Froissart’s Chroniques are divided into four books. Book 1 was recast by the
chronicler into four redactions. It relates events up to 1369, 1372, or 1377 depending on
redactions. After this book, Froissart wrote the independent Chronique de Flandre, which
relates the disorders occurring in that country between 1378 and 1387. This chronicle was
later incorporated into Book 2, which ends with events in 1387; there are two redactions
of Book 2. The last two books exist in only one redaction. The third relates events to ca.
1390 and the fourth to ca. 1400.
Froissart’s Chroniques, an important monument of an elegant and efficient French
prose, enjoyed an instant, wide, and lasting success. They were particularly appreciated in
England, not only for their pro-English stance (inherited, so to speak, from Jean le Bel),
but also for their archaizing, chivalric outlook. The Chroniques are a priceless source for
the history of the 14th century, especially for the reader who understands the aristocratic
vantage point from which Froissart viewed it. One should not expect to find either
penetrating explanations of political history or subtle social commentary. Froissart’s
views were limited by those of his patrons: he never understood the aspirations and
growing power of the bourgeoisie. He had nothing but contempt for the peasant revolt of
the French Jacquerie of 1358, or for its English counterpart led by Wat Tyler in 1381. His
Chroniques give us a vivid mirror of the epoch, the distortions of which can be more
easily understood through the ideology informing his poetry.
Froissart wrote lyric verse, narrative-didactic poetry, and a long, rhymed Arthurian
romance. His lyrical output is considerable: thirteen lais, six chansons royaux, forty
ballades, thirteen virelais, 107 rondeaux, and twenty pastourelles. They come to us in the
two manuscripts carefully copied under his supervision (B.N. fr. 830 and 831), which
also contain his narrative-didactic poetry. He also wrote several serventois in honor of the
Virgin. Otherwise, all his lyrical poems, most of which were composed before 1372,
celebrate courtly love. In lyrical as well as narrativedidactic poems, his unavowed model
was Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300–77), but Froissart, as far as we know, composed no
music.
Of special historical interest because of their historical realia are Froissart’s
pastourelles. The lovestruck shepherds sometimes make historical allusions, and under
the easily penetrated fictional cover, six of these pastourelles celebrate public events,
such as the arrival in Paris of Queen Isabeau (1385), or the marriage of the elderly John,
duke of Berry, to the very young Jeanne de Boulogne (1389). The pastourelles present
real affinities between Froissart’s lyric poetry and his Chroniques.
Much of Froissart’s lyric poetry exists in two “redactions,” for many of the poems
were not only grouped according to their genre, but also inserted (sometimes slightly
modified) in narrative dits (called also dittiés or trettiés). The oldest of them is the
Paradis d’Amour (1,724 lines with five lyric insertions), an allegorical dream vision (in
the manner of the first part of the Roman de la Rose) in which the poet-lover encounters
in the Garden (Paradise) of Love such traditional figures of the God of Love, Plaisance,
Hope, Pity, and Sweet Looks. The protagonist tells the story of his love to the God of
Love, recites his poems, and meets his ladylove, who makes him a wreath of daisies. To
reward her, the poet recites his ballade Sur toutes flours j’aimme la margerite. Her touch
wakes him from his delightful dream. What is important in this dit is Froissart’s explicit
connection between the love-dream and the ability and capacity for composing lyric
poetry.
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