Claude Charles Fauriel

Charles -Claude Fauriel ( born October 21, 1772 in Saint- Étienne, † July 15, 1844 in Paris) was a French philologist and literary historian.

Life

Fauriel received his first education in schools Oratorier, first in Tournon, then in Lyon. During the Revolution he was a soldier in the Army of the Western Pyrenees Dugommier under whom he served as secretary. 1799, shortly before the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire, he became secretary of the Minister of Police Joseph Fouché, but came back soon again, and then lived at his country estate La Maisonette. But he continued to move in literary circles and was about a frequent guest in the salons of Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant. He devoted himself to the study of history, the older languages ​​and literature. He learned Arabic and Sanskrit, translated 1810 Jens Immanuel Baggesen Parthenais from Danish and was in frequent correspondence with writers across Europe. Particularly fruitful was his correspondence with Alessandro Manzoni, with whom he lived 1823-1826 in Italy and whose dramas he translated into French.

1830 Fauriel first professor of " foreign literature " at the Faculté des lettres de Paris, the Sorbonne. In 1832 he was appointed one of the conservators of the manuscript department of the Royal Library was added to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1836. He was also an employee in François Guizot's historical committee, involved in the begun by the Benedictine Histoire littéraire de la France with. Since 1834 he was a corresponding member of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence.

Work

Fauriel considered a pioneer of comparative literature in France and next to Jean -Charles- Léonard de Sismondi Simonde as the founder of the romantic paradigm in French literary history, which only began to challenge some decades after the Revolution, the prevailing neoclassical ideals. This break was manifested primarily in the common in the Romantic fascination with the Middle Ages, which also Fauriel devoted a good part of his work, and the appreciation of folk poetry at the art seal.

This became clear in his first publication, a collection and translation of modern Greek folk songs. She was the first work of this kind ( Werner von Haxthausens previously started collection was not published until 1935 in press) and was an important contribution to philhellenic movement is that is not prescribed a few of the European romantics. It represents today is an important basic work of the Modern Greek, although later philologists Fauriel methodological and linguistic expertise often cast doubt. So Fauriel never entered Greek soil, but was based on the memories and records of Greek exiles in Italy. The collection was also well received internationally, yet in 1825 published translations of the collection into German ( concerned by Wilhelm Müller ), English and Russian. In the preface Fauriel expresses his conviction, following on from Herder's idea of ​​the " national spirit " that in Greek folk poetry of the " immediate and true expression of the national character and spirit" of the Greeks show, and asserts a continuity of this popular poetry of the ancient Greek epics.

After his appointment as professor of foreign literatures, there Fauriel devoted especially to the European literature of the Middle Ages. The lectures on the poetry of Provence (1831-1833) and Dante Alighieri (1833-1835) published posthumously in print, but unfolded among his pupils, such as Jean -Jacques Ampère, great effect. In the Histoire de la poésie Provençale he defends the thesis that not only the French, but consequently the whole of European literature on the Provençal literature of the Middle Ages go back. Behind the Trobadordichtung it suspects a vast body of an older, but not traditional unspoilt tradition folk poetry, in which a new Christian- this-worldly view of the world had first found shape and expression. Traces of these probably mainly orally transmitted tradition sought Fauriel in European literature of the Middle Ages prove that but have farther away than ever by increasing artificiality of these origins. René Wellek compares Fauriel effort to delineate this Provencal substrate, with the contemporary efforts of historical linguistics to reconstruct the Indo-European proto-language. The tradition of the hero song and the courtly poetry both northern France and Germany led Fauriel as a Provençal origin back like shapes of the Italian or Spanish folk and later art seal as the days song, the ballad or the pastourelle. The Germanic influence ( as alleged him about the Brothers Grimm and other German Romantics ) was overall negligible, as is the Celtic and Arabic. The methods of Fauriel reconstruction attempts, however, are often ventured at least according to philological point of view. Thus, bases his thesis of a Provençal template for the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach solely on the references therein to a troubadour named, Kyot ', for whose existence there but according to current knowledge is no evidence.

Even in Dante ( Dante et les origines de la langue et de la littérature italiennes, printed 1854) he thinks he can prove the Provencal influence. However, this two-volume work also provides a detailed overview of the political circumstances of the emergence of Dante's works and a ( now obsolete ) demolition of the historical development of the Italian language. However, his concern is not only the historicization of the work, but also the presentation of the ingenious creativity of Dante.

Works (selection)

As author

• Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne. 2 vols. Firmin Didot, Paris 1824-25. ( Digitized: Volume I, Volume II )
• Histoire de la Gaule méridionale sous la domination of Conquerants Germains. 4 volumes. . Paulin, Paris 1836 ( digitized: Volume I, II, III, IV)
• De l' origine de l' épopée chevaleresque du moyen age. Auffary Auguste, Paris, 1832. ( Digitized )
• Histoire de la contre les croisade heretics albigeois. Imprimerie Royale, Paris, 1837. ( Digitized )
• Histoire de la poésie Provençale. 3 volumes. Jules Labitte, Paris 1846 ( digitized: Volume I, II, III).
• Dante et les origines de la langue et de la littérature italiennes. 2 vols. . Auguste Durand, Paris 1854 ( digitized: Volume I, II)
• Les jours du derniers consulat. Edited by Ludovic Lalanne. Calmann Lévy, Paris, 1886. ( Digitized )

As a translator

• Jens Immanuel Baggesen: Parthenais. , 1810.
• Alessandro Manzoni: tragedies. 1823.

Secondary literature

• Stavros Deligiorgis: Fauriel and Modern Greek Poetry. In: PMLA 84:1, 1969.
• Michel Despland: Un vers l' tournant herméneutique en France en 1806? In: Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 23:1, 1994.
• Michel Espagne: Le paradigme de l' étranger: Les chaires de littérature étrangère au XIXe siècle. Le Cerf, Paris, 1993. ISBN 2-204-04739-2
• Michel Espagne: Claude Fauriel s quête d'une méthode, ou l' écoute de l' ideology à l' Allemagne. In: Romantisme 73, 1991.
• Jean -Baptiste Galley: Claude Fauriel, membre de l'Institut ( 1772-1843 ). A. Champion, Paris, 1909.
• Michael Glencross: Reconstructing Camelot: French Romantic medievalism and the Arthurian tradition. Boydell & Brewer, Cambridge 1995.
• Miodrag Ibrovac: Claude Fauriel et la fortune européenne of poésies populaires grecque et serb, étude d' histoire romantique. Didier, Paris 1966.
• Αλέξης Πολίτης (ed.): Κατάλοιπα Fauriel και Brunet de Presle. 1: Τα " νεοελληνικά " του Claude Fauriel; 2: Η Συλλογή τραγουδιών του W. Brunet de Presle: αναλυτικός κατάλογος. Κέντρο Νεοελληνικών Ερευνών Ε.Ι.Ε., Athens 1980.
• Charles -Augustin Sainte -Beuve: Portraits contemporains. Vol IV Michel Lévy Frères, Paris, 1869. Pp. 125-268.
• Brigitte Sgoff: Claude Fauriel and the beginnings of the Romance linguistics. Unpublished Dissertation, Munich 1994.
• René Wellek: history of literary criticism. Vol 2 DeGruyter, Berlin and New York from 1977 to 1990. Pp. 5-8.