Heroic novel

The heroic Romance is a literary Genre primarily French which corresponds about to the years 1640 - 1660 and which associates romantic fiction and epopee by lengthily telling the historical exploits of mythifiés heroes pushed by the love.

The superabundance of the characters, the places and the complicated intrigues of these saga novels of several thousands of pages makes take part the heroic novel in esthetics Baroque and places it made at the idealization, with the women and with the feelings makes it inseparable from the Préciosité.

Origin

Succeeding the sheep-folds in the Italian and Spanish taste of the beginning of the 17th century like Astrée of Honore d' Urfé (1610), the heroic novel is generated by the warlike context of the period 1618-1659 (Guerre Thirty Year old and war against Spain) and by an aristocratic reaction vis-a-vis a rise to power of the middle-class.

The heroic novel thus constitutes a rebirth of the tale of chivalry of the end of the 16th century parodied in a certain way by the Don Quichotte of Cervantes: it takes again the characters of the warlike adventure but adds subtleties of an organized and elegant world which corresponds to the new ideal of the court which surrounds the young person Louis XIV but also with the vogue of the literary living rooms where meets the good company of time as to the Hôtel of Rambouillet.

Narrative characteristics of the heroic novel

See Gallica

multiplicity of the aristocratic characters whose history preserved the trace (Tarquin, Cyrus, Cléopâtre…), without realistic concern but with an unquestionable smoothness in the psychological analysis,
a complicated and plentiful intrigue, with for engine of the action the chance which leads to multiple and extraordinary adventures without preoccupation with a probability (separation, catastrophes, violences, coincidences, identities mysterious, meeting again…),
a design of the idealized love,
a discursive narration with an opening in media LMBO and of the explanatory flashbacks, the digressions and the accounts with drawers as well as the important presence of letters, conversations and long descriptions,
a mixture of epic poetizing, style and preciosity with a bombastic language, with the long and complex sentences, also using the metaphor and a success in the art of descriptions, particularly of the portraits,
the disproportionate length: Clélie comprises more: 13000 pages and Cléopâtre holds a record with more: 15000 pages,
the virtue and the exploit are closely associated with the idealized love and extraordinary adventures, with the result that, beyond the entertainment, the company of time finds in these novels a kind of mirror, the more so as to the galantery the play of the novel is added to keys which charms the circles of readers and more still of readers.

Principal works

Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1595 - 1676): ARIANE (1632) with the Greek topic from which Lully will draw a ballet later.
Marine Roy de Gomberville (1600? - 1674):

Carithée (1621) which reports the surging adventures of Agrippine and of Germanicus at the first century of the Roman empire.
Polexandre (5 volumes, 1632 - 1637) which has as an aim the adventurous loves of Polexandre and Alcidiane within a framework exotic (Mexico - Africa) and magic (paradisiac island of sinners of pearl) that will appreciate the Fountain.

Gautier de Costes of Calprenède (1614 - 1663):

Cassandre (1642 - 1645) in 10 volumes which recall partly the history of Alexandre Large the with warlike scenes (Calprenède had a military career) and conflicts in love as in the nation with the Amazones.
Cléopâtre, the beautiful Egyptian woman (1646 - 1658), 12 volumes: 15000 pages published in 1662, which put in scene the century of Auguste with many characters of which remained to us the expression “proud like Artaban”, proud character and beta.
Faramond or French history dedicated to Roy (1661 - 1670, 7 volumes - unfinished) which has as a framework Gaulle with and the Mérovingiens.

Madeleine and Georges de Scudéry whose novels are sometimes classified like Romance invaluable, in particular volumes due to Madeleine de Scudéry.

Ibrahim or the Famous one Based (1641 - 1642) which treats involuntary competition of the hero with Soliman when it must be denied the plotters within the exotic framework of the seraglio in the Ottoman Empire. A tragi-comedy will be drawn from the novel.
Artamène or Large Cyrus (1649 - 1653), 10 volumes: 13095 pages with the end of which Cyrus ends up marrying Mandane after having fought all its rivals and conquered all Asia to find it. The keys are discussed by all the readers who recognize the Grand Cop, the Duchesse of Longueville, Mrs. de Rambouillet, Vincent Voiture or Madeleine de Scudéry itself under the features of Sappho the “feminist “narrator.
Clélie (exact title: Clélie, Roman history ), ten volumes between 1654 and 1660 of which the first were signed by Georges de Scudéry.

