French literature

The Renaissance

Renaissance

1 October 2020

XXth century

1 October 2020

XIXth century

1 October 2020

XVIIIth century

1 October 2020

XVIIth Century

31 March 2021

Renaissance

1 October 2020

Middle Ages

New ways of acting and believing

In France, the Renaissance is generally considered to stretch from Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America (1492) to the death of Henri IV (1610).

What changed? Let us compare with what came before. We can imagine a society in which what is is never challenged by what could be. Such was medieval society: a world founded on a fixed set of beliefs and customs.

But around the turn of the 15th century, across Europe, people began to think: We have always done it this way — but why not do it differently?

In our innovation-driven societies, this may seem obvious, but at the time, breaking with tradition often meant social exclusion. And this leads us to the tragedy of the Renaissance: the Wars of Religion. To act differently, or to believe differently, was to question the established order. Martin Luther’s criticisms gave rise to a new religious movement and to conflicts with Catholicism that would last until the 18th century.

Caravaggio, Catherine of Alexandria (detail).
Caravaggio, Resting during the Flight from Egypt. (detail)
Raphael, The School of Athens. (detail)

The world expands

Far bolder than their predecessors, the men and women of the Renaissance sought to widen their geographical and cultural horizons. The discovery of a newly inhabited world shook their minds to the core. It was also a period in which culture sought new points of reference, especially in Antiquity. Greek and Latin authors were rediscovered, translated or retranslated, discussed, and commented upon. In this tumultuous age, a powerful wind of freedom and humanism began to blow.

Whether Catholic or Protestant, the Renaissance remained Christian from beginning to end — but in a far more imaginative and inventive way than before.

"Que sais-je ?"

Social and religious structures were being transformed, and ways of learning and knowing were changing as well. In Italy, Galileo laid the foundations of modern physics. Theology was no longer quite the queen of the sciences, and Aristotle was no longer accepted as the ultimate authority on every philosophical question. In short, neither the Bible nor the Greek philosopher was sufficient to explain the world anymore.

This was a time of feverish thirst for knowledge especially visible in writers like Rabelais. But to know is also to know oneself. And in a world turned upside down, how are we to understand our place in it? How are we to live? This is the question Montaigne poses when he asks, “What do I know?” In this emerging modern world, existence comes with no instruction manual…

The french language in the Renaissance

The 16th century was a decisive period in the formation of the French language, for two major reasons.

  • French became the official language used in legal documents (Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, 1539). It also gradually established itself in technical and scholarly writing.
  • At the same time, like Erasmus and Rabelais, the century produced great Latinists and Hellenists who coined many French words from Greek and Latin roots.

In other words, while classical Latin still enjoyed immense prestige, French was becoming increasingly indispensable. This shift was famously affirmed in Joachim du Bellay’s Défense et illustration de la langue française (1549), which argued that the French language should be defended and elevated — but the question remained: which French?

This is one reason why modern readers are sometimes disoriented by Renaissance texts: each author appears not only to have their own style, but almost their own language — sometimes embraced openly (as with Maurice Scève), sometimes introduced with an apology (as in Montaigne’s admitted use of Gascon expressions). In fact, writers were trying to establish a new standard not by compromise, but by amplifying their particular linguistic stance.

Renaissance authors often set out to create new words from Greek or Latin roots when they believed existing French terms were poorly formed or based on false etymology. But sometimes the original word survived — and as a result, we now have duplicates: for instance, déambuler (from Latin ambulare) was meant to replace se promener (which persisted); libérer (from liberare) was intended to supplant délivrer (which remained in common use); and ausculter (from auscultare) was introduced to stand in for écouter, but instead acquired a specifically medical meaning while écouter continued in general usage.

Humanism

When Letters caught Fire

“Il est bel est bon”, composed by Pierre Passereau (1509-1547).

At the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, many scholars and writers began to work in a new direction. Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus, Guillaume Budé, Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne and La Boétie (among others) shared admirations, dreams and sometimes projects. Much later, in the 19th century, they would be called humanists.

This intellectual fervour profoundly transformed language, literature and themes of reflection. Like the painters and sculptors of the same period, intellectuals felt that they were participating in a major change in history. The modern world was beginning.

Printing

In Mainz, Gutenberg developed a printing process using movable type. The first book appeared in 1451. Printing presses spread rapidly across Europe, often with great commercial success. Between 1450 and 1500, more than twenty million books were printed in Europe.

Humanism: A European Movement

The first major figure of humanism was Petrarch (1304–1374). Born in Tuscany, he studied in Carpentras, Montpellier, and later Bologna. He lived for many years in Avignon and then in a village in the Vaucluse, travelled through Flanders and the Rhineland, and stayed in Naples and Rome.

This itinerant lifestyle was also shared by Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536), whose correspondence includes more than 3,000 letters addressed to recipients throughout Europe. A friend of Erasmus, the remarkable Thomas More (1478–1535) helped spread humanism in England, while François Rabelais (1483?–1553) travelled extensively in France and Italy in search of learning—and to avoid persecution.

Back to the Sources

Contrary to popular belief, people in the Middle Ages did think. But philosophy rarely left the university. Books were copied by hand, were costly, and circulated poorly. Intellectual debate remained tightly structured and confined. The central issue was how to reconcile Aristotle with Christian doctrine.

