Machaut and the Medieval Apprenticeship Tradition: Truth, Fiction and Poetic Craft 1843843722, 9781843843726

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“A milestone in Machaut studies and in late-medieval French literature in general. Machaut, already considered the seminal figure in late-medieval poetics and music, here comes across in these respects more clearly than ever. Kelly also further contextualises him within what we might call the authorial ‘apprenticeship tradition’ of Boethius, the Roman de la Rose, Dante, and later Gower,Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan. The fruit of one of the field’s most distinguished scholars today.” NADIA MARGOLIS, MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE

DOUGLAS KELLY is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Cover illustration: ‘Poet and apprentice’. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 22545, f.157v. C OVER DESIGN: SIMON LOXLEY

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

Truth, Fiction and Poetic Craft

DOUGLAS KELLY

Guillaume de Machaut was celebrated in the later Middle Ages as a supreme poet and composer, and accordingly, his poetry was recommended as a model for aspiring poets. In his Voir Dit, Toute Belle, a young, aspiring poet, convinces the Machaut figure to mentor her. This volume examines Toute Belle as she masters Machaut’s dual arts of poetry and love, focusing on her successful apprenticeship in these arts; it also provides a thorough review of Machaut’s art of love and art of poetry in his dits and lyricism, and the previous scholarship on these topics. It goes on to treat Machaut’s legacy among poets who, like Toute Belle, adapted his poetic craft in new and original ways. A concluding analysis of melodie identifies the synaesthetic pleasure that late medieval poets, including Machaut, offer their readers.

MACHAUT AND THE MEDIEVAL APPRENTICESHIP TRADITION

Gallica

MACHAUT AND THE MEDIEVAL APPRENTICESHIP TRADITION

DOUGLAS KELLY

Gallica Volume 35

Machaut and the Medieval Apprenticeship Tradition

Gallica ISSN 1749–091X

General Editor: Sarah Kay

Gallica aims to provide a forum for the best current work in medieval and Renaissance French studies. Literary studies are particularly welcome and preference is given to works written in English, although publication in French is not excluded. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editor, or to the publisher, at the addresses given below; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Sarah Kay, Department of French, New York University, 13–19 University Place, 6th floor, New York, NY 10003, USA The Editorial Director, Gallica, Boydell & Brewer Ltd., PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the end of this book.

Machaut and the Medieval Apprenticeship Tradition Truth, Fiction and Poetic Craft

Douglas Kelly

D. S. BREWER

© Douglas Kelly 2014 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Douglas Kelly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2014 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978–1–84384–372–6 D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate This publication is printed on acid-free paper

I’ve made up so many love stories. Now I feel fictional. Tell me! (‘The Fragile Vial’, in Rumi, p. 14 [translator’s emphasis]) Il me plut moult bien a sentir Le vray de ce que vous mentistes, En ce qu’après le voir deïstes.  (JN, v. 720–2) [It pleased me very much to sense the truth in your lies because you told the truth afterwards.]

CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgements xii List of Abbreviations xiii Note on References and Quotations xix Introduction 1 Part I: An Art of Love 1 Machaut’s Evolving Conception of Good Love 2 The Vicissitudes of Good Love: A Quandary?

21 51

Part II: An Art of Poetry 3 The Scope of Toute Belle’s Art of Poetry 4 Examples and Their Reconfiguration 5 The Debate Mode

97 138 188

Part III: Machaut’s Legacy in Poetry and Music 6 Machaut as Pre-Text: Imitation and Emulation 221 7 Melodie 275 Afterword 297 Bibliography of Primary Sources Bibliography of Secondary Studies

301 308

Index 333

PREFACE The Gordian knot of late medieval poetry – fiction in truth, truth in fiction – cannot be undone by simply cutting it, letting the loose threads fall apart in disorder. The problem as witnessed in medieval autobiography – what is true? what is false? – is only one manifestation of the issue. The overarching question is, how did medieval authors want us to distinguish an author’s truth from the author’s fiction? That is the issue this book takes up: the interlacing features of medieval writing that foreground both its fiction and its truth (or truths). What Machaut claims in his Prise d’Alexandrie – ‘Il dient en leur verité’ (v. 7280/7279/7273) [they express their own truth]1 – holds generally for all medieval French authors who claim to speak the truth in what they write. The issues such claims raise prove especially crucial for modern readers. Although these truths may be presented in pleasing form, how many of us accept the truths medieval writers promote or even believe what they wrote to be beautiful? Put another way, what made their writing both rationally convincing and aesthetically appealing for medieval audiences? The Voir Dit is a key work in this matter. Its very title encourages readers to seek the truth of what it presents in its conjointure of identifiable events in Machaut’s life with events in the Hundred Years War and fictitious matiere. We are further assisted in reading his montage of truth and fiction (to use Jacqueline Cerquiglini’s defining term for the dit)2 because the Voir Dit purports to tell the story of an apprenticeship in the poet’s own art of poetry. The epigraphs to this monograph express in a nutshell the issue of truth and fiction in writing and its paradoxical status in medieval literature. Blending truth and fiction, the jeu-parti model so common from Chrétien de Troyes to François Villon poses quandaries not only for modern readers, but for medieval audiences as well. Jeux-partis set up debates in which the issue is as arbitrary as are the sides chosen, and judgment is almost never pronounced as to which side is right and which is wrong. The Roman de la rose provides a prime example of a work that fashions a debate, even multiple debates like those in jeux-partis; however, it does not offer a final judgment or even the promised ‘gloss’ on the meaning and intent of this masterpiece, causing many modern readers to reproach Jean de Meun because, unlike Machaut, apres ce que mentist le voir ne dist pas.

1

2

See Bétemps, 1998, pp. 320–2. Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, 1985.

x PREFACE

Yet, despite the problems we perceive in the Rose today, and perhaps partly because of them, the poem was widely read, discussed, debated, appreciated, and condemned throughout the Middle Ages. Guillaume de Machaut, on the other hand, does offer some judgments and explanatory glosses, notably in the Jugement dou roy de Behaigne and its sequel, the Jugement dou roy de Navarre, as well as in the Voir Dit. Yet the two Judgment dits, written in chronological succession, present contrary judgments – contraires choses as medieval readers might have called them. This is equally true in the Voir Dit in which one description of Fortune describes Toute Belle’s conduct whereas an opposing description is applied to the Machaut figure. As suggested above, the juxtaposition in these dits of contrary opinions is a defining feature of composition in medieval French literature from the twelfth century well into the Renaissance, a feature that cultivates the uncertainty we find when truth and fiction blend rather than stand sharply apart. Machaut was a model author in his time, one, I argue here, who articulates debatable issues in order to enhance readers’ understanding and appreciation of literature and its perplexities on its own, medieval terms. As a model author, Guillaume de Machaut was recommended along with the Roman de la rose as an exemplar of good writing because he was deemed a true vernacular poete, as Deschamps describes him, a ‘first’ in French literature at a time when only those who wrote Latin verse were called poets.3 Thus, aspiring writers could learn about poetic composition when they turned to Machaut’s works, much as the fictional or semi-fictional Toute Belle does, an aspiring young writer Guillaume agrees to mentor in the Voir Dit. Readers learn how this young writer, having sought out the fourteenth-century master poet, begins an apprenticeship after having already learned to write well enough to realize that she now needs guidance in order to perfect her skills. This leads to the love between master and pupil that is one of the most widely discussed features of the Voir Dit in modern scholarship. For Machaut, in order to write true poetry, one must love sincerely. Toute Belle says that she loves her master, sight unseen. He falls in love with her par ouï-dire, fully aware of the perils of such a January–May liaison in a fourteenth-century amor de lonh. Perhaps more importantly here, Toute Belle, as the Voir Dit depicts her, exemplifies the mélange of truth and fiction evoked in the Jugement Navarre epigraph. Truth in fiction and fiction in truth become issues as we read the account of Toute Belle’s ever more turbulent apprenticeship that becomes, for us readers as well as for aspiring writers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, an example of how to love and, as a result, how to write verse that she finds aesthetically pleasing and intellectually convincing; that is, how to write true, not counterfeit, verse. In explaining the issues raised in and by the Voir Dit, it is necessary to look at both the art of love and the art of poetry exemplified not only in Machaut’s last dit about love but also in his prior dits as well as in his lyrics or formes fixes 3

Brownlee 1984.

PREFACE xi

– the ballades, rondeaux, virelais, motets, and lays in Machaut’s Louange des dames and elsewhere. In the final analysis, we shall be looking for something represented by the modern word ‘aesthetics’ that medieval French readers are said to experience as melodie, pitié, and, last but not least, science and moralité. This is the context in which Machaut wrote; it reveals him as poete in his own time and explains his influence as model for much that was written in his wake. These three topics determine the three parts of this monograph: Guillaume de Machaut’s art of love, his art of poetry, and his legacy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Maureen Boulton, Liliane Dulac, Lawrene Earp, SunHee Gertz, Yolanda Plumley, A. C. Spearing, and Frank Willaert for their advice and contributions in the preparation of this book. Nadia Margolis, who reviewed my proposal for the press (anonymously at the time), prepared a thorough, thoughtful, and knowledgeable evaluation that has done much to improve my book. Last but not least, and prima inter pares, I wish to thank Caroline Palmer, the Editorial Director at Boydell & Brewer, for guiding with a sure hand my manuscript through to the finished product, and doing so with unfailing efficiency and courtesy. Her colleagues, Rohais Haughton and Rob Kinsey, contributed immensely to this task in the proof-reading and production of the volume. It goes, of course, without saying that these individuals are in no way responsible for any errors or misprisions that I may have included in it.