The novel draws its argument from Tite-Live and locates the action at time when the Étrusques and Tarquin Superb the fight against Rome, towards 509 before JC. It is acted in fact of a transposition of the Fronde at times of the formation of Rome and the contemporaries passionately sought the keys of the novel. The intrigue complexes and rebounding tale the final union of Clélie and Advertisement after tumultuous and multiple hitches: the lovers find themselves finally afterwards: 6000 pages of catastrophes (earthquake), of historical events (head office of Rome, falls of the Roman royalty and beginning of the Republic), of separations (removal of Clélie by Tarquin), of fights and wanderings. The principal action which rests on the hazardous way of the love that illustrates celebrates it Carte of Tightening is in addition stopped by many enchased stories and long descriptions.

Influences

The heroic novel will mark the spirits in the middle of the 17th century and will influence the theatrical kind with works baroques with the superabundant and incredible adventures and especially the kind of the Tragi-comédie, called sometimes “gallant tragedy” or “romantic tragedy” which illustrate the Death of Cyrus (1656) of Philippe Quinault, and especially the Timocrate of Thomas Corneille (1656) which was an immense success.

Curious to create temporal and/or geographical expatriation, the heroic novels also take part in the mode of the Exotisme (let us point out only Mamouchi of Molière or Bajazet of Racine) destined for beautiful following days at the following centuries, and, although not very concerned realism, these novels exploits solid book sources and thus precedes the Historical novel to come. But excesses of the kind give birth to rather quickly the satires Burlesque S and the pastiches which constitute the comic Novel (1651 - 1657) of Paul Scarron, the middle-class Novel (1666) of Furetière (1666) or False Clélie, Francoise history gallant and comic (1671), of Subligny; these works thus finding the vein of comic History of Francion (1623) of Charles Sorel.

At the same time, with the generation of 1660 will be done day of criticisms at the same time morals and esthetics which summarizes this Lenoble formula which condemns “the long Novels full with words and fabulous adventures, and empty of the things which must remain in the spirit of the Reader and make fruit there”. Finally the traditional novel will be worked out in reaction against these saga novels by producing shorter, concerned accounts of probability in the events as in the psychology of the characters fewer, with a language measured in the search of a more realistic fiction, nearer to the daily newspaper of the readers and with a moral aiming. the Princess of Clèves of Madeleine de Lafayette (1678) illustrates this new orientation not without sometimes preserving aspects of the héroïco-sentimental novel like the adjacent stories.

Problems

Denomination

Answering rather well the definition of Pierre-Daniel Huet for which the novels is “fictions of adventures in love, written in prose with art, for the pleasure and the instruction of the readers” ( Traité origin of the novels , 1670), the heroic novel constitutes a type of works characteristic of the romantic production of the middle of the 17th century but its denomination makes sometimes question, as it is frequent with artistic and literary labelling.

Certain commentators underline the differences between the heroic novels “pure” of Gomberville and the invaluable Calprenède and novel by considering the relative place granted to the action and the historical context on the one hand and the analysis of the feeling in love idealized and the taking into account with the female condition on the other hand. They thus put aside the novels of Madeleine de Scudéry which “creates with it only a particular literary type: the invaluable novel” whose prototype would be Clélie which would find something of Astrée of Honore d' Urfé.

But of other analysts of the literary history the common points propose (see above Caractéristiques) and gather Romance heroic and Romance invaluable: they speak then about “héroïco-sentimental novel” or “invaluable heroic novel”, considering that the differences concern a question in temperament more than of distinctions of kind whereas others still are satisfied with a broader category: the novel of the age Baroque; but this last label, however less prone to debate than that of “novel baroque”, hardly defines the dominant narrations of the kind.

Dates

The dates given for works of this time are rather floating, hesitant between dates of writing, beginning of publication and final publication. The taken again dates are those retained in the other articles of Wikipédia.

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