THE PREDOMINANCE OF FRANCE. THE RISE OF ALLEGORY. LYRIC. THE "ROMANCE" AND THE "PASTOURELLE." THE "FABLIAUX." THEIR ORIGIN. THEIR LICENCE. THEIR WIT. DEFINITION AND SUBJECTS. EFFECT OF THE "FABLIAUX" ON LANGUAGE. AND ON NARRATIVE. CONDITIONS OF "FABLIAU"-WRITING. THE APPEARANCE OF IRONY. FABLES PROPER. 'REYNARD THE FOX.' ORDER OF TEXTS. PLACE OF ORIGIN. THE FRENCH FORM. ITS COMPLICATIONS. UNITY OF SPIRIT. THE RISE OF ALLEGORY. THE SATIRE OF 'RENART.' THE FOX HIMSELF. HIS CIRCLE. THE BURIAL OF RENART. THE 'ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.' WILLIAM OF LORRIS AND JEAN DE MEUNG. THE FIRST PART. ITS CAPITAL VALUE. THE ROSE-GARDEN. "DANGER." "REASON." "SHAME" AND "SCANDAL." THE LATER POEM. "FALSE-SEEMING." CONTRAST OF THE PARTS. VALUE OF BOTH, AND CHARM OF THE FIRST. MARIE DE FRANCE AND RUTEBOEUF. DRAMA. ADAM DE LA HALLE. "ROBIN ET MARION." THE "JEU DE LA FEUILLIE." COMPARISON OF THEM. EARLY FRENCH PROSE. LAWS AND SERMONS. VILLEHARDOUIN. WILLIAM OF TYRE. JOINVILLE. FICTION. 'AUCASSIN ET NICOLETTE.' [Sidenote: _The predominance of France._] The contributions of France to European literature mentioned in the three chapters (II.-IV.) which deal with the three main sections of Romance, great as we have seen them to be, by no means exhausted the debt which literature owes to her during this period. It is indeed not a little curious that the productions of this time, long almost totally ignored in France itself, and even now rather grudgingly acknowledged there, are the only periodic set of productions that justify the claim, so often advanced by Frenchmen, that their country is at the head of the literary development of Europe. It was not so in the fourteenth century, when not only Chaucer in England, but Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in Italy, attained literary heights to which none of their French contemporaries even approached. It was not so in the fifteenth, when France, despite Villon and others, was the very School of Dulness, and even England, with the help of the Scottish poets and Malory, had a slight advantage over her, while she was far outstripped by Italy. It was not so in the sixteenth, when Italy hardly yet fell behind, and Spain and England far outwent her: nor, according to any just estimate, in the seventeenth. In the eighteenth her pale correctness looks faint enough, not merely beside the massive strength of England, but beside the gathering force of Germany: and if she is the equal of the best in the nineteenth, it is at the very most a bare equality. But in the twelfth and thirteenth France, if not Paris, was in reality the eye and brain of Europe, the place of origin of almost every literary form, the place of finishing and polishing, even for those forms which she did not originate. She not merely taught, she wrought--and wrought consummately. She revived and transformed the fable; perfected, if she did not invent, the