The Orloge amoureus is the only dit written in decasyllabic couplets (unlike the others
composed in octosyllables). Its 1,174 verses describe the workings of the clock, then a
relatively new invention. In all probability, it was the real Parisian clock in the tower of
the Palais Royal on the Île de la Cité that Froissart examined in 1368 during his return
trip from Italy. The poet systematically compares his love-filled heart with the “subtlety”
of the workings of the clock. Thus, the foliot or bar-balance is Fear, the main weight is
Beauty, the mother wheel is Desire, the ‘scape wheel is Moderation, the striking wheel is
Sweet Talk, and so on. Each part of the mechanism corresponds thus to a “well-
working,” allegorical system of courtly love. The presentation of the workings of the
clock is so detailed and exact that the Orloge amoureus was cited and partially translated
by an English historian of horology. This dit is, like the Chroniques, a monument to
Froissart’s unquenchable curiosity concerning the things of this world.
The Espinette amoureuse (4,198 verses with fourteen lyric insertions) offers first a
long pseudo-autobiographical introduction describing his childhood and stressing the
precocity of his love inclination. Then the poet presents a dream vision in which he
encounters Juno, Pallas Athene, Mercury, and Venus. Venus makes him a gift of a
“[c]œur gai, joli et amoureus” (l. 547). The rest of the dit is quite similar to the Paradis.
The poet-lover encounters his ladylove, they exchange poems, they dance, but after a
while the lady must leave because she is to marry someone else. The poet becomes ill and
alternates between hope and despair.
The Prison amoureuse (3,895 lines with sixteen inserted poems and twelve letters in
prose) tells, under the usual allegorical cover, the real story of Wenceslas of Luxemburg,
captured in the Battle of Baesweiler in 1371 and awaiting the ransom money to be paid
by his brother, the emperor Charles IV. The seven letters written by Rose (=Wenceslas)
and five by Flos (=Froissart) present the backbone of the dit. They discuss the subtleties
of courtly love. We know that the combination of letters and verse-narration was made
popular by Machaut in his Voir dit (ca. 1362), but whereas Machaut presents a real plot,
in Froissart the plot is replaced by two exempla: a pseudomythological love story told by
Flos and an allegorical vision experienced by Rose, in which we can made out the real
story of the imprisoned Wenceslas.
The Joli buisson de Jonece is the longest and most ambitious of Froissart’s dits (5,442
lines, with twenty-seven inserted poems). It is a dream vision that Froissart, aged thirty-
five, had on November 30, 1373. In his dream, populated by mythological and allegorical
figures, Youth leads him to an allegorical Bush. Awakened, the poet realizes the real
danger and turns his thoughts toward the Virgin, whom he praises in a lai. She becomes
“li Buissons resplendissans” (l. 5,402) and her Son “[e]st li feus plaisans,/ Non
ardans,/Mais enluminans” (ll. 5,407–10).
Like the Orloge, the Temple d’honneur (1,076 lines) does not contain any inserted
lyrics. In this allegorical dream, Honor marries his son, Desire, to Lady Plaisance.
Froissart calls this poem not a dit amoureus, but trettié de moralité. Indeed, most of the
trettié consists of Honor’s long moral sermon on love and marriage. It is quite possible
that the Temple is indeed an epithalamium celebrating a real couple.
Besides these five dits, Froissart composed six shorter lyrico-narrative poems. The Dit
dou bleu chevalier (504 lines) tells, in a complicated metric scheme, the efforts of the
poet to console a lovesick knight dressed in blue (the color of fidelity). The Joli mois de
mai (464 lines with three lyric insertions) is a purely lyrical composition in which the
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