French Lyrics

The Project Gutenberg EBook of French Lyrics, by Arthur Graves
Canfield
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Title: French Lyrics
Author: Arthur Graves Canfield
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8591]
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[This file was first posted on July 25, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: French and English
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0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENCH

LYRICS ***
Produced by Charles Franks, Marc D'Hooghe
and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team
FRENCH LYRICS
SELECTED AND EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND
NOTES
BY
ARTHUR GRAVES CANFIELD
Professor of the Romance Languages and Literatures in the University
of Michigan.
PREFACE.
This book is intended as an introduction to the reading and study of
French lyric poetry. If it contributes toward making that poetry more
widely known and more justly appreciated its purpose will have been
fulfilled.
It is rather usual among English-speaking people to think slightingly of
the poetry of France, especially of her lyrics. This is not unnatural. The
qualities that give French verse its distinction are very different from
those that make the strength and the charm of our English lyrics. But
we must guard ourselves against the conclusion that because a work is
unlike those that we are accustomed to admire it is necessarily bad.
There are many kinds of excellence. And this little book must have
been poorly put together indeed if it fail to suggest to the reader that
France possesses a wealth of lyric verse which, whatever be its
shortcomings in those qualities that characterize our English lyrics, has
others quite its own, both of form and of spirit, that give it a high and
serious interest and no small measure of beauty and charm.
The editor has sought to keep the purpose of the volume constantly in
view in preparing the introduction and notes. He has hoped to supply

such information as would be most helpful, if not indispensable, to the
reader. And as he has thought that the best service the book could
render would be to stimulate interest in French poetry and to persuade
to a wider reading of it, he has wished in the bibliography to meet
especially the wants of those who may be inclined to pursue further one
or another of the acquaintances here begun. It is of course not intended
to be in any wise exhaustive, but only to present the sum of an author's
lyrical work, to indicate current and available editions, and to point out
sources of further information; among these last it has sometimes been
accessibility to the American reader rather than relative importance that
has dictated the insertion of a title.
The editor acknowledges here his wholesale indebtedness for his
materials to the various sources that he has recommended to the reader.
But he wishes to confess the special debt that he owes to Miss Eugénie
Galloo, Assistant Professor of French in the University of Kansas, for
many suggestions and valuable help with the proofs. Her assistance has
reduced considerably the number of the volume's imperfections. For
those that remain he can hold no one responsible but himself.
0. G. C.
LAWRENCE, KANSAS,
Dec. 7, 1898.
INTRODUCTION.
As literature is not a bundle of separate threads, but one fabric, it is
manifestly impossible to give an adequate account of any one of its
forms, as the lyric poem, by itself and aside from the larger web of
which it is a part. The following pages will attempt only to sketch the
main phases which the history of the lyric in France exhibits and so to
furnish a rough outline that may help the reader of these poems to place
them in the right historical relations. He should fill it out at all points
by study of some history of French literature.[1] No account will be
taken here of those kinds of verse that have only a slight contact with
serious poetry. Such are, for instance, the songs of the chansonniers,
mainly of vinous