ABBREVIATIONS (Abbreviations of medieval titles are given in the Bibliography: Primary Sources) Arthur French The Arthur of the French: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval French and Occitan Literature. Ed. Glyn S. Burgess and Karen Pratt. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, 4. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006 Auctor Auctor et auctoritas: invention et conformisme dans l’écriture médiévale. Actes du Colloque tenu à l’Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (14–16 juin 1999). Ed. Michel Zimmermann. Mémoires et Documents de l’Ecole des Chartes, 59. Paris: Ecole des Chartes Béarn Froissart à la cour de Béarn: l’écrivain, les arts et le pouvoir. Ed. Valérie Fasseur. Texte, codex & contexte, 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009 BFR Bibliothèque française et romane BHE Bibliothèque de l’Ecole de Hautes Etudes Bibliothèque du XVe siècle BibXVe Bien dire Bien dire et bien aprandre BZrP Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie Cambridge The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature. Ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 CFMA Classiques français du moyen âge CGM A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut. Ed. Deborah McGrady and Jennifer Bain. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 33. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2012 Chaucer’s Chaucer’s French Contemporaries: The Poetry/Poetics of Self   French and Tradition. Ed. R. Barton Palmer. Georgia State Literary Studies Series, 10. New York: AMS Press, 1999 Cicero The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition. Ed. Virginia Cox and John O. Ward. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 2. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2006 Contexts Contexts: Style and Values in Medieval Art and Literature. Ed. Daniel Poirion and Nancy Freeman Regalado. Yale French

xiv ABBREVIATIONS

Studies: Special Issue. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1991 CourtlyArts Courtly Arts and the Art of Courtliness. Selected Papers from the Eleventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 29 July–4 August 2004. Ed. Keith Busby and Christopher Kleinhenz. Cambridge: Brewer, 2006 CourtlyLit Courtly Literature: Culture and Context. Selected Papers from the 5th Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, The Netherlands, 9–16 August 1986. Ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper. Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature, 25. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1990 CRMH Cahiers de recherches médiévales/Cahiers de recherches médiévales et Humanistes CSML Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature Cultures Cultures courtoises en mouvement. Ed. Isabelle Arseneau and Francis Gingras. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2011 Dialogues Roy Bruno Roy. Cy nous dient … Dialogue avec quelques auteurs médiévaux. Medievalia, 28. Orléans: Paradigme, 1999 DLMF Dictionnaire des locutions en moyen français. Ed. Giuseppe Di Stefano. Bibliothèque du moyen français, 1. Montréal: CERES, 1991 DMF Joël Blanchard and Michel Quereuil. Lexique de Christine de Pizan. Matériaux pour le Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (DMF), 5. Paris: Klincksieck, 1999 ECh Etudes christiniennes Erotics The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages. Ed. Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner. The New Middle Ages. New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 Essays Taylor Essays in Later Medieval French Literature: The Legacy of Jane H. M. Taylor. Ed. Rebecca Dixon. Durham Modern Language Series. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2010 Essays Ward Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100–1540: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward. Ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thomson. Disputatio, 2. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003 Etudes ‘De vrai humain entendement’: études sur la littérature   Cerquiglini française de la fin du Moyen Age offertes en hommage à Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet. Ed. Yasmina Foehr-Janssens and Jean-Yves Tilliette. RR, 21. Geneva: Droz, 2005

ABBREVIATIONS xv

Etudes Poirion L’Hostellerie de pensée: études sur l’art littéraire au Moyen Age offertes à Daniel Poirion pas ses anciens élèves. Ed. Michel Zink and Danielle Bohler, with Eric Hicks and Manuela Python. Cultures et civilisations médiévales, 12. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1995 FEW Walther von Wartburg. Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Leipzig, Berlin: Teubner, Basel: Zbinden, 1928– FF French Forum Froissart Froissart across the Genres. Ed Donald Maddox and Sara   Genres Sturm-Maddox. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998 FTi Faux Titre GLML Garland Library of Medieval Literature Godefroy Godefroy, Frédéric. Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX e au XV e siècle. 10 vols. Paris: Vieweg, 1881–1902 Goût Le Goût du lecteur à la fin du moyen âge. Ed. Danielle Bohler. Cahiers du Léopard d’Or, 11. Paris: Léopard d’Or, 2006 GRLMA-VI Grundriß der romanischen Literaturen des Mittalters. Vol. 6/1: La Littérature didactique, allégorique et satirique. Ed. Hans Robert Jauß and Jürgen Beyer. Heidelberg: Winter, 1968 GRLMA-VIII Grundriß der romanischen Literaturen des Mittalters. Vol. 8/1: La Littérature française aux XIVe et XVe siècles. Ed. Daniel Poirion. Heidelberg: Winter, 1988 Handbook A Handbook of the Troubadours. Ed. F. R. P. Akehurst and Judith M. David. Publications of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 26. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995 HWR Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik. Ed. Gert Ueding with Gregor Kalivoda and Franz-Hubert Robling. 10 vols. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992–2012 JAM Journal of the American Musicological Society Lanc-Grail The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Text and Transformations. Ed. William W. Kibler. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994 LitCrit The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 2: The Middle Ages. Ed. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 LR Les Lettres romanes Machaut1 Guillaume de Machaut: Colloque – Table ronde organisé par l’Université de Reims (Reims, 19–22 avril 1978). Actes et colloques, 23. Paris: Klincksieck, 1982 Machaut2 Guillaume de Machaut 1300–2000: actes du Colloque de la Sorbonne 28–29 septembre 2000. Ed. Jacqueline CerquigliniToulet and Nigel Wilkins. Musiques/Ecritures: Série Etudes. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002

xvi ABBREVIATIONS

MAe Masques

Medium Aevum Masques et déguisements dans la littérature médiévale. Ed. Marie-Louise Ollier. Etudes médiévales. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, Paris: Vrin, 1988 Mélanges Notz En un vergier … Mélanges offerts à Marie-Françoise Notz. Ed. Joëlle Ducos and Guy Latry. Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2009 MF Le Moyen Français M&H Medievalia et Humanistica Miroirs Miroirs et jeux de miroirs dans la littérature médiévale. Ed. Fabienne Pomel. Interférences. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003 MLR Modern Language Review MP Modern Philology MR Medioevo romanzo MSB Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen MST Mittellateinische Studien und Texte Music Machaut’s Music: New Interpretations. Ed. Elizabeth Eva Leach. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music, 1. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003 NBMA Nouvelle Bibliothèque du moyen âge Niermeyer Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus. Ed. J. F. Niermeyer and C. van de Kieft, with G. S. M. M. Lake-Schoonebeek. Leiden: Brill, 1984 NML New Medieval Literatures NMS Nottingham Mediaeval Studies Nouvelles Nouvelles de la Rose: actualité et perspectives du ‘Roman de la Rose’. Ed. Dulce Mª González-Doreste and Mª del Pilar Mendoza-Ramos. Publicaciones Institucionales: Investigación, 5. La Laguna, Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de la Laguna. 2011 NRSS Nouvelle Revue du XVIe siècle OED Oxford English Dictionary [online]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011 Opus The Medieval ‘Opus’: Imitation, Rewriting, and Transmission in the French Tradition. Proceedings of the Symposium Held at the Institute for Research in the Humanities October 5–7 1995, The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ed. Douglas Kelly. FTi, 116. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996 Ovide Ovide métamorphosé: les lecteurs médiévaux d’Ovide. Ed. Laurence Harf-Lancner, Laurence Mathey-Maille, and Michelle Szkilnik. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2009 PMM Plainsong and Medieval Music Poétiques Poétiques de la Renaissance: le modèle italien, le monde franco-bourguignon et leur héritage en France au XVIe siècle.

