to other great personages. From 1375, his name appears
in the records as bailli of Valois; he became bailli of
Senlis in 1389. Married ca. 1373, he had two sons and
a daughter, his wife dying in childbirth, probably in
- He did not remarry.
Until his fi nal years, Deschamps associated with a
wide circle of nobility and important fi gures, and much
of his poetry deals with current political and social
events. His works also show that he knew many poets of
the time: he writes of a joke that Oton de Granson played
on him, composes a ballade in praise of Chaucer and
another poem praising Christine de Pizan (in response
to a poem of praise from her), and in other works speaks
of Philippe de Vitry, Jean de Garencières, and most of
the poets of the Cent ballades. But his most important
literary association was with his fellow Champenois
Guillaume de Machaut, who fi gures prominently in
several of his works and whose death he laments in
a double ballade with the refrain, La mort Machaut,
le noble rethouryque. He may have been a nephew of
Machaut, whom he credits with “nurturing” (educat-
ing?) him. Accordingly, his poetry is mostly in the fi xed
forms that Machaut popularized. But Deschamps writes
more on moral and topical subjects than on his mentor’s
predominating subject, love, and he did not write long
dits amoureux comparable with Machaut’s.
Deschamps’s bulky œuvre is almost all preserved in
a single thick manuscript compiled a few years after
his death (B.N. fr. 840). Ballades predominate, 1,017
surviving. In addition, there are 171 rondeaux, eighty-
four virelais, 139 chansons royales, fourteen lais, and
fi fty-nine other pieces, including twelve poems in Latin.
His one important prose piece is the Art de dictier et de
fere chançons (1392), probably written to instruct one
of his “great lords” in the composition of lyrics; it is
the only extant treatise on the art of poetry from 14th-
century France. Notable is Deschamps’s classifi cation
and discussion of poetry without music as “natural
music”; musical notation is for him “artifi cial music.”
The treatise otherwise concentrates on illustrating the
ballade, virelai, rondeau, and lai.
Neither of Deschamps’s two extant long poems was
completed, and in both cases rubrics state that death
prevented the author from fi nishing them. The Fiction
du lyon is a beast-fable on political events in France,
with Charles VI presented as Noble the Lion, Charles
the Bad of Navarre as Renard the Fox, and Richard II
of England as the Leopard. Deschamps’s Miroir de
mariage is his longest poem by far, 12,004 lines in
octosyllabic couplets. Drawing on standard writings
against matrimony like St. Jerome’s Adversus Jovini-
anum, it opens with a discussion of friendship, which
leads to the main question, whether a young man named
Franc Vouloir (Free Will) should marry. While such
friends as Desir and Folie advise him to take a wife,
Repertoire de Science (Wisdom) counsels against it
in a long enumeration of the dangers and ills of carnal
marriage. He contrasts spiritual marriage, which Franc
Vouloir eventually chooses. The work ends with a poorly
integrated review of history, interrupted at the Treaty
of Brétigny (1360). The Miroir has been thought an
important source for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but
this is questionable.
The great bulk of poetry preserved in the major
Deschamps manuscript, edited in eleven impressive
volumes, his ballade to Chaucer, his wit, and his inter-
est in current affairs have made Deschamps seem a
more important poet than he was. Had it not been for
a literary friend who gathered his works together after
his death and had them copied, there would remain
little evidence of his versifying. Much of the work is
journalistic, and virtually none of the alleged infl uence
on Chaucer is sure. Nevertheless, Deschamps was
undoubtedly a master of the ballade, and his reports of
quotidian incident, dialogues, petitions to his patrons,
observances of ceremonial events, and a great variety
of other discourses in ballade form are often amusing
and well done. Without his work, we would certainly
know much less about public life and literature in late
14th-century France.
See also Charles II the Bad; Charles V the Wise;
Chaucer, GeoffreyFurther Reading
Deschamps, Eustache. Œuvres complètes d’Eustache Deschamps,
ed. Auguste Queux de Saint-Hilaire and Gaston Raynaud. 11
vols. Paris: Didot, 1878–1903. [Vol. 11 includes biographical
study and survey of sources.]
Hoepffner, Ernest. Eustache Deschamps: Leben und Werke.
Strassburg: Trübner, 1904.
Thundy, Zacharias. “Matheolus, Chaucer, and the Wife of Bath.”
In Chaucer Problems and Perspectives, ed. Edward Vasta
and Zacharias Thundy. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University
Press, 1979, pp. 24–58.
James I. WimsattDHUODA (ca. 800–ca. 845)
Few biographical details remain on Dhuoda, the only
known female author of the Carolingian Renaissance.
This well-educated noblewoman from a powerful Aus-
trasian family married Bernard, duke of Septimania, at
the royal palace at Aachen on June 29, 824. Bernard,
a powerful imperial magnate, played an important but
unpredictable role in the turbulent 830s and 840s. Dur-
ing the duke’s extended absences between the births
of their two sons, William (826) and Bernard (841),
Dhuoda played a key role administering the province.
To counter Bernard’s emerging disloyalty, King Charles
the Bald summoned William to court as a royal hostage
in 841. In response, Dhuoda crafted her Liber manualisDHUODA