CONTENTS.
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Waning of the Pleiad. Malherbe—Purity and correctness—Verse. Disciples—Maynard—Racan. Social forces—Hôtel de Rambouillet—Academy. Independents—Théophile de Viau—Saint-Amant—Mlle. de Gournay and Mathurin Régnier. Vincent Voiture. Heroic poems. Prose-romances—D'Urfé—L'Astrée; Camus—Exemplary tales; Heroic romance—Gombauld's Endymion—Gomberville's Polexandre—La Calprenède—Elimination of the marvellous—Romantic history—Madeleine de Scudéry—Culmination of "Préciosité"—Boileau's dialogue Les Héros de Roman. Realism and burlesque in romance—Sorel—Le Berger Extravagant—Francion—Lannel—Cyrano—Scarron. Shapers of modern French prose—Balzac and the cult of style; Descartes—Rationalism and lucidity; Pascal—The way of the intellect and the way of the heart. The Memoirs—De Retz and La Rochefoucauld—Philosophy of the Fronde—Les Maximes. |
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The formation of French tragedy and comedy—Sixteenth-century drama—Larivey and Montchrestien—The popular drama—Experiments in the provinces—Hardy and Valleran Lecomte—Hardy's tragedies, tragi-comedies, pastorals, and mythological plays—Beginning of polite drama—Théophile and
Racan—Influence of Italian pastoral, and of Spanish tragi-comedy—Mairet—The Unities—Sophonisbe and the revival of tragedy—Corneille—Mélite and the development of comedy—Early plays—The Cid and the flowering of tragedy—Battle of the Cid—Triumph of the Unities—Corneille's great tragedies—Le Menteur—Comedy under Spanish influence— Corneille's last plays—Relation of French tragedy of Corneille and Racine to Greek tragedy and to romantic tragi-comedy—Rotrou—Burlesque comedy—Les Visionnaires |
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