ABBREVIATIONS xvii

Ed. Perrine Galand-Hallyn and Fernand Hallyn. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 348. Geneva: Droz, 2001 Poetry Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France. Ed. Rebecca Dixon and Finn E. Sinclair, with Adrian Armstrong, Sylvia Huot, and Sarah Kay. Gallica, 13. Cambridge: Brewer, 2008 PQ Philological Quarterly PRF Publications romanes et françaises Problemata Aristotle’s ‘Problemata’ in Different Times and Tongues. Ed. Pieter De Leemans and Michèle Goyens. Mediaevalia Lovaniensia. Series I: Studia, 39. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006 Questes Questes: Bulletin des jeunes chercheurs médiévistes Reinterpreting Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan. Ed. Earl Jeffrey Richards, with Joan Williamson, Nadia Margolis, and Christine Reno. Athens, GA, London: University of Georgia Press, 1992 Riverside The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. 3rd ed. Boston:   Chaucer Houghton Mifflin, 1987 RLA RLA: Romance Languages Annual RobertH Dictionnaire historique de la langue française. Ed. Alain Rey. 2 vols. Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, Montréal: Dicorobert, 1992 RPh Romance Philology RR Recherches et rencontres SATF Société des Anciens Textes français Théories Théories et pratiques de l’écriture au moyen âge: Actes du Colloque Palais du Luxembourg-Sénat, 5 et 6 mars 1987. Ed. Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Christiane Marchello-Nizia. Littérales, 4. Paris: Centre de Recherches du Département de Français de Paris X-Nanterre and Centre Espace-TempsHistoire de l’E.N.S. Fontenay/Saint-Cloud, 1988 Thinking Thinking through Chrétien de Troyes. By Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginie Green, Sarah Kay, Sharon Kinoshita, and Peggy McCracken. Gallica, 19. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010 ThLL Thesaurus linguae latinae. Leipzig: Teubner, 1900– T-L Tobler-Lommatzsch Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch. Berlin: Wiedemann, Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1925– TLF Textes littéraires français TransMed Translations médiévales: cinq siècles de traductions en français au moyen âge (XIe–XVe siècles). Etude et répertoire. Ed. Claudio Galderisi with Vladimir Agrigoroaei. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011 TransOv Les Translations d’Ovide au moyen âge: actes de la journée d’études internationale à la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique le 4 décembre 2008. Ed. An Faems, Virginie Minet-Mahy,

xviii ABBREVIATIONS

and Colette Van Coolput-Storms. Université Catholique de Louvain: Publications de l’Institut d’Etudes Médiévales. Textes, Etudes, Congrès, 26. Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’Etudes Médiévales. 2011 TrLL Trésor de la langue française. Ed. Paul Imbs. Paris: Editions du Centre de la Recherche Scientifique, 1971–94 TSMAO Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental Union The Union of Words and Music in Medieval Poetry. Ed. Rebecca A. Baltzer, Thomas Cable, and James I. Wimsatt. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991 Vernacular Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages. Ed. Lois Ebin. Studies in Medieval Culture, 16. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1984 Vertu La Vertu de prudence entre Moyen Age et Age Classique. Ed. Evelyne Berriot-Salvadore, Catherine Pascal, François Roudaut and Trung Tran. Colloques, Congrès et Conférences sur la Renaissance Européenne, 71. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2012 VKAW Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen: Afdeeling Letterkunde WhatLit What Is Literature? France 1100–1600. Ed. François Cornilliat, Ullrich Langer, and Douglas Kelly. Edward C. Armstrong Monographs on Medieval Literature, 7. Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1993 Zoeken De kunst van het zoeken: studies over ‘aventuur’ en ‘queeste’ in de middeleeuwse literatuur. Ed. Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma. Amsterdam: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU, Münster: Nodus, 1996 Zoet akkoord Een zoet akkoord: middeleeuwse lyriek in de Lage Landen. Ed. Frank Willaert. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1992

NOTE ON REFERENCES AND QUOTATIONS References to some works referred to require explanation. For many primary works more than one edition is in general use. In these cases, pagination, line references, or section markings are not always the same. When this occurs, I have given references to the other divergent editions in the order in which they appear in the Bibliography: Primary Sources. If only one reference is given, there is no discrepancy, as, for example, for v. 203 or 217 in the two editions of the Voir Dit; when they diverge, both are referenced. Accordingly, the first reference and quote from the Voir Dit is to the Imbs edition and the second to the Leech-Wilkinson edition, as in v. 4622/4742 and p. 308bc/226. When a work has alternating kinds of text – prose, rhyming couplets, lyrics – the page number may be included to facilitate identifying the reference. For the Tresor amoureux page numbers as well as verse references are necessary; thus, pp. 60–1: v. 266, 285, refers to those line numbers on pp. 60–1 whereas p. 244: XXXII, v. 23, refers to ballade 32, v. 23, on p. 244. In the case of the Chevalier errant, a prosimetrum, pp. 468–9: v. 7257–70, refers to the line numbers on pp. 468–9, whereas p. 470: 104, 9–10, refers to section 104 in prose, lines 9–10, on p. 470. References to Evrart de Conty’s Echecs amoureux vary because the edition being prepared by Gianmario Raimondi is appearing serially, but is not yet complete. Here the abbreviations for each edition indicate which publication is being referred to. His edition is identified as Echecs am1, followed by either (I) or (II) to indicate which of the two installments in print is quoted; for the Christine Kraft edition, references are to Echecs am2. When there is overlap, the referencing principle used for Machaut applies here as well: Raimondi first, Kraft second. References to Evrart de Conty’s Echecs moralisés are to the folio pages and lines as shown in the edition – for example, 27v–28r. Other partial editions of the poem conform to the abbreviated title in the Bibliography: Primary Sources (for example, Echecs amR); in these cases there is no overlap. Finally, references to Johannes de Grocheio’s De musica are by page and line number, as in Musica, p. 144: 23–6. In order to emphasize the medieval sense of certain words that have an English equivalent, I use the French term in order to make clear a specific meaning not current in the usual contemporary English or French sense of the word. This occurs, for example, for rethorique, sens/scens, melodie, matiere, and maniere. On the other hand, Michael Riffaterre’s intertexte designates the stage between materia remota as source and materia propinqua as a new rewrite

xx NOTE ON REFERENCES AND QUOTATIONS

of that source. The sense of these and similar words is explained in detail when they first appear. Finally, I should note that A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut (= CGM) became available to me too late for more than brief mention in my book. However, given the scope of this volume (it lacks, however, a chapter or section on Machaut’s conceptions of love, the subject which, according to his Prologue, he was formed by Nature to write about; cf. Altmann 2012, p. 312, on this ‘dominant theme of Machaut’s poems’ and, as she shows, his dits) and its role as état présent on Machaut critical scholarship, I thought it appropriate to indicate in the notes areas that are covered in both CGM and my book; readers will be able to evaluate the relation of my argument to those in this ‘companion’ volume.

Introduction Je, Nature, par qui tout est fourmé Quanqu’a ça jus et seur terre et en mer, Vien ci a toy, Guillaume, qui fourmé T’ay a part.1 (Prologue, 1, 1–4)

Guillaume de Machaut is known today for works that depict an art of love as well as an art of poetry. Indeed, he fused the two arts – ‘in many texts “love” seems to become a metaphor for “poetry”’2 – so that his art of love is an integral part of his art of poetry. As Machaut puts it in one of many variations of the same idea: ‘Car qui de sentement ne fait, / Son oeuvre et son chant contrefait’ (Remede, v. 407–8)3 [for whoever does not write with true feeling falsifies both his poem and his song]. The sentement, Machaut claims, must be sincere. Since love is the ‘feeling’ about which Machaut composes almost all his poems and much of his music, love becomes inextricably bound to poetry in his corpus; he can write only when in love, whether singing love dirges or good and happy loves.4 Indeed, as Zeeman suggests, Machaut’s arts of love and poetry are virtual allegories of one another; they thus become mutually illuminating. We observe this in the Voir Dit, Machaut’s last ‘love dit’,5 in which a young woman, Toute Belle, asks the aging poet Guillaume to mentor her in his art of poetry because he practices the art with such distinction and success. Since she and her tutor must love de sentement in order to write good poetry, they fall in love at the very beginning of her apprenticeship. 1 ‘I, Nature, who fashioned everything above and on earth and in the sea, come to you, Guillaume, I who formed you apart.’ 2 Zeeman 1988, p. 821; cf. Schilperoort 1936, p. 29; Brownlee 1984, p. 94; LeechWilkinson and Palmer, ed., VD, p. lxiii; Hülk 1999, p. 154; Bétemps 2001, pp. 18–21; Gally 2005, p. 8; Fasseur 2006a; Huot 2006, pp. 25–7; Jeay 2006a, pp. 276–7; T. Adams 2007, pp. 55–8; Gally 2010, pp. 21–4. Gallo 1999 notes an analogous interaction between Machaut’s art of love and his art of music (pp. 36–8). 3 The words of the poem are analogous to physical reactions like blushing that, according to Machaut, cannot be ‘faked’ – a possible translation for contrefaire here (cf. CerquigliniToulet 1985, p. 191). The idea is commonplace in Machaut’s lyrics; see, for example, Loange 250/137, v. 17–24; Vir 17, v. 42–3; BalNot 32, v. 9–10; VD, p. 170c/110. 4 For example, Loange 44/81, 75/18, 77/170, 145/192, 240/217; Lai 5, v. 143–59, 24, v. 173–82; BalNot 32; etc. 5 For the chronology of Machaut’s dits, see the conclusion to this Introduction.

