The XIXth century

XIXth Century

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

Revolutions

In France, the nineteenth century is a long one—stretching somewhat beyond its official dates. It can be viewed as unfolding between two major events: the French Revolution of 1789 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

First and foremost, it is a century of revolutions and political upheavals: 1789, 1799, 1815, 1830, 1848, 1851, 1870. No respite—one shock follows another. The century opens with the fall of the monarchy: after centuries of obedience and suffering, the people now claim sovereignty. This shift sets the tone for most of the political events that follow. Every social class seeks the right to shape its political and economic future. Yet their interests frequently clash.

Urbanization

It is also a century of urbanization. Imagine a country where, in 1806, more than 80% of the people lived in the countryside. In 1910, it’s only 50%. In the meantime, the cities changed their face and grew dispoportionately. In 1800, intramural Paris had 550,000 inhabitants; on the eve of the First World War, nearly three million (much more than today!). As the cities grew, they were transformed: sounds, smells, colors changed. At the end of the century, electricity illuminated urban space in major capitals. The city also appears as the place where everything is possible, where all hopes are allowed (Le Rouge et le Noir) in contrast to the countryside where nothing happens (Madame Bovary).

Coal and steel

Beyond the revolutions, the dominant fact of the time consists perhaps in a gigantic technical development . People excavated and dug in the ground to extract materials, they tried to take to the skies, they transformed matter and worked to increase their power. It was a complete upheaval compared to the mentalities of previous centuries. As it continued to produce more and more, France sought resources and markets in its colonies and struggles to expand its empire in Africa and Central America. The rise of industry gave birth to a new social class: the industrial workers. Dissatisfied with their conditions and the hardships they endured, they often became the driving force—though not always the beneficiaries—of the century’s political upheavals.

Education

Finally, a major fact stems from popular education. Whereas during the previous century books were reserved for a bourgeois or aristocratic elite, reading gradually spread to all classes of society and in 1882 education became free, secular and mandatory. The price of paper and the cost of manufacturing books drop considerably, and books became affordable for everyone.

The french language in the XIXth century

This era inherited a sense of universality and an obsession with pedagogy from the previous century. Everyone had to understand each other and speak the same language: as soon as the revolution of 1789 took place, the State began to wage war on patois and dialects, which continued to decline throughout the century. As always, technical developments and political struggles enriched the language.

In the nineteenth century, European scientists no longer wrote in Latin, but in French, English, German, Italian. Medicine, biology, social sciences progressed rapidly and the vocabulary had to follow. All the words in electro- , for example, date from this period.
The nineteenth century was also marked by numerous political and social conflicts : it was therefore the birth certificate of all the words in – isme , – iste , anti- , which continue to increase the lexicon today.

At a deeper level, the relationship to language in the nineteenth century is somewhat similar to that of the Renaissance: through the influence of Romanticism, poetry is placed at the service of lexical richness, without making a hierarchy between uses. This led to a proliferation of dictionaries compiling words that were often quickly forgotten as fatrasser (to occupy oneself with nonsense), épigrammatiser (to make a joke with piquant words) or écrivailler “to write a lot, quickly and badly” (a nice word!). Sometimes these dictionaries include neologisms destined for a great future: ébouriffant, actualité, actualiser, actualisation (Words from the Complément au dictionnaire de l’Académie françaiseby Louis Barré, 1842). In contrast to the 17th century, a French-style syntactic garden, carefully pruned, vocabulary in the 19th century is more abundant, wild, excessive -and sometimes unnecessary.

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Romanticism

Storm warning for literature

Romanticism was the major literary movement of the 19th century. Let us first look at the moment of its emergence and the conditions that made it possible.

From 1789 to 1815, France was convulsed first by the Revolution and then by the Napoleonic Wars. People had more urgent concerns than literature.

When peace returned in 1815, what was the literary landscape? The novel barely existed as a recognised genre. The two dominant forms were theatre and poetry, still overshadowed by the great classics of the 17th century. But should writers continue producing tragedies in the manner of Racine, or verse in the style of La Fontaine?

When did Romanticism begin?

In France, its earliest traces appear in the 18th century in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and above all with the publication of Atala by Chateaubriand (1801). Romanticism took on a new dimension in 1820 with Lamartine’s Méditations poétiques, reached its peak around 1830, and faded out in the 1840s.

The Académie Française

Founded in 1634 by Richelieu, the Académie Française took its role as censor seriously from the very beginning. In 1637, it published its Opinion on Le Cid, condemning Corneille’s innovations. Taking the same line during the Romantic upheaval, its 1824 Discourse on Romanticism denounced the supposed “errors” of a “schism” born of a “new sect.”

Although mocked and scorned by young writers, the Académie Française nonetheless conferred undeniable social prestige on its members—an honor many authors sought as they neared the end of their careers. It has often played a key role in French literary life, its conservatism provoking both the anger and the creativity of writers.

Fire on Voltaire and the Academy!

During the 18th century, Voltaire had taken precisely this path. He regarded Racine as the unsurpassable master of the stage and attempted to imitate him as closely as possible in some thirty tragedies—works that are now largely forgotten.

At the beginning of the 19th century, new generations were taught along the same lines. Teachers hammered into students’ heads that there was only one form of good taste in literature: that of the 17th-century classics. Beyond them—and the ancient authors—there was no salvation. Rabelais? Vulgar, scatological! Shakespeare? Chaotic, brutal! Rousseau? Excessive—a pathological case! Naturally, young readers were drawn to precisely these bold authors who pushed the boundaries of literature. Down with Voltaire and good taste! Down with teachers’ warnings, social conventions, and the dictates of the Académie française!