In the 14th century, however, Petrarch ignited a new enthusiasm for Antiquity that extended far beyond Aristotle. This appetite continued to grow, and from around 1450 onward, the advent of printing made texts accessible to a much wider audience. Readers began to question existing translations and the various modifications made over time to the writings of Greek philosophers and Latin authors. It became clear that knowledge of Greek Antiquity, in particular, was fragmentary and based on dubious translations. Guillaume Budé convinced Francis I to establish chairs in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Erasmus dared to retranslate the New Testament. Setting off across Europe in search of manuscripts, scholars translated and published major works of Antiquity. Gradually, the vast cultural landscape of Greek and Roman civilization was rediscovered.

From Admiration to Creation

This return to Greco-Roman roots (visible also in sculpture) was accompanied by a surge of creativity. Renaissance thinkers did not wish to remain mere compilers, translators, or commentators. While admiring Antiquity, they believed themselves capable of producing original work, shaped by their own aspirations and expressed in their own language.

Montaigne’s Essays offer a striking example of this ambition. In the early chapters, the subject is swallowed up in a flood of anecdotes borrowed from Plutarch or Livy; but as the work progresses, the writer gradually gains confidence and increasingly asserts his own personality, ideas, and style. In the same way, Rabelais’s vast erudition did not prevent him from creating a profoundly original language. On a more theoretical level, Joachim du Bellay’s Défense et illustration de la langue française encouraged writers to compose in French — a language still largely uncultivated, yet which, he argued, held immense literary promise.

Towards New Literary Horizons

“You will know how, with dexterity, to choose and adapt to your work the most expressive words from the dialects of our France, whenever those of your own tongue are not sufficiently apt or meaningful; nor need you care whether they are Gascon, Poitevin, Norman, Manceau, Lyonnais, or from other regions, provided they are good and properly express what you wish to say…”

 

Ronsard, L’art poétique, 1565

The Dream of a Complete Language

Rather than exhausting themselves in sterile imitation of ancient literature, humanists and their successors enriched and revitalised their language. Nor did they seek to constrain it to the refined tastes of the court. Montaigne did not hesitate to include Gascon expressions. Ronsard recommended that poets spend time among craftsmen to draw new words and metaphors from their trades.

Perhaps it was in Rabelais’s work that this dream of a language encompassing every register was realised most fully: his pages range from the scatological to classical rhetoric, passing at times through frankly surreal or fantastical narratives.

New Genres

Medieval literary genres were either abandoned or profoundly renewed by Renaissance writers. Inspired by Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron bore little resemblance to medieval fables and tales, and instead approached what would later be called the novella. With Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534), François Rabelais inadvertently marked the birth of the modern novel. Montaigne’s Essays (1580)—free-flowing meditations on subjects ranging from the art of eating with one’s fingers to the foundations of knowledge—gave rise to a new literary genre: the essay, which would later flourish in England (Francis Bacon, Essays, 1597).

Four-part song based on a poem by Ronsard, “Mignonne, allons voir si la rose…”. Composed by Guillaume Costeley in 1570.

“This great world […] is the mirror wherein we must look in order to recognize ourselves from the right perspective. In sum, I would have this to be the book of our pupil. So many humors, sects, judgments, opinions, laws, and customs teach us to judge our own rightly, and teach our judgment to recognize its imperfections and its natural weakness — which is no slight learning.”


— Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book I, Chapter 25, tr. Donald M. Frame (Stanford University Press, 1958).

Education in Progress

In a work written at the age of twenty-three—often seen as a manifesto of humanism—Pico della Mirandola has God speak words with which we can still identify today:

I have made you neither celestial nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so that, like a skilled painter or a practiced sculptor, you may shape yourself in the form you prefer.
(Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1496)

This ideal would occupy the centuries that followed. In this context, education took on major importance. For humanists, learning was not merely about transferring knowledge from one mind to another; it was about giving every child the means to realize themselves freely as a human being. In the 16th century, Rabelais and Montaigne engaged passionately with the question, advocating physical development and insisting on the importance of experience, travel, and life beyond the classroom. Learning became a way of inhabiting the world.

The Birth of Critical Thinking

Humanism began as a hunger for reading, discovery, and translation. Scholars were not revolutionaries; they simply wished to be left in peace to pursue their work—for example, to produce more accurate translations of sacred texts. The Church authorities, however, reacted harshly. They felt threatened: if everyone were allowed to form their own opinion, what would become of ecclesiastical authority? But the worm was already in the fruit. Soon, no area would remain untouched by examination and critique.

Alongside their meticulousness, humanists also had another trait: they could not help but dream. The discovery of a new continent did not lead Montaigne to seek commercial gain; instead, it prompted him to question notions of barbarism and otherness. Why consider customs different from our own as barbaric? On the contrary, did not the simple lifestyle of the Brazilian natives highlight our own excesses?

In England, Thomas More went even further by inventing utopia—a fictional society whose organization and customs call into question the legitimacy of our own (Utopia, 1516). Critical thinking clearly had a long future ahead of it.

Major writers of the XVIth Century

Marguerite de Navarre

Rabelais

Ronsard

Montaigne