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Toute Belle and her Poet-Lover as Mentor6 Scholars today find Toute Belle to be just as intriguing as she is problematic, even perplexing. To be sure, in Machaut’s time members of the nobility sought advice and guidance from poets on writing poetry7 and Toute Belle is described as noble.8 But she is a young woman who begins a love story with an elderly master who is not noble. Here is where their master–pupil relationship begins to grow problematic; it becomes ever more complex and conflicted as the plot unfolds. We can put the problem in its pedagogical context by consulting Jacques Legrand’s early fifteenth-century treatise, the Archiloge Sophie, on proper master–pupil relations. Legrand emphasizes the importance of a competent teacher who guides the promising pupil towards mastery and wisdom. But ‘practice what you preach’ is the rule, for ‘c’est laide chose quant le docteur est a reprendre par sa propre parole et quant ses parolles sont bonnes et ses œuvres mauvaises. Par les quelles choses il appert comment l’escolier doit apprendre et le maistre monstrer’ (Archiloge, p. 51, lines 14–17)9 [it’s a vile thing when the teacher is blameworthy by the standards of his own teaching and when his words are good but his deeds are bad. These considerations set the standards by which the pupil must learn and the master teach]. This being the case, it is difficult at first glance to see how Guillaume is an estimable master in the Voir Dit. If both master and pupil must love sincerely in order to write and sing well, they must also avoid the faults that medieval morality condemned in amorous entanglements. That is, Guillaume’s love for Toute Belle must measure up to Machaut’s own standards or Guillaume becomes a false lover and a blameworthy teacher: they must love with a good love.10 Garnering images of the poet-lover from a variety of Machaut’s compositions allows us to see the importance of good love for the poet. The Prologue sets the stage by making Machaut alias Guillaume the recipient of gifts from Nature and Amour, gifts that form him as a love poet. From the earlier Remede de Fortune, we learn that Esperance is his master: she teaches Machaut’s art of love to Guillaume. It is the pedagogical context, however, that creates the nuances linking lover and poet, as seen when the Voir Dit’s Esperance ‘com par courrous, / Me dist «tu», et laissa le «vous»’ (v. 4222–3/4341–2) [as if in anger addressed me with tu and stopped using vous]. Her anger is designed to teach her pupil a lesson.

Much of what follows relies on the important article by Valérie Fasseur 2006a. Langlois 1902, pp. vi–vii; Taylor 2007, pp. 38–46. 8 Cf. VD, v. 1265–72/1335–42, 1295–9/1365–9, 1560–1/1630–1, 8067–70/8140–3. 9 The moral implications of Legrand’s depiction of master–pupil relations recall the role of the ‘charismatic’ personality of the teacher that Jaeger 1994 discerns in high medieval cathedral schools. 10 The Regensburg Love Songs offer a twelfth-century example of the male master– young female pupils exchanging love letters (Jaeger 1999, pp. 74–8, 101–3). 6 7

INTRODUCTION 3

Guillaume and Toute Belle as Poet-Lovers Creating a composite poet-lover in a variety of works over time can reveal general, overarching elements that seem to be thematically important to Machaut throughout his poetry – for example, the appearances of Esperance as Guillaume’s guide. But Esperance does not always express the same kind of hope. The same holds for Guillaume who does not always represent the same kind of poet and/or lover. In the Navarre, for example, Guillaume slides closer to the proverbial ‘Guillaume’ of farce and nouvelle, even becoming something of a rusé11 or a fool who mouths but fails to exemplify Machaut’s truths.12 But it is also important to take note of those instances – truth in fiction as well as fiction in truth – when Guillaume seems to identify, explicitly or implicitly, with his author Machaut. For poets who wish to benefit from Machaut’s quandary of how truth and fiction relate to love and writing in his poems, the task becomes especially complex as the ambivalent, evasive Guillaume is seen to speak and act so diversely in Machaut’s dits.13 It follows that Machaut’s Guillaume is a mask with multiple identities,14 allowing diverse ‘Guillaumes’ to populate his dits and lyrics.15 In order to identify and distinguish these masks from the author Machaut, in what follows, insofar as possible, ‘Guillaume’ designates the Machaut figure depicted in each work and ‘Machaut’ refers to the actual author of these works.16 While modern scholarship has made us aware of and sensitive to this distinction, medieval audiences may not always have been so alert to it. As I argue further on, this problem is particularly relevant to how I treat the Guillaume/Machaut identities with respect to Machaut’s art of poetry. Toute Belle, also an author, will be consistently identified by that name, whether a biographical Peronne or Peronnelle (or Peron) is lurking behind that designation.17 Toute Belle can also designate or exemplify, in manuscripts that do not follow modern conventions in orthography, toute belle, or every

11 Cf. Dufournet 2008, p. 30: ‘Guillaume est à rapprocher de guile “ruse”: le marchand [dans Pathelin] est un rusé qui joue au niais et/ou un niais qui se croit rusé.’ Cf. Leach 2003: ‘As frequently in his narrative dits, Machaut succeeds as a poet in the act of failing as a lover’ (p. 113); see also Brownlee 1984, p. 108. On the ‘comédie du moi’ in late medieval poetry, see Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, in Poétiques, pp. 323–5 (with additional bibliography). 12 Ehrhart 1999; cf. VD, v. 7395/7468. 13 Armstrong and Kay 2011, p. 39. 14 McGrady 2008, pp. 111–21. 15 Cf. Zumthor 1975, esp. pp. 179–80; De Looze 1988; Swift 2012. 16 Bearing in mind that ‘this distinction is all the more useful as … the author’s presence can be identified elsewhere than in the character that is his ostensible representative’ (Kay 2008, p. 22). This occurs, for example, when Esperance corrects Guillaume in the Remede and the Voir Dit. She speaks for the author. 17 It is still uncertain today whether such a person existed (Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, pp. 223–43; Plouzeau 2003, pp. 182–6, 201; Findlay 2010).

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beautiful woman, making them the object of Machaut’s philogyny18 – what Christine de Pizan calls ‘la reverence des femmes’ (Cité, p. 40) – vis-à-vis Guillaume’s misogyny in the Jugement Navarre and the Voir Dit. Fiction and truth do comprise factors in reading names and surnames in Machaut’s writings, especially with respect to defining his art of poetry, but their boundaries can become blurred.

Machaut’s Shaping of the Conventions of Love and Poetry In the Voir Dit, Toute Belle initiates their relationship by sending the poet a rondeau she wrote. Although she introduces herself as ‘Celle qui unques ne vous vid’ (VD, v. 203) [she who never saw you], she offers him her poem as one who loves him faithfully – ‘qui vous aimme loyalment’ (VD, v. 204). Critically, Toute Belle’s rondeau immediately convinces Guillaume that she already knows how to write well. The poem’s language, he exclaims, ‘ne fu villaine ne fole, / Ainssois fu si sagement dite / Qu’il n’i ot vice ne redite’ (VD, v. 217–19) [was neither coarse nor foolish; rather it was so prudently expressed that it contained no fault or repetition]. Vice and redite are technical terms in Machaut’s art of poetry. Important for the tensions the poem creates in the relation between love and poetry, words like vice, villain, and fol have not only commonplace connotations in fourteenth-century love and morality, they also have a technical sense in late medieval poetics.19 The more specifically poetic term, redite, is a technical fault that Toute Belle avoids in her poem, an achievement that her master-to-be recognizes and appreciates; consequently, he decides to accept her as his pupil – and lover, or at least as his beloved. She has, as it were, passed an entrance examination after which she becomes his apprentice in the art of poetry and, perforce, the art of love. In the Voir Dit two Guillaumes – the poet teacher and the lover – coalesce in his relationship with Toute Belle. Machaut’s Guillaume appears in his other dits in the guise of poet and of various kinds of lovers as well; he also appears as a counselor, a litigant, and a witness.20 These different roles support Isabelle Bétemps’s observation that ‘le Voir Dit n’est pas seulement le récit de l’écriture d’un livre, il collecte les poses de l’écrivain qu’il promeut’.21 Indeed, as apprentice, Toute Belle could see Guillaume’s diverse personae as masks personifying different kinds of loves 18 Cf. ‘les vueil toutes pour une amer’ (Loange 230/73, v. 22) [I wish to love all women for the sake of one of them]. 19 Langlois 1902, p. 461, s.v. redites; cf. ‘vice de rethorique’ (pp. 251, 316), ‘façons de ryme deffendues en vraye rhethoricque et reputées pour vices’ (p. 314). Similarly, Evrart de Conty’s Echecs amoureux passes over much of his source in the Roman de la rose in order to avoid redites (Echecs am1 (II), v. 3921–6/am2, v. 259–64). See Bloch 1983, pp. 133–6, and Ziolkowski 1985, pp. 40–4, for analogous definitions of vitium in medieval Latin poetics. 20 Brownlee [et alii] in LitCrit, p. 466; cf. Kelly 1999b. 21 Bétemps 2001, p. 15. For a discriminating survey of late medieval representations of the author, see Attwood 1998.

