Alain-René Lesage

Alain-René Lesage (May 8, 1668, Sarzeau – November 17, 1747, Boulogne), also spelled Le Sage was a French novelist and playwright born at Sarzeau, in the peninsula of Rhuys, between the Morbihan and the sea, Brittany.

Novels

It is, however, as a novelist that the world has agreed to remember Lesage. A great deal of unnecessary labor has been spent on the discussion of his claims to originality. What has been already said will give a sufficient clue through this thorny ground. In mere form Lesage is not original. He does little more than adopt that of the Spanish picaroon romance of the 16th and 17th century. Often, too, he prefers merely to rearrange and adapt existing work, and still oftener to give himself a kind of start by adopting the work of a preceding writer as a basis. But it may be laid down as a positive truth that he never, in any work that pretends to originality at all, is guilty of anything that can fairly be called plagiarism. Indeed we may go further, and say that he is very fond of asserting or suggesting his indebtedness when he is really dealing with his own funds. Thus the Diable boiteux borrows the title, and for a chapter or two the plan and almost the words, of the Diablo Cojuelo of Luis Velez de Guevara. But after a few pages Lesage leaves his predecessor alone. Even the plan of the Spanish original is entirely discarded, and the incidents, the episodes, the style, are as independent as if such a book as the Diablo Cojuelo had never existed.

Related Topics:
Picaroon - Luis Velez de Guevara

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Gil Blas

The case of Gil Blas is still more remarkable. It was at first alleged that Lesage had borrowed it from the Vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón of Vicente Espinel, a curiously rash assertion, inasmuch as that work exists and is easily accessible, and as the slightest consultation of it proves that, though it furnished Lesage with separate incidents and hints for more than one of his books, Gil Blas as a whole is not in the least indebted to it. Afterwards Father Isla asserted that Gil Blas was a mere translation from an actual Spanish book, an assertion at once incapable of proof and disproof, inasmuch as there is no trace whatever of any such book. A third hypothesis is that there was some manuscript original which Lesage may have worked up in his usual way, in the same way, for instance, as he professes himself to have worked up the Bachelor of Salamanca. This also is in the nature of it incapable of refutation, though the argument from the Bachelor is strong against it, for there could be no reason why Lesage should be more reticent of his obligations in the one case than in the other. Except, however, for historical reasons, the controversy is one which may be safely neglected, nor is there very much importance in the more impartial indication of sources chiefly works on the history of Olivares which has sometimes been attempted. That Lesage knew Spanish literature well is of course obvious; but there is as little doubt (with the limitations already laid down) of his real originality as of that of any great writer in the world. Gil Blas then remains his property, and it is admittedly the capital example of its own style.

Related Topics:
Vicente Espinel - Father Isla - Olivares

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Lesage's style

For Lesage has not only the characteristic, which Homer and Shakespeare have, of absolute truth to human nature as distinguished from truth to this or that national character, but he has what has been called the quality of detachment, which they also have. He never takes sides with his characters as Fielding (whose master, with Cervantes, he certainly was) sometimes does. Asmodeus and Don Cleofas, Gil Bias and the Archbishop and Doctor Sangrado, are produced by him with exactly the same impartiality of attitude. Except that he brought into novel writing this highest quality of artistic truth, it perhaps cannot be said that he did much to advance prose fiction in itself. He invented, as has been said, no new genre; he did not, as Marivaux and Prévost did, help on the novel as distinguished from the romance. In form his books are undistinguishable, not merely from the Spanish romances which are, as has been said, their direct originals, but from the medieval romans adventures and the Greek prose romances. But in individual excellence they have few rivals. Nor should it be forgotten, as it sometimes is, that Lesage was a great master of French style, the greatest unquestionably between the classics of the 17th century and the classics of the 18th. He is perhaps the last great writer before the decadence (for since the time of Paul Louis Courier it has not been denied that the philosophe period is in point of style a period of decadence). His style is perfectly easy at the same time that it is often admirably epigrammatic. It has plenty of color, plenty of flexibility, and may be said to be exceptionally well fitted for general literary work.

Related Topics:
Homer - Shakespeare - Fielding - Cervantes - Marivaux - Greek - Paul Louis Courier

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