Mediaeval and modern history . eir stimu-lating influence theearly poetry of al-most every people ofEurope is largely in-debted. 243. The Trou-veurs. — These werethe poets of North-ern France, who com-posed in the Langtied Gil, or Old Frenchtongue. They flour-ished during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As the poeticalliterature of the South found worthy patrons in the counts ofToulouse, so did that of the North find admiring encouragers inthe dukes of Normandy. There was, however, a wide difference between the literatureof Southern and that of Northern France. The compositions ofthe Tro
Mediaeval and modern history . eir stimu-lating influence theearly poetry of al-most every people ofEurope is largely in-debted. 243. The Trou-veurs. — These werethe poets of North-ern France, who com-posed in the Langtied Gil, or Old Frenchtongue. They flour-ished during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As the poeticalliterature of the South found worthy patrons in the counts ofToulouse, so did that of the North find admiring encouragers inthe dukes of Normandy. There was, however, a wide difference between the literatureof Southern and that of Northern France. The compositions ofthe Troubadours were almost exclusively lyric songs, while thoseof the Trouveurs were chiefly epic or narrative poems, calledromances. These latter celebrated the chivalrous exploits andloves of great princes and knights, and displayed at times almostHomeric animation and grandeur. Many of them gather aboutthree familiar names, — Charlemagne, King Arthur, and Alexan-der the Great, — thus forming what are designated as the cycle. Fig. 43. — In the Land of the Troubadours— THE Castle of Foix. (From Smith, TheTroubadours at Home) FROISSARTS CHRONICLES 229 of Charlemagne, the Arthurian or Armorican cycle, and theAlexandrian.^^ The influence of these French romances upon the springingliteratures of Europe was most inspiring and helpful. Nor has theirinfluence yet ceased. Thus in English literature, not only didChaucer and Spenser and all the early island poets draw inspirationfrom these fountains of Continental song, but the later Tennyson,in his Idylls of the King, has illustrated the power over the imagina-tion yet possessed by the Arthurian poems of the old Trouveurs. 244. Froissarts Chronicles. — The first really noted prosewriter in French literature w^as Froissart (about 1337-1410),whose picturesqueness of style and skifl as a story-teller have wonfor him the title of the French Herodotus. Born, as he was,only a Httle after the opening of the Hundred Years War, andknowing
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