two miscellaneous lyrics. The manuscripts also include music for his famous Messe de
Nostre Dame and a textless three-voice hocket.
Machaut’s earliest narrative poem, the Dit du vergier (late 1330s; 1,293 lines), is an
allegorical dream vision in the tradition of the Roman de la Rose. It is a first-person
account of an encounter with the God of Love, who together with six youths and six
maidens appears to the narrator in a grove. In three lengthy speeches, the god discourses
on love and promises to help the narrator in his own amours, if he proves worthy.
The Jugement du roy de Behaigne (late 1330s; 2,079 lines) narrates a love debate and
its resolution by Jean l’Aveugle. The allusions to this poem and the large number of
extant manuscripts (twenty) are evidence that this was the most popular of Machaut’s
works. The question debated is who suffers more, the knight whose lady has taken a new
lover or the lady whose beloved has died. 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 influential
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 fixes 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 finally
Guillaume de Machaut composing a
lyric, Remede de Fortune. BN fr. 1586,
fol. 26. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris.
goes to his Lady’s château 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 ambiguous 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 fixes. 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
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1084