A Gust of wind in the sails

The essence of Romanticism lies in the answer to a single question: must we be content to reproduce, dutifully and obediently, what we have been taught? The new generations answered: No—absolutely not! They knew and admired Corneille, Racine, and La Fontaine perfectly well, but they also wanted to forge their own style. After all, the classics themselves had once been innovators. It was time to do the same.

In the early 19th century, Romanticism brought together the most vibrant forces in literature. Rather than a school or a rigid group, it was a movement—an eruption of youthful energy. A gust of wind in the sails! With it, the literary horizon widened dramatically.

Expanding horizons

The inner song : Beethoven, excerpt from sonate n°29, op. 106 (1819), D. Levit.

Volcanic energy : Beethoven, excerpt from sonate pour violin and piano n°9 “Sonate à Kreutzer” (1805), Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say.

Northern Inspirations: Germany and Scotland

Introduced to France by Madame de Staël (De l’Allemagne, 1813), Goethe and Schiller developed new, far freer dramatic forms inspired by popular culture, in opposition to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. The Sturm und Drang movement exalted aspirations to freedom, the intensity of passion, national identity, and what Johann Kaspar Lavater called an Elastizität der Seele—an “elasticity of the soul” (1778). From Scotland came the legendary bard Ossian, whose supposed Celtic voice inspired European youth and even Napoleon, who adored its raw energy.

In the Mediterranean world, Spain and Italy held a privileged place in the Romantic imagination—so much so that the trope soon bordered on cliché and even self-parody, as seen in Alfred de Musset’s Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie (1829).

Exoticism

Romantic writers had a distinct taste for travel. Chateaubriand led his readers through the vast forests of America and along the banks of the Mississippi (Atala, René), before transporting them to the Middle East in his Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (1811). Although rooted largely in Northern Europe, Romanticism developed a strong fascination with the Orient, as evidenced in Byron (who died fighting alongside the Greek revolutionaries), Lamartine (Voyage en Orient, 1835), and Victor Hugo (Les Orientales, 1829).

In the Mediterranean world, Spain and Italy also held a prominent place in the Romantic imagination—so much so that the motif soon bordered on cliché and even self-parody, as in Alfred de Musset’s Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie (1829).

“’Tis the Djinns’ tremendous throng!
Hark! the whirling rush of their flight!
Yews that their onslaught beat along
Rattle like burning pines in night.
In the far sky, dense and livid,
Their horde, so rapid yet so heavy,
Gleams like a storm-cloud dark and dreary
That shows a lightning in its side.

They come! they come! …”

Victor Hugo, « les Djinns» in Les Orientales, 1829

History as a Source of Inspiration

In the 18th century, German playwrights began to draw inspiration from the Middle Ages—for instance Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen (1773) and Schiller’s The Robbers (1782). From Scotland, Walter Scott flooded Europe with medieval novels such as Ivanhoe (1819).

Victor Hugo followed suit with The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1832). Alexandre Dumas enjoyed enormous success with his Renaissance-themed drama Henri III et sa cour, first performed in 1829. History thus became an inexhaustible playground for dramatists, poets, and novelists.

The epic sweep : Rossini, excerpt from Guillaume Tell’s ouverture (1829), R. Chailly.

The Individual Versus Society

In Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1782, posthumous), Jean-Jacques Rousseau introduced the contemplation of nature into literature—an approach that would resonate profoundly with the Romantics. But his influence did not end there. Echoing his accusations in political philosophy, many Romantic writers criticised society as fundamentally incapable of fulfilling individual aspirations.

Thus, in The Red and the Black (1830), Stendhal portrays a dark, violent protagonist at war with a class-based society that thwarts his ambitions. George Sand denounces the tragedies produced by unjust marriage laws in Indiana (1832). Victor Hugo attacks the death penalty in The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829).

Melancholic lyricism : Chopin, excerpt from étude op.25 n°1 (1837), by W. Horowitz.

The Lonely, Melancholic Soul

From the outset, Romanticism was marked by tragedy. Believing his love to be impossible, Werther commits suicide—and the emotional shock rippled across Europe (The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe, 1774). Suicide for love? That meant taking feelings very seriously indeed. In a speech delivered in 1824, the Académie Française reproached the Romantics for their lack of cheerfulness, for their constant sulking, and for “finding poetry only in misfortune and affliction.”

The Romantic soul refuses to root itself in anything tangible. Life itself is never enough:

“Rise, swiftly longed-for storms that will bear René into the realms of another life…”
— Chateaubriand, René (1802)

Contemplation of nature evokes both a dream of fusion and a feeling of solitude: “There is nothing in common between the earth and me,” laments Lamartine in Méditations poétiques (1820).

Romantics soar high and struggle with reality. Love, for them, often exists in a vaporous state, sustained by music and exchanged glances. Alfred de Musset and George Sand, one of the movement’s emblematic couples, left for Venice in passionate rapture, only to return irreparably estranged.

Yet Romanticism contains within itself the seeds of its own critique. Stendhal and George Sand did not hesitate to mock their own weaknesses or those of their contemporaries—sometimes sulky, pretentious, or theatrically in love, like Mathilde de la Mole in The Red and the Black.