Literary history and criticism of French medieval works in the nineteenth century: The phenomenon of nationalism

Nineteenth-century French critics of medieval literature were not adherents of literary theories but scholars who addressed the issue of textual origins as one of national identity. This study, which traces the change in the French attitude of cultural complacency before the nineteenth century to one of cultural anxiety during the nineteenth, is an examination of French cultural history as seen through the microscope of commentary on medieval texts.;The first chapter examines scholars' attitudes toward medieval works from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and serves as background for the discussion of how and why the attitude toward medieval literature changed in the nineteenth century.;The second chapter reveals the change in the French attitude from complacency with France's position at the head of the cultural hierarchy to uncertainty as to its status. German literature and philosophy were becoming popular in France and Mme de Stael's De l'Allemagne further influenced French scholars. German intellectuals could openly vie for leadership in the European intellectual sphere with the permission of French scholars.;The third chapter discusses further the reasons French intellectuals accepted this German attempt to prove their own preeminence in intellectual and cultural matters. German philosophers, linguists and scientists provided "proof" to support their argument for German superiority. In addition, many French intellectuals were receptive to German claims, perceiving a close tie with the Germans: the Germans had invaded France in the fifth century and formed the basis for the French nobility. Germanic ancestry was seen as the more positive, stronger component in French heritage and the Gallo-Roman as the weaker.;The final chapter demonstrates the way in which nineteenth-century French literary history and criticism of medieval literature reflected France's identity crisis. Criticism centered on vague notions of what ethos had inspired a work, generally reflecting the desire of the French to identify with the German component of their heritage, but having very little to do with textual evidence. The question of racial origins of medieval works, important in the nineteenth century, lost significance in the twentieth when scholars shifted their focus from the origin of the spirit of the work to literature actually extant.