FROISSART, JEAN
(1337-after 1404). The greatest French chronicler, as well as an outstanding poet and
romancer, Jean Froissart was born the year the Hundred Years’ War began, to a humble
bourgeois family of Valenciennes, which lay then outside the French kingdom. After a
clerical education, he entered the service of the counts of Hainaut. All his life, Froissart
was a servant of powerful nobles. His ability to please his aristocratic patrons and
protectors is his chief characteristic as a man and writer. In 1361, he went to England to
become one of the clercs de la chambre of Philippa of Hainaut, wife of Edward III. He
remained in that service until her death in 1369. His stay in England was interrupted by
extensive travels to Scotland, to southern France in the suite of the Black Prince, and
later, in the retinue of Edward’s second son, Lionel, duke of Clarence (patron and
protector of Chaucer), to northern Italy, where Lionel married the daughter of the duke of
Milan. After the wedding, Froissart traveled to Rome and returned to England via
Hainaut and Brabant. These travels doubtless furnished him with the “pan-European”
outlook informing much of his Chronicles. The youthful service at the very French court
of Philippa imprinted in him a permanent, idealized image of a chivalric “paradise lost”
so evident in his romance Méliador. After the death of Philippa, Froissart returned to his
native Hainaut in search of new patrons. His chief benefactors were Robert de Namur (d.
1392); more importantly, Gui II, count of Blois (d. 1397), who in all probability urged
him to work on the Chroniques; and Wenceslas, duke of Luxembourg and Brabant (d.
1383), who certainly encouraged his poetry, for he was a poet in his own right. We know
that Froissart took holy orders and that, in 1373, he received a benefice in Les Estiennes
near Mons. In 1384, he became a canon at Chimay. Sometime later, he received another
canonry at Lille. He spent the winter of 1388–89 in Orthez, at the splendid court of
another aristocratic man of letters, Gaston Phoebus, count of Foix (d. 1391). He traveled
to the Low Countries, and in 1394 he briefly revisited England. Little is known about
Froissart’s declining years. He died some time after 1404.
Froissart’s main achievement is Les chroniques de France, d’Angleterre et de païs
voisins..., a history of almost all of western Europe spanning the years 1327 (the
accession of Edward III) and ca. 1400 (the death of Richard II). This history, although
providing us with an enormous wealth of realistic detail, is written from a distinctive
point of view. Like so much of Froissart’s poetry, it embodies a frank glorification of an
aristocratic, idealized, “international,” chivalric life. Up to 1361, his work is a recasting
of Jean le Bel’s (ca. 1290–1370) Vrayes chroniques, which present the first years of the
reign of Edward III and the beginnings of the Hundred Years’ War. After this date,
Froissart follows his own observations, hearsay, and, occasionally, documents. He was
certainly conscious of partisan points of view in history and took some pains to ascertain
the facts, interviewing eyewitnesses and participants in the events described. He traveled
widely to seek out sources and constantly recast the first two books of his Chroniques to
suit changing political circumstances and the tastes and views of his patrons.
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