INTRODUCTION 5

and lovers, be they foolish, wise, or perplexed. As we shall see, the semantic diversity and nuances apparent in different kinds of lovers characterize depictions of other commonplace figures in Machaut’s dits: the patron, royalty and nobility, médisants, toutes belles, peasants, the poor, as well as personifications and exemplary figures drawn from history, literature, the Bible, and medieval fables attributed to Ovid.22 These variations underscore the allegorical relationship and the clear distinction Machaut makes between the arts of love and poetry in his writings. Although the two arts are figuratively linked, they are also marked by distinct, different subject matters in their deployment of commonplace scripts, terminologies, and techniques. Their relationship in the Voir Dit is signaled early on in Toute Belle’s presentation rondeau, a love poem in which Guillaume finds no technical or amorous faults. Guillaume responds in turn with a rondeau that mirrors Toute Belle’s piece (VD, v. 374–86); that is, he uses the same rhymes and rhyme scheme that she does (VD, v. 203–15) to express his love for her beautiful, but as yet unseen self. A second exchange of rondeaux follows in which Guillaume again responds by taking her poem as model (VD, v. 475–87, 536–48). All are love poems. In addition to love poems, Toute Belle writes the first of the Voir Dit’s ‘love letters’ entirely in prose, like the forty-five others except for Letter 23 at the dit’s midpoint and some verses inserted in a few other letters. These epistres are what Guillaume seems to understand as ‘art letters’ because of their stylistic qualities (VD, v. 494–5).23 Toute Belle’s first letter tentatively asks Guillaume for a critical evaluation of her rondeau, before suggesting that he take her on as an apprentice in verse composition. She informs him that she has learned to write poetry on her own for ‘ne eu je unques qui rien m’en aprist’ (VD, p. 94f/48) [I never had anyone to teach me how to do it]. She is convinced that Guillaume will teach her ‘a mieulz faire et dire; quar je en apenroie plus de vous en un jour que je ne feroie d’un autre en .I. an’ (VD, p. 96f/48) [to write and express myself better; for I would learn more about these matters from you in a day than I would from another person in a year]. In the Voir Dit we are not privy to any such instruction. But, as we shall see in chapter three, the dit does illustrate the progress Toute Belle makes as Guillaume’s pupil. Toute Belle’s ability to learn and excel in the art of poetry is suggested in her early letters. She claims in Letter 3 to include a virelai that is not recorded in the Voir Dit (there is only another rondeau); there is another reference to it in her Letter 5 that does indeed include a virelai (VD, p. 140e/86 and v. 1241–60/1304–30). By this time the reader will have realized that Toute Belle has on her own acquired skill in writing some formes fixes common in her time, On the term ‘fable’ as example, see Jung 2009, p. 108. On this term, see also Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, pp. 40–9; Demartini-Franzini 2001; Lefèvre 2002, esp. p. 227; Brownlee [et alii] in LitCrit, pp. 453–4; Lachet 2006, esp. pp. 73–81; Sultan 2008; Colombo Timelli 2011, pp. 25–7, 33–5. On medieval letters and the art of letter writing in general, see Ruhe 1975; Constable 1976; Camargo 1991. 22 23

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although, as she insists, she has not mastered the art. Her virelai, for example, has only one stanza enclosed within its refrain. Toute Belle hopes Guillaume will help her improve so that she will be able to compose a complete virelai; she does so soon enough (VD, v. 1704–37/1774–819). Machaut shows his apprentice struggling with the virelais she writes, a lyric form as difficult to write well as the lyric lay. Toute Belle does not attempt to write a lay.

Toute Belle as Autodidact in the Art of Poetry What Toute Belle has learned by the time she sends her first rondeau to Guillaume is attuned to what we find in the so-called arts of the Second Rhetoric.24 These vernacular treatises begin to appear in French at the end of the fourteenth century with the Art de dictier by Eustache Deschamps, another of Machaut’s alleged apprentices. The question that then emerges is: given Toute Belle’s mastery, what further instruction can Guillaume offer her? To answer this question we must look at the scope of the late medieval art of poetry and prose that French writers adapted from the medieval Latin art as well as at what, in the context of Legrand’s master–pupil relationship, Guillaume offers or fails to offer to his young apprentice in the Voir Dit. This will allow us to situate and define Machaut’s art of poetry on its own terms while setting out a context for evaluating Toute Belle’s apprenticeship and love. Her apprenticeship will, therefore, serve as exemplary subtext for the examination of the poet’s art of love in Part I, his art of poetry in Part II, and of selected works that reflect or revise Machaut’s dual arts in Part III. Recent scholarship shows that the medieval art of poetry and prose is not limited to what the technical treatises teach in, for example, Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova in the Latin tradition and Deschamps’s Art de dictier in the vernacular.25 The medieval Latin art recommended recognized masterpieces for study and imitation by those moving beyond the treatises that teach the art by precept, example, and practice. Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s treatise prepared the pupil to write in both verse and prose on the liberal arts and philosophical subjects. These advanced pupils treated aspects of the arts and sciences they studied in the quadrivium, using the techniques they learned in the trivium while following instruction modeled on that contained in the arts of poetry and prose.26 Recommended Latin masterpieces, to name a few, include Vergil’s Aeneid, Bernardus Silvestris’s Cosmographia (particularly important because, like the Voir Dit, it contains both verse and prose), and Jean de Hauville’s Architrenius,27 as well as Fasseur 2006a, esp. pp. 168–72. What follows is based on Kelly 1991; see also Basso 2008. 26 Kelly 2004a; James-Raoul 2005, pp. 264–8; James-Raoul 2007, p. 14. Deschamps describes the trivial and quadrivial arts in his treatise, as do Evrart de Conty in his Echecs moralisés, pp. 101–208, and Jacques Legrand in his Archiloge Sophie, pp. 66–261. 27 This late twelfth-century Latin poem is cited in Evrart de Conty’s Echecs moralisés. 24 25

INTRODUCTION 7

Alain de Lille’s poetry that remains widely known well into the fifteenth century and beyond.28 In French, beginning in the late fourteenth century, in addition to Alain Chartier and the Roman de la rose, a work Toute Belle refers to, we also find Machaut among recommended models for aspiring writers. The recommendations are also found in verse narratives. Thus, in Evrart de Conty’s Echecs amoureux written at the end of the fourteenth century, the god of love intervenes to counsel a young man who has fallen in love,29 referring him and incipient lovers to works that teach the art of love. Here Ovid joins those named above alongside recommended vernacular exemplars of the art. Et s’est aussy toute la chose Comprise u Roumant de la Rose. La le poes tu veïr de plain, Car tu le trouveras tout plain De ma doctrine et de mes rieugles; Si voeil, que par ce tu te rieugles Et par les aultres escriptures, Qui sont faites des aventures, Qui avienent en chest vergier. (Echecs am2, v. 5443–51) [The whole subject is also contained in the Roman de la rose. There you can see it plainly set out, for you will find in it a thorough account of my teaching and my rules. I want you to follow them as well as the other writings on the adventures that happen in this grove.]

Important to underscore here, Ovid, the Rose, and other writings were recommended not only as arts of love but also for the French art of poetry. Machaut wrote some of those ‘aultres escriptures’ that one should know and imitate when writing love poetry. That is, he is one of ‘les premiers rethoriques’30 [the foremost poets] that those should study who, like Toute Belle, wish to advance beyond merely composing well-crafted formes fixes free of vices and redites. Her choice of Guillaume, Machaut’s alter ego, is consistent with poetic practice in her time when would-be versifiers sought guidance from reputed writers, some of whom wrote treatises for them like Deschamps’s Art de dictier and, as will be argued here, Machaut’s Voir Dit itself. Before going further, let us return briefly to redite, the term used to describe the faulty kind of repetition that Guillaume claims was not present in Toute Belle’s first rondeau. There are actually two kinds of redites in medieval poetics, those that occur in the same work, in Guillaume’s sense of faults, and those that copy model works using ‘citation’, including ‘auto-citation’, conforming to ‘la tradition d’emprunter à des œuvres existantes des elements textuels 28 29 30

Raynaud de Lage 1951, pp. 34–8; Woods 2010, p. 48. See Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (I), pp. 74–6, and Echecs am2, v. 3099–5466. Langlois 1902, pp. 11, 12.

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ou musicaux’.31 An example of the latter in French is the just cited Echecs amoureux, a verse allegory on love written in imitation of the Roman de la rose, from which Evrart de Conty crafted some redites. In this book, I use redite to refer to the faulty variety, or repetition, and reprise as the positive variety, or citation.32 Reprises may, if successful, become acceptable redites.33 Like redite, the term contrafacta is ambiguous. ‘Contrafacere in medieval Latin (contrefaire in Old French) means to imitate, counterfeit or forge.’34 Its positive and negative connotations conform to the Latin tradition exhorting pupils to imitate model antecedents in order to acquire more proficiency by imitating and, ultimately, emulating them.35 Using their knowledge and acquired skills in the art of poetic composition, pupils attempted the more substantive subjects and subtle practices that they found in their models. Evrart de Conty puts it this way in his Echecs moralisés: in the ‘invencion de choses semblables’ (39r25) [invention of similar things] one must add to what has been ‘found’ – that is, ‘on se doit lors asoutillier et adjouster du sien et de nouvel trouver aucunes choses’ (39r18–19) [one must then become more subtle, adding one’s own contributions and inventing something new]. Critically here, Toute Belle has similar ambitions and, as we shall see in chapter two, achieves her goal by rewriting and, on occasion, even correcting her master’s verse. The medieval Latin stages for progress in poetic proficiency were carried over to the vernacular literatures and widely followed by late medieval poets in Europe. We find them, for example, in late Occitan literature, especially that practiced by the poets who competed in the poetic contests held in the academies of Toulouse and Barcelona.36 The Occitan treatises and poems offer paralPlumley 2009, p. 322. Basso 2009, p. 194; cf. Dufourcet Hakim 2002; Szkilnik 2011. For the Rose’s redites as citations or reprises in the Echecs amoureux, see the notes to its modern editions. A Machaut reprise is Polypheme’s song, inserted into the Voir Dit from the Ovide moralisé (Thomas 1912; cf. Plouzeau 2003, pp. 199–201). 33 Lechat 2001; Victorin 2001, p. 42 n. 18; Gally 2005. It will be apparent in what follows that reprises can effect a rewriting or revision of the matter and meaning of the original text, as occurs with lyric insertions, quotations, and adaptations. 34 Butterfield 2002, p. 103; in chap. six, she discusses contrafacta (see also Leach 2011, pp. 110–12). She notes that the positive sense of Machaut’s contrefaire occurs, for example, when ‘sacred love poetry takes secular refrains as fundamental units of construction: the refrains are not incidental to the process of contrafacta but directly motivate and structure it’ (p. 118). See also Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, pp. 191, 195–6; Bétemps 2001, pp. 14–15; Fasseur 2006a, pp. 172–4. For examples of the word contrefaire in Machaut, see JN, v. 750–6; Lyon, 1154–84 (cf. ‘controuvaille’, v. 2058); Remede, v. 1776–9; VD, v. 518–29; Loange 250/137, v. 17–24; Vir 17, v. 41–3. 35 On the distinction between imitation as conforming to the antecedent model and emulation as vying with it, see Cizek 1994; Kelly 1999a; Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, in Poétiques, pp. 575–9. 36 What follows is based on Kelly 2005; see also Gally 2000; Kay 2009, pp. 60–1; Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 6–9, 39–42. On contacts between Northern and Southern poets in the late medieval period, see Wilkins 1968. On this Occitan tradition beyond the fifteenth century, see Courouau 2008, pp. 381–402. 31 32

