A CONCISE HISTORY OF FRENCH POETRY

Compiled by Kristin Aardsma

In the 13th century there was a common use of strict form including octosyllabic rhyming couplets, ten-syllable assonanced strophes. Medieval French lyric poetry came from Southern France. The poets were called occitan troubadors and they invented a style of poetry that focused on complex love codes called, fin amors or courtly love.

Late in the 13th century there was a loss of strict form and subject matter (fin amors) to more secular subject matter (ex: "Roman de Fauvel" which is a satire about the abuses of the church).

In the early 16th century poets focused on sonorous experimentation by les Grands Rhétoriqueurs (de Belges, Molinet) before Petrarch influenced them along with Greek revival, centered around Pindar and Anacreon influences. Poets began writing lots and lots of sonnets and Clément Marot and Mellin de Saint-Gelais are cited as having written the first sonnets in French.

During the middle of the 16th century, French poets were still writing lots of sonnets, Pindarian odes, mythology, and blason of female form.

De Baïf and de Vigenère attempted to meter French poetry but because the French is not a heavily stressed language and does not have many long or short syllables, it was difficult to follow the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew poetic meters (called vers mesurés).

At the end of the 16th century there was a lot of pessimistic poetry, probably due to the civil war.

During the 17th century l'honnête homme (the honest man) poetry became one of the principal modes of literary production of noble gentlemen and of non-noble professional writers in their patronage.

During both the 17th and 18th centuries poetry was used for everything: births, deaths, weddings, wars. It was also the main form of theatre. Poets during this time also wrote epics and satires.

Poetic games became popular in salons and those poems often contained intense metaphorical language, epigrams, satirical verse. Many intelligent and noble women, called les précieuses (the preciousness) wrote this poetry, and were often mocked by men.

By the 18th century, forms (esp. sonnet) were avoided and poems began to look more like prose.

Some famous french classicists: de Fontaine, Racine, Boileau-Despréaux

Hugo was HUGE-O by the 19th century. There was lots of realism, symbolism, and fin de siècle ("end of the century," often marked by decadence in moral vision).

There was a turn toward the objective by the middle of the 19th century. Poets began to focus on strict form and emotional detachment. Baudelaire became popular because of his naturalism (read: pessimism and matter-of-fact bleakness). Mallarmé and Rimbaud fought against the standard of poetry and strove for more symbolism. In returning to form, poets again focused on the sonnet, which Baudelaire reinvented many times in les Fleurs du mal.

In the 20th century, Appollinaire invented Calligrammes (visual poetry), and poets began to write about urban life.

And then WWI happened. Thus came Dadaism: Freud's unconscious: Surrealism: parlor games like cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) and lots of alcohol and drugs were attempts to unleash the unconscious mind.

Poets previously thought to be radical (Baudelaire and Rimbaud) were looked up to and the bourgeoisie was looked down upon.

Post-war: philosophical, phenomenological, existential ideas from Heidegger became popular.