriage. When the duel was over and Sancho appeared, sword in hand, Chimène jumped to the conclusion that Roderick was dead.

Falling on her knees before the King, she begged that she be released from the promise of marriage to enter a convent, bestowing her fortune on Sancho in reparation.

As it turned out, Sancho had merely come to report that he was alive because Roderick had generously refused to take the life of one who loved Chimène. Thus both honor and love were satisfied.

Le Cid was one of the greatest theatrical successes of the 17th century. And although its success was marred by a literary quarrel in which lesser authors attacked its transgressions against the literary rules, it marked Corneille as a major dramatist and opened the most important epoch of his career.

During this period Corneille showed great pride in his literary accomplishments but continued to practice law in Rouen, Normandy and remained very much a bourgeois provincial who had made good.

He was both resentful of, and deferential to, the literary "authorities" who attacked his play. When the newly founded French Academy decided against him, he was genuinely discouraged and apparently abandoned the theater for some time.

Glory, Heroism and Moral Conflict

Overcoming his discouragement, Corneille wrote the successful tragedy Horace (1640), which was soon followed by Cinna (1640) and Polyeucte (1642).

In these tragedies he continued to explore the concepts of glory, heroism, and moral conflict. Based on an incident from early Roman history, Horace depicts a young man who with his brothers, the Horatii, is obliged to defend Rome in combat against three brothers (the Curatii) from an enemy town.

Horace's wife, however, is a sister of the Curatii, and his own sister is engaged to one of them.

In Cinna a conspirator hesitates between his fidelity to the state and the desire for vengeance of the woman he loves; and the Roman emperor Auguste, who discovers the conspiracy, must choose between vengeance or clemency for the conspirators. inna, we are presented with a situation that, for all intents and purposes, begins on a path to tragedy.

As the suspense builds and true battle-lines are drawn, we, familiar with tragic convention, expect deaths, retribution, and drawn-out laments over foolishly squandered lives, but Corneille does not deliver what we expect.

At ‘Cinna’s end there is no tragedy at all, rather, we are given the happiest ending possible, with not one person dying, or even suffering punishment, and the benevolent Augustus surrounding by his smiling, grateful, friends.

He even announces the wedding of Cinna and Emilia. While this play begins in a way that leads us to expect tragedy, it certainly does not end in a tragic way, so it cannot be, in the Aristotelian sense or any other, regarded as a proper tragedy.

In Polyeucte the hero is converted to Christianity during the Roman persecution of the Christians. He openly attacks the pagan religion, and thus he, his wife, his father-in-law (the Roman governor), and a noble Roman envoy must reconcile personal feelings and religious or political duty.

The drama is set in Armenia during a time when Christians were persecuted there under the Roman Empire. Polyeucte, an Armenian nobleman, converts to Christianity to the great despair of his wife, Pauline, and of his father-in-law, Felix.

Despite them, Polyeucte becomes a martyr, causing Pauline and Felix to finally convert as well.

There is also a romantic subplot: the Roman Severus is in love with Pauline and hopes she will be his after the conversion of Polyeucte. However, she chooses to stay at the side of her husband. Before dying, Polyeucte entrusts Severus with Pauline.

This tragedy departs radically from the dramatist's named sources, more so than in any other of his works. It is argued here that the plot is altered in order to avoid any potentially subversive readings.

Le Menteur by Corneille

There is an obvious political agenda - that the monarch is not criticized at any point, yet one factor that has been overlooked may be a desire to neutralize the suggestion of homo eroticism.

Thus, the play represents an apologia for Christian marriage and intimate relations between the sexes. This manipulation amounts to the portrayal of a heterosexual hero, far removed from a virgin-martyr stereotype, and from the saint's legend as presented in standard narratives.

Overall, Corneille's intense focus on human will, the will striving for freedom, and the fashioning of one's own destiny distinguishes his tragedies from classical Greek dramas, in which humans are depicted as helpless victims of fate.

Critical reception

Critics have praised Corneille's plays for their great diversity, brilliant versification, and complexity of plot and situation.

Scholars have also applauded his liberation of tragedy from the confinement and artificiality of neoclassical strictures. Much critical discussion of Corneille's work focuses on his relationship with his contemporary and rival, the playwright Jean Racine.

Many scholars compare the objectives and accomplishments of Corneille with those of Racine, often to Racine's advantage.

Although the decline of Corneille's reputation, begun in his own lifetime, continued throughout the eighteenth century, the next century saw a reappraisal of his place in literary history, and today he is situated in the front rank of French dramatists.

Le Cid was so different from Corneille's earlier dramas that it hardly seems the work of the same hand.