INTRODUCTION 9

lels with the northern French Second Rhetoric and, more strikingly, with the art of love that Machaut promotes in his poetry. For our purposes here, two features of post-troubadour Occitan poetics stand out. First, there is an innovation in the art of love when compared to the troubadour tradition and its commonplaces that is analogous to Machaut’s departure from love poetry in the tradition that preceded him. Second, the Occitan art of poetry and prose conforms to the Latin model in ways found in the French tradition too, especially with respect to the reliance on antecedent models for writers who advance beyond technical mastery of versification and the treatises that set standards for achievement.37 This becomes clear in the late Occitan arts of poetry. Poems by At de Mons loom large among models recommended for the new art. Examination of At’s extant compositions as well as references in the Leys d’amors to features of his writing that illustrate his art show how an apprentice poet who has studied and learned to use correct grammar, versification, and tropes and figures can then go on to learn more about performance, imitation, and invention as he (the Occitan Academies did not permit any Toue Belle to compete) moves beyond technical proficiency towards competition in poetic contests. Importantly here, this is the stage Toute Belle has reached when she contacts Guillaume. She too imitates Guillaume’s poems; he also sends her Morpheus – a dit better known today as the Fontaine amoureuse and written just before the Voir Dit – as an example of lyrical narrative poetry,38 as well as the Voir Dit itself. In other words, Toute Belle can read the Voir Dit not only as an account of their love and its joys and sorrows but also as an example of how she might (or did) treat these subjects in her own verse. On this level the Voir Dit depicts what Marc-René Jung terms Erlebnismuster, or scripts that explain and structure experience while illustrating how to translate that experience into poetry.39 Commonplace Erlebnismuster are the gradus amoris and the cursus aetatum; I use Jung’s term to refer to such scripts in Machaut’s poetry and in other medieval compositions. As an exemplary poetic masterpiece, model, and script, the Voir Dit deploys different modes and styles characteristic of his poetry and prose as Erlebnismuster; it does so by moving from basic fixed forms to ever more subtle poetic modes and scripts. The late-Occitan art of poetry also promoted an art of love. But its poets seemed fixed on writing only about pure or chaste love. Treatises like the Leys d’amors and the standards set by the academies that managed poetic contests demand poetry that, above all, depicts the beloved lady with only those attributes and actions that could also describe the Virgin Mary. Love for such a woman is pure, elevated by the analogy with Mary to a virtually religious devotion that, in some poems, makes it possible to read the lady as both chaste and as Mary herself. In an analogous ploy, referring to Toute Belle as the tresmontainne, a

37 38 39

Langlois 1902, p. xii–xv; Thiry 2000. On lyrical narrative poetry as dit, see Huot 1987. Jung 1986, p. 14; cf. Allen 1984; Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 4, 8–9.

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common name for Mary,40 Machaut promotes an analogous kind of good love as both pure and chaste. Likewise, he frequently qualifies words like amour and esperence that he favors as ‘good’, as in bonne amour and bonne esperence, distinguishing them in this way from more conventional meanings of these words in traditional ‘courtly love’ poetry. Here, I prefer the adjective ‘good’ rather than ‘ideal’ or ‘courtly’ when analyzing Machaut’s conception of love, not only because ‘good’ translates best the French adjective he uses, but also because of the word’s strong moral connotations in much of his lyric poetry. Machaut’s dits reveal over time an evolution of his ideas on good love. From the kind of love found in Guillaume de Lorris’s part of the Roman de la rose and the tradition it inaugurates in medieval French love poetry, Machaut moves in stages towards the good love that he sets out in the Remede de Fortune, a love that he compares to and contrasts with other kinds of love he depicts in his earliest dits and many lyrics. He foregrounds its problems in exemplary fashion in the Voir Dit. Whether the love depicted in this dit is good, that is, pure in the sense of chaste, is a major issue not only in the Voir Dit but also in modern critical scholarship.

The Complex Relationship between Love and Poetry As suggested above, Machaut’s art of poetry and prose and his art of love can be described as a kind of metaphorical equation. To be sure, good allegory is more than an equation of two distinct subject matters.41 In fact, the Voir Dit moves subtly and skillfully from the one art to the other without always directly glossing the transitions. The apprentice poet should be especially attentive to how Machaut accomplishes this in the fictions and truths the dit assembles. Indeed, by foregrounding different kinds of love in diverse modes and models, the Voir Dit offers abundant material as models – Erlebnismuster – for apprentice poets like Toute Belle; indeed, many more than the Remede de Fortune, a work often looked upon today as an advanced art of poetry. The apprentice studying both dits must be alert too, moving back and forth between the love story and the poetic art that relates it. Simply put, the Voir Dit exemplifies more extensively than any of Machaut’s other dits the interrelation between poetry and love that his Prologue shows to be characteristic of all his poetry. In order to demonstrate how complex Machaut’s links between poetry and love were, I begin, in Part I of this book, with the evolution of Machaut’s views on good love before receiving final elaboration and illustration in the Voir Dit. Thus, in chapter one, I trace the poet’s thought on good love as it evolved from the Dit dou vergier to the Remede de Fortune and the Confort d’ami. This leads to chapter two’s in-depth study of how the Voir Dit, ‘œuvre comme d’avance 40 On Machaut’s assimilation of Toute Belle to Mary, see Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, pp. 80–2; Bétemps 1998, pp. 57–8. 41 Tuve 1966, pp. 21–2.

INTRODUCTION 11

faite pour susciter la controverse’,42 treats problems that Machaut’s ideas on love and ways of loving give rise to. The evolution is apparent in debates such as those in Machaut’s two Judgment poems, the Jugement dou roy de Behaigne and the Jugement dou roy de Navarre, as well as in the quandary that emerges in the latter half of the Voir Dit on the character of the love between Guillaume and Toute Belle. These debates and the quandaries they provoke confront the apprentice with the ways fictional dits and lyrics invent, express, and debate their truths. After exploring Machaut’s evolving sense of good love in Part I, I turn in Part II to the Voir Dit itself as an advanced treatise on and model of Machaut’s art of poetry and prose and illustration of Toute Belle’s apprenticeship in the art.43 In Part II, then, chapter three treats Machaut’s art of poetry from versification to the modus tractandi – that is, the ‘manner or procedure of thought – a way of thinking’44 that characterizes the poetic invention he practices. Chapter four explores how examples elucidate the poet’s ideas on love as well as how they follow diverse scripts, or Erlebnismuster, for different kinds of love and other human activities and emotions. The modus exemplorum positivus gives rise, in chapter five, to debates that illustrate how examples become proof; more specifically, this chapter examines how Machaut construes and illustrates the debate mode in his two Judgment poems as well as in the Voir Dit debates. The debates that arise in evaluating love in this dit’s second half are crucial for depicting the culmination of Toute Belle’s apprenticeship in the more advanced skills of Machaut’s art of poetry. A word here on debate before introducing Part III. Debate is a commonplace mode in medieval French poetics. It enables medieval writers to promote, contrast, and develop ideas, from the tensos and jeux-partis of the twelfth century to the Belle dame sans mercy and the poems it inspired in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.45 A common device in the debate mode is the example, itself a link between poetics and love and, more profoundly, between truth and fiction. Machaut’s use of the exemplary mode is prominent in the Jugement Navarre, the Confort d’ami, the Fontaine amoureuse, and, of course, the Voir Dit itself with its dreams, the Venus cloud episode, and the Polypheme fable. Elsewhere, the bestiary variety of the example mode is drawn on for the lion in the Dit dou lyon and for raptors in the Alerion and the Voir Dit. Importantly, Toute Belle also tries her hand at exemplification in the complainte she writes shortly after the dit’s midpoint. And of course personification is a prominent Imbs 1991, p. 13. Leech-Wilkinson and Palmer, ed., VD, p. xlvii; Ferrand 2006, pp. 474–5; Taylor 2007, pp. 46–9. Jeay 2006a, pp. 305–6, notes some practical lessons that Toute Belle might glean while reading the Voir Dit, such as the necessity of a secretary to copy and distribute one’s poems (pp. 314–22). Guillaume himself is ‘secretary’ in the Fontaine amoureuse. Galatea exemplifies the secretary when she copies Polypheme’s love song in the Voir Dit (v. 6818– 19/6891–2, 6914–15/6987–8; cf. Jeay 2006a, pp. 320–1). 44 Allen 1982, p. 68. 45 McRae 2004; Cayley 2006a; cf. Cayley 2004. 42 43

