Saintsbury George

A History of the French Novel (Vol. 1&2)


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       George Saintsbury

      A History of the French Novel (Vol. 1&2)

      Complete Edition

      e-artnow, 2020

       Contact: [email protected]

      EAN 4064066399061

       Volume 1

       Volume 2

      Volume 1

       Table of Contents

       PREFACE

       ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA

       CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY

       CHAPTER II. THE MATTERS OF FRANCE, ROME, AND BRITAIN

       CHAPTER III. ROMANS D'AVENTURES

       CHAPTER IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION

       CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION

       CHAPTER VI. RABELAIS

       CHAPTER VII. THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE "AMADIS" ROMANCES

       CHAPTER VIII. THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL—I

       CHAPTER IX. THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL—II

       CHAPTER X. LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PRÉVOST, CRÉBILLON

       CHAPTER XI. THE PHILOSOPHE NOVEL

       CHAPTER XII. "SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS.

       APPENDICES. CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRENCH FICTION NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME

       BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

      PREFACE

       Table of Contents

      In beginning what, if it ever gets finished, must in all probability be the last of some already perhaps too numerous studies of literary history, I should like to point out that the plan of it is somewhat different from that of most, if not all, of its predecessors. I have usually gone on the principle (which I still think a sound one) that, in studying the literature of a country, or in dealing with such general characteristics of parts of literature as prosody, or such coefficients of all literature as criticism, minorities are, sometimes at least, of as much importance as majorities, and that to omit them altogether is to risk, or rather to assure, an imperfect—and dangerously imperfect—product.

      In another point, however, I have kept to my old ways, and that is the way of beginning at the beginning. I disagree utterly with any Balbus who would build an absolute wall between romance and novel, or a wall hardly less absolute between verse- and prose-fiction. I think the French have (what is not common in their language) an advantage over us in possessing the general term Roman, and I have perhaps taken a certain liberty with my own title in order to keep the noun-part of it to a single word. I shall extend the meaning of "novel"—that of roman would need no extension—to include, not only the prose books, old and new, which are more generally called "romance," but the verse romances of the earlier period.

      The subject is one with which I can at least plead almost lifelong familiarity. I became a subscriber to "Rolandi's," I think, during my holidays as a senior schoolboy, and continued the subscriptions during my vacations when I was at Oxford. In the very considerable leisure which I enjoyed during the six years when I was Classical Master at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, I read more French than any other literature, and more novels than anything else in French. In the late 'seventies and early 'eighties, as well as more recently, I had to round off and fill in my knowledge of the older matter, for an elaborate account of French literature in the Encyclopædia Britannica, for a long series of articles on French novelists in the Fortnightly Review, and for the Primer and Short History of the subject which I wrote for the Clarendon Press; while from 1880 to 1894, as a Saturday Reviewer, I received, every month, almost everything notable (and a great deal hardly worth noting) that had appeared in France.

      Since then, the cutting off of this supply, and the extreme and constant urgency of quite different demands on my time, have made my cultivation of the once familiar field "parc and infrequent." But I doubt whether any really good judge would say that this was a serious drawback in itself; and it ceases to be one, even relatively, by the restriction of the subject to the close of the last century. It will be time to write of the twentieth-century novel when the twentieth century itself has gone more than a little farther.

      For the abundance of translation, in the earlier part especially, I need, I think, make no apology. I shall hardly, by any one worth hearing, be accused of laziness or scamping in consequence of it, for translation is much more troublesome, and takes a great deal more time, than comment or history. The advantage, from all other points of view, should need no exposition: nor, I think, should that of pretty full story-abstract now and then.