Jean decides in favor of the knight, then entertains both
parties at his castle of Durbuy for a week. Elements of
verisimilitude and the participation of a historical king
bring a new air of realism to the dit amoureux.
Remede de Fortune (ca. 1340; 4,300 lines) is arguably
the best and most infl uential French love poem of the
14th century. The Lover/Narrator tells of his long but
silent love service to his lady. To pass time, he writes
poems in the formes fi xes about his love and circulates
them anonymously, until one day a lai comes into his
lady’s hands. When she asks him who had written it,
he is unable to speak and retreats in despondency to the
Park of Hesdin, where he delivers a lengthy complainte
against Love and Fortune. In response, Lady Hope
appears and tells him that both Fortune and Love had
treated him as well as could be expected. Encouraged
by Hope, the Lover fi nally goes to his Lady’s chateau
and declares his love. Although they exchange rings, the
Lady, prompted by the need for discretion and secrecy in
love, later ignores him, and the poem ends on an ambigu-
ous note. Remede de Fortune is an important didactic
poem, serving as a manual for courtiers and providing
a poetic and musical model for each of the formes fi xes.
Among the last and best of a line of French love poems
that integrated lyrics with narrative, it also provided a
model for the nonmusical narratives of such poets as
Froissart, Granson, and especially Chaucer.
The Dit du lyon (2,204 lines), with the action set on
April 2, 1342, is sometimes thought to be the original of
Chaucer’s lost Book of the Lion. The narrator comes onto
an island, where he encounters a friendly lion; the lion
leads him through a wasteland into a grove, where they
are received by a noble lady and her retainers. Here, the
narrator observes the love experience of the lion, who is
harassed by the persecution of hostile beasts whenever
his lady takes her gaze from him. The narrator intercedes
on behalf of the lion before returning to his manor.
In the Jugement du roy de Navarre (1349; 4,212
lines), Machaut returns to the love debate of Behaigne
and this time pronounces, through the person of Charles
the Bad, king of Navarre, in favor of the Lady. Much
more than a simple love debate, the poem is a complex
commentary on the role of a poet and poetry in society.
An important prologue evokes the Black Death.
The Dit de l’alerion (1350s; 4,814 lines) is a bird
allegory that presents extensive analogies between birds
of prey and women, between hawking and fi n’amors.
The Narrator/Lover tells of four raptors he has acquired,
loved, and lost: a sparrowhawk, an alerion (a type of
large eagle), an eagle, and a gerfalcon. Like the Remede,
it is a didactic treatise on love; unlike that poem, it in-
corporates exempla drawn from historical and literary
sources to make its points.
The Fonteinne amoureuse (1360–62; 2,848 lines) is
a dream vision in which Machaut offers advice to his
patron, Duke John of Berry. One night, the Narrator
overhears a Lover bemoaning the fact he must go into
exile (in actuality, John went to England in 1360 as a
hostage after the Treaty of Brétigny) and be separated
from his Lady. The next day in a garden, the Narrator
and the Lover fall asleep near a fountain and are visited
by Venus, who brings the Lady to comfort her suitor
and assure him of her fi delity. The two men awaken and
return to the castle; several days later, the Lover crosses
the sea, but with joy in his heart.
In his last and lengthiest dit amoureux, the Voir dit
(1363–65; 9,009 lines with intercalated prose letters),
Machaut gives a pseudoautobiographical account of
an affair with a young admirer, Toute-Belle. A sort of
epistolary novel in verse, the work is more likely a fi c-
tion than an account of a real affair, though many early
scholars sought to see in it a roman à clef. It is notable
for its verisimilitude and for its apparently parodic
depiction of fi n’amors.
The shorter dits include the Dit de la Marguerite, the
Dit de la Fleur de Lis et de la Marguerite, the Dit de la
Harpe, and the Dit de la Rose.
In addition to his dits amoureux, Machaut composed
two other long poems: Confort d’ami (1356–57; 4,004
lines) and Prise d’Alexandrie (1369–71; 8,886 lines
and three prose letters). The Confort, incorporating
many exempla, was written to console Charles the Bad,
who had been taken prisoner by John II in April 1356.
The Prise is a verse account of the career of Pierre de
Lusignan, king of Cyprus, which culminated with the
capture of Alexandria in 1365.
Machaut’s musical works fall into three genres: mo-
tets, settings of fi xed-form lyrics, and Mass. Fifteen of
Machaut’s motets set French texts, six set Latin texts,
and two mix French and Latin. The earliest date we have
for a work by Machaut is the Latin motet Bone pastor
Guillerme/Bone pastor qui/Bone pastor, written for the
occasion of the election of Guillaume de Trie as arch-
bishop of Reims in 1324. Most of the remaining motets,
dated before ca. 1350, celebrate fi n’amors. The invec-
tive against Fortune in Machaut’s most popular motet,
Qui es promesses/Ha Fortune/Et non est, was known
to Chaucer. The last three of Machaut’s motets appear
to relate to political events of the late 1350s. Formally,
the motets use isorhythmic designs based on chant
tenors and are evenly divided among bipartite designs
with diminution and unipartite designs. Three motets
are based on secular tenors in virelai or rondeau form,
one of which, Lasse comment oublieray/Se j’aim mon
loyal/Pour quoy me bat mes maris, sets a 13th-century
dance song, the complaint of a malmariée.
Machaut is unique among 14th-century composers in
his cultivation of the diffi cult lai with music. Although
most of the musical lais are monophonic, their great
length, demanding a half-hour or more in performance,MACHAUT, GUILLAUME DE