12

MACHAUT AND THE MEDIEVAL APPRENTICESHIP TRADITION

exemplary mode in Machaut’s dits, from the Vergier’s god of love to the Remede’s and Voir Dit’s Esperance-Espoir as major mentors in their narratives. Machaut’s writings come together in the ‘ordonnance logique des recueils’46 or the anthology manuscripts in which Machaut and others collected his complete works. Love serves as the principal topic in his poetry, an emphasis he highlights in the Prologue, his last major dit; on the other hand, ordonnance as the arrangement of love poetry in manuscript is a central feature of Machaut’s entire corpus.47 It is not difficult to imagine that the order in which his dits were written and ordered in manuscripts reveals the development and evolution of his thought over time, from the Dit dou vergier through the Remede de Fortune to the Voir Dit and the Prologue.48 More specifically and importantly, we can discern different kinds of Erlebnismuster that Machaut plots in each dit and lyric and that aspiring poets like Toute Belle might imitate or emulate. We come now to Part III. In chapter six, several dits are examined that, in Machaut’s wake, illustrate features of his art of poetry and love as advanced apprentices might treat not only the love motif and theme but also larger moral and social issues that recontextualize the love motif. In the anonymous Tresor amoureux and Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant, their young protagonists meet Connaissance who opens each of them to larger moral contexts and a deeper experience of love and its place in their life, but also in the world order. Their growing up and attainment of adulthood is described according to the cursus aetatum or ages of life motif. Similarly concerned with moral and social issues, Evrart de Conty’s Echecs amoureux, its glosses, and his lengthy commentary, the Echecs moralisés, introduce a young man at the moment he reaches the age of accountability and of love as he envisions life’s possibilities, commitments, and dangers. Like Toute Belle the protagonists in all three dits are young; what we might call their learning curve begins with love.49 These works suggest what subjects Toute Belle might have taken up. Following the prescription for invention set out in the Echecs moralisés, her poetry would be original and subtle. For, ‘sy come dit Aristote, c’est signe de tres petit engin et trop mal eurs de user tousdis de choses ja trouvees et nullesfoiz de choses a trouver, c’est a dire quant on ne adjouste riens a sa science, fors ce que on a apris et trouvé en ses livres ou retenu des autres, sanz aucune soutilleté trouver nouvelle’ (Echecs mor, 39r19–24) [as Aristotle said, it’s a sign of a very little genius for invention and a great misfortune always to use what has already been invented and never what needs to be invented – that is, when one adds nothing 46 Poirion 1965, p. 193. The recueil is a virtual genre in manuscript cultures, but one with various species; see Huot 1987; Short 1988; Busby 2002, chap. five; Taylor 2006b and 2007; Leach 2011, pp. 119–23. Earp 1983 provides a careful description of Machaut’s anthology manuscripts as recueils both as he and later scribes ordered them. 47 Lukitsch 1983; Zeeman 1988. 48 Palmer 1993. 49 Froissart illustrates a similar trajectory in the Espinette amoureuse, the Prison amoureuse, and the Joli Buisson de jonece; the cursus aetatum commonplace links them into a three-part ‘super dit’.

INTRODUCTION 13

to his knowledge except what one has learned and found in books or recalled from hearing others without finding some new subtlety]. In other words, this is a variety of invention as redite that poets should avoid. Machaut achieved this sort of originality with his conception of good love and his formalizing of the dit in generic terms. Finally, in the last chapter, the aesthetic or, more accurately, synaesthetic poetry Machaut and his followers write is analyzed. The human microcosm and its Erlebnismuster should ultimately be in harmony with the geocentric creation we live in. Love now becomes the beginning, in youth, of a lifelong quest for connaissance by which one comes to know the place and role of love poetry in a harmonious universe, with its diverse melodies from the music of the spheres to human poetry and music and, further on, to the birdsong and dogsong of lovely spring mornings.

Sondry usages Machaut’s good love seems unusual, perhaps even strange or incredible to modern readers; some have found it improbable if not downright ridiculous. Yet Latin and, later, vernacular literary traditions show that Machaut’s ‘good love’ was not unusual in poetry and prose written in his time. Indeed, his good love is a late manifestation of the ‘ennobling love’ that C. Stephen Jaeger has historically traced in both male friendship and heterosexual love. ‘It is important to note that at the same time woman becomes virtuous, she also becomes a poet. The image of the virtuous woman is coupled with learning virtue, but also with learning and practicing poetry.’50 Does this not describe Toute Belle? Rather than the lust that some old men feel for Susanne in the Confort d’ami or the ‘lust against the will’51 that Helen of Troy feels for Paris, virtuous women who write poetry inspire a ‘chaste voluptuousness’.52 In Toute Belle’s case, her love illustrates such a state; virtuous, chaste, yet affectionate, it is an Erlebnismuster compatible with her and Machaut’s moral universe. The Voir Dit is a challenge to the modern reader because it is a casebook of mentalities and mores that separate us from the lovers that populate Guillaume de Machaut’s poetry and, indeed, the narratives of many of his contemporaries. Should we therefore scornfully or contemptuously knock our poet and his apprentice from the pedestal onto which his contemporaries elevated them because his depiction of ennobling love seems the product of darker times during which literary production and even historical writing whitewashed reality with a fictional, otherworldly sheen? But would this not be rather narrow-minded for our allegedly multicultural mentality? Geoffrey Chaucer, Machaut’s contemporary, gives food for thought on our predicament and, I think, a useful caveat for scholars who attempt to 50 51 52

Jaeger 1999, p. 88. Ehrhart 1999, p. 151. Jaeger 1999, pp. 15, 33.

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MACHAUT AND THE MEDIEVAL APPRENTICESHIP TRADITION

understand acts, sentiments, and rituals – in short, Erlebnismuster – foreign to modern readers. Ye knowe ek that in forme of speche is chaunge Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so, And spedde as wel in love as men now do; Ek for to wynnen love in sondry ages, In sondry londes, sondry ben usages. (Troilus, p. 489, v. 22–8) [You know too that change occurs in how we speak in the space of a thousand years, and words that once were prized we now regard as quite quaint and strange; and yet they spoke that way and succeeded as well in love as men do now; for to gain love in different times and diverse lands, different customs prevail.]

Critically here, the debates in Machaut’s dits broach fluid medieval ideas informing what today we have called ‘courtly love’ and its relation to honor, virtue, gender roles, and misogyny as well as its reliance on exemplary material drawn from the same sources from which Machaut culls examples. Machaut’s dits prove instructive since, in contrast to more conventional expressions of courtly love, they often bend and even twist their sources to fit new intentions and contexts. The debates offer insight into the conflicted world of love in late medieval literature while highlighting modes we must be aware of when reading ‘sondry usages’ in works written in and for bygone times. The problems facing us in attempting to interpret the medieval art of poetry can be as great and as baffling as those raised by its diverse arts of love. One particular problem adumbrated by Chaucer in considering the sources from which he extracted and molded his Troilus and Criseyde arises because modern critical terminology either can be inapplicable to medieval writing or cannot be translated into language that medieval writers might have understood. Pascale Bourgain explains the problem in an essay on the imaginaire in medieval literature – and her remarks hold for other modern concerns like class, subjectivity, individualism, psychology, creativity, and postmodern theory.53 C’est apparemment une gageure que d’écrire sur l’imaginaire au Moyen Age. Le mot n’existe pas alors, ni en latin ni en français. Des approximations, tantôt péjoratives ou méfiantes, tantôt extrêmement périphrastiques, en tiennent lieu – très mal ... Or nos esprits habitués à évaluer très haut l’originalité et la capacité d’invention inclinent à donner aux œuvres médiévales qui en font preuve une importance que leurs contemporains ne leur ont pas toujours reconnue.54 53 For analogous problems in distinguishing medieval meanings from modern meanings for ‘nature’, see Zink 2006, Otten 2011. 54 Bourgain 1983, p. 565; see also Page 1993a, pp. 43 and 65–8, on the applicability of ‘intellectual’ and ‘audience’ to medieval contexts; Leech-Wilkinson 2003; Plumley 2012,

