treatise: the Doleance de Megere, written in 1469 by Regnaud Le Queux (whom some
argue is the compiler of the Jardin); the Donnet baillé au feu roy Charles huytiesme, a
brief treatise on Latin grammar composed ca. 1491, perhaps by Le Queux; and the
Chastel de joyeuse destinée, an anonymous allegorical narrative poem of over 4,000
lines, relating a long quest through lands peopled by recognizable allies and adversaries
of Love, ending with a vision of Love’s palace, a place of plaisance, referring no doubt
as well to the jardin de plaisance, the anthology in which the work is included. After
hearing one of their company recount a debate between heart and eye, the lovers dwelling
in the garden begin to create ballades and rondeaux both praising and blaming love and
women. The women respond, in verse as well, thus carrying forth an exchange of opinion
and sentiment extending over some 600 short lyric pieces. Poetic debates and laments on
amorous situations are followed by a series of some thirty ballades and a single rondeau.
The work is then slowly brought to an unhappy ending through a series of poems relating
the obstacles to love. In the end, dying from love, a knight leaves a confession and
testament to other lovers. In the work’s final poem, he is called the Oultré d’amours, the
one wronged by Love.
The Jardin de plaisance is ineffective as an overall narrative. Its interest resides in its
attempt to define and illustrate in the same volume poetic art of the later Middle Ages and
in its selection of poets included in the anthology. Written at the request of students of
law, the Instructif can thus be seen as a handbook for those wishing to avoid pitfalls in
composing occasional poetry. It relates poetry to a rhetorical aim and enumerates defects
of style, figures of speech, principles of rhyme and versification, poetic genres, and
appropriate levels of discourse for speech attributed to characters in moralities, comedies,
chronicles, and other prose genres. By a curious tour de force, the Instructif’s rules are
generally given in the form of the genre being defined. Nearly fifty poets are represented
in the Jardin’s anthology, among them Machaut, Deschamps, Chartier, Charles
d’Orléans, Granson, Pierre Chastellain, Jean de Calais, Baudet Herenc, Villon,
Meschinot, and Molinet. The anthology gives little attention to the then flourishing
Grands Rhétoriqueurs, preferring to present the models of the previous tradition.
Janice C.Zinser
Le jardin de plaisance et fleur de réthorique. 2 vols. Paris: Didot, 1910 and 1925. [Vol. 1 (1910) is
the facsimile edition; Vol. 2 (1925) comprises the introduction and notes by Eugénie Droz and
Arthur Piaget.]
JAUFRE
. An Occitan quest-romance of 11,000 lines (octosyllabic rhymed couplets), Jaufre
survives entire in two principal manuscripts (B.N. fr. 2164 and B.N. fr. 12571). Dated
either in the 1170s (Rita Lejeune) or 1205–30 (Paul Rémy), the poem is dedicated to a
king of Aragon who was generous with jongleurs and “crowned very young.”
Jaufre, son of Dozon, arrives to be knighted at Arthur’s weakened court just when
Taulat offends Arthur by murdering a knight and vowing to repeat this yearly. Jaufre
pursues Taulat, vanquishing evildoers all the way and each time sending prisoners and
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