INTRODUCTION 15

Just as, I might add, we may be inclined to denigrate medieval works that their contemporaries admired because they do not meet our standards, expectations, or beliefs. Medieval Erlebnismuster rarely, if ever, coincide with our own commonplace paradigms. Indeed, Bourgain’s words on the poetic art complement Chaucer’s caveat on how people love in different times and places. Although the word amour existed in the Middle Ages, its semantic range is broad and its ways have often seemed outmoded, foreign, or even ridiculous since the rise of vernacular philology in the nineteenth century. Did not Paulin Paris rewrite the Voir Dit to suit contemporary tastes, much as Chaucer did in amalgamating ancient and modern in his poetry? The same is true of another important word in Machaut, vertu, admittedly a ‘pliable concept’55 in medieval (and not only medieval) usage – the devil’s vertu for example.56 In the medieval art of poetry we are examining here, one encounters similar problems when considering formes fixes, commonplaces, rituals, and hierarchies in subject matters. The issue is especially complicated for medievalists when vocabulary that existed in the works we study does not carry the same meaning today or even from language to language today.57 Many present-day scholars, for example, express irritation when German colleagues refer to the höfische Epik, or ‘courtly epic’, by Chrétien de Troyes rather than what we in English call romance (and in French roman médiéval) but not epic. It proves instructive to probe Machaut’s love poetry, not so much or not only with our contemporary presuppositions, but with special attention to his medieval language and meanings as anchored in his poetry. This is what Toute Belle knew and understood while reading the Voir Dit and progressing on to mastery of Machaut’s art. In positioning her as an intelligent pupil who is familiar with the words and authoritative works of the time, Machaut is able to add nuance to his terminology as he shows Toute Belle mastering the composition of medieval Erlebnismuster and the modes with which she articulates them. But since people and their literatures may be as different from us today and from one another in the past as they are in different lands today, in striving to understand our multiculturalism, we shall not ignore p. 167 continued on p. 170. In another article, Bourgain 2001 notes that terminology may also change over time, even if it survives today. Cf. Lusignan 1986, p. 9: ‘Nous devons déployer des efforts constants d’analyse pour éviter de projeter l’expérience moderne sur les réalités linguistiques médiévales.’ Cf. as well Ziolkowski 1996, p. 153 n. 4, quoting from Andraud 1902, p. 3. ‘Nihil majorem utilitatem praebet ad veterum nostrorum scriptorum ingenia recte perspicienda, quam iis judiciis uti quae ipsi de suismet operibus, tum cum haec edebantur, fecerunt.’ [Nothing is more useful in understanding correctly the minds of our ancient authors than to avail ourselves of the judgments they themselves reach on their own works at the time those works were being made public.] 55 Jaeger 1999, p. 152. In the case of ‘virtue’, the contrast between medieval and modern usage is especially obvious if one compares (in an exercise I have had my students undertake – it could be eye-opening) translations of virtus in a medieval Latin dictionary like Niermeyer’s with the definitions of the same word in modern dictionaries. 56 T-L, vol. 11, cols. 340.44–7, 341.18–19. 57 Cf. Zumthor 1985; Moos 2004 on the meanings of ‘publicus’ and ‘privatus’ in ancient and medieval Latin as well as in Greek and the modern languages.

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its multisecular possibilities. Doing so requires identifying and explaining what Toute Belle could have known and thought in her time, not just what modern presuppositions may seem to contribute to our understanding – how the ‘sondry usages’ Machaut’s works illustrate, promote or reject our ‘sondry usages’. In this study, I shall endeavor to build my interpretations on medieval evidence and terminology. Critically, doing so sheds light on how Machaut integrates what he calls sens, retorique, and musique, or his art of invention, with plaisance, esperence, and dous penser, or his subject matter. Since his metaphor of poetry and love was, for him, aesthetically and morally satisfying, by telling us what key words like these mean in his poetry and what he wanted Toute Belle to understand, he contextualizes and recontextualizes his art of poetry and love from poem to poem. In this context the Voir Dit represents the fullest expression of how a young, aspiring poet pursues her apprenticeship in the art of poetry and prose under a recognized master of the art, while living an idealized love story with an aging, physically unattractive master-lover. These ‘sondry usages’ confront us with a real quandary because Toute Belle is neither a Lolita nor a Heloise. Neither would she become a précieuse or a femme savante as Molière satirizes them; rather she resembles, potentially and more cogently, the evolution from précieuse to femme savante that Christine de Pizan follows in her own poetry and dits. This study follows two major trajectories. First, it explores the metaphor of love and poetry. This metaphor, when extended into allegory, reveals an art of poetry and prose fashioned as an art of love. While the Remede de Fortune remains a pivotal work in expressing that extended metaphor, the Voir Dit provides an even more profound example. In it, an aging master named Guillaume writes, at a young woman’s request, the Voir Dit, a love poem about her apprenticeship and their love. Critically, he does not write for a beginner. If Toute Belle knows how to write rondeaux, virelais, and ballades with some proficiency, what more she needs to know lies beyond that stage. Not a technical treatise like Deschamps’s Art de dictier, the Voir Dit goes beyond elementary instruction to teach its lessons as a model dit that, like the Remede de Fortune, offers its truths in fictional mode for consideration and imitation. The second trajectory probes Machaut’s integration of truth and fiction. In Machaut’s time, fiction on the literal level often covers a more-or-less hidden truth or truths available as allegory. Recognizing them is essential to understanding such writing. The Voir Dit is the best, albeit most complex and ambitious illustration among Machaut’s dits of this integration of truth and fiction because it shows how the integration works, what it can actually tell us about truth and fiction, and, most importantly, how poets give expression to them. Fiction and truth permeate the dit’s literal and allegorical levels to such an extent because Machaut fuses them in one whole. Ironically, therefore, he writes about himself in order to be fictional. As such, the Voir Dit masterfully generates quandaries and debates that can provoke and disturb fictional characters, reallife audiences, and other poets. Through a study of these issues and problems, we can attempt to read Machaut as he may have wished to be read. Perhaps we

INTRODUCTION 17

can then start to understand how and why he valued good love and construed the poetic art in the ways he did. Consequently, an important development in this study begins with Machaut’s Confort d’ami. Although love and poetry are closely related in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French poetry, the Confort also shows that treating love has larger implications. This is because the principles that obtain in writing about good love obtain as well in writing about good government, about good social relations, and even about scientific, philosophical, and moral topics. Perhaps this universal, ‘multidisciplinary’ approach made what Machaut had to say about love, poetry, and music in the fourteenth century influence and inspire not only Toute Belle, but also his contemporaries and immediate successors who treat love in larger, ever more universal contexts. In order to understand this influence, I shall be comparing Machaut’s treatment of love and poetry to numerous works like, among others, the Roman de la rose and the Ovide moralisé, as well as Jacques Legrand’s Archiloge Sophie, some of Froissart’s dits, the anonymous Tresor amoureux, Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant, and Evrart de Conty’s Echecs amoureux and his commentary on it, and, further on in time, Christine de Pizan’s and Alain Chartier’s poetry. As in my previous studies on authors in the Roman de la rose tradition, I endeavor to understand the art these authors practice and to use that art to interpret what they wrote. An eminent musicologist in medieval studies, Elizabeth Eva Leach, puts it best, I think, and in quoting her below, I adapt her words to my study of Machaut’s medium, as indicated by italics. They sum up the philological approach of this book. There is a lot we cannot know about medieval literary culture, but this is equally true of later periods, their greater abundance of written sources notwithstanding. As a foil, warning, pre-echo, or model, study of the literature of the Middle Ages reminds us that historical pictures are always partial. More unambiguously than scholars concerned with later periods, the medievalist is forced to contend with problems actually inherent in all historical study, to work in the space for creative interpretation that lies between its difficulties and its pleasures. The continuing decline of the study of premodern literature in a misplaced rush to make philology more relevant to our modern world is regrettable. Nothing modern is so new and unprecedented that it cannot be seen more clearly with experience gained from grappling with no less accessible changes of the more distant past.58

This perceptive observation essentially captures the approach to Machaut’s œuvre in this book. It echoes Bourgain’s and Jaeger’s concerns about reading medieval writing on medieval terms. The contrast between medieval and modern can, I believe, be appreciated best if we look back to medieval attempts to modernize 58 Leach 2007, p. 295; ‘literary’ italicized in place of ‘musical’, ‘literature’ in place of ‘music’, and ‘philology’ in place of ‘musicology’. Pertinent here is Yri 2012, who discusses the evolving character of modern performances of Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame.

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the ancient literature they loved but could not accept on its own, pagan terms. They therefore ‘medievalized’, even ‘Christianized’ it, by making Ovid, Vergil, and others into virtually ‘closet Christians’ who wrote more or less openly about Christian and chivalric moralities. When confronted with such oddities (to us) in medieval literature and, more to the point here, in Machaut and his contemporaries there are tendencies to modernize them, or postmodernize them, in order to gain purchase on what, otherwise, we might reject. Medieval critics too, in order to preserve antique writings they loved, modernized them by imposing medieval social and religious readings on them. The Ovide moralisé is a good illustration of late medieval modernization. However, scholars are not poets. They can therefore avoid similar misprisions today by striving to learn what medieval authors knew and how their knowledge can reveal what their works meant to them. As the Roman de la rose puts it, we read with a mind aware of contraires choses that can be mutually illuminating. The chronology for Machaut’s dits looms large in Part I. Therefore, I append here their approximate dates of composition based on Earp 1995, pp. 189–94; cf. as well Earp 1989; Leach 2011, p. 86 n. 4. The approximate dates of composition for Machaut’s dits indicate roughly their order of composition: Vergier 1330, Lyon 1342, Alerion 1340s, Jugement Behaigne before August 1346, Jugement Navarre after 1349, Remede before 1357, Confort 1357, Fontaine amoureuse c. 1360–61, Voir Dit 1363–65, Alexandrie c. 1370–72, Prologue c. 1372. Shorter dits ascribed with more or less certainty to Machaut are dated as follows: Cerf blanc 1364 (Earp 1995, p. 235); Marguerite between 1364 and 1369 (Earp 1995, p. 231); Harpe late 1360s (Earp 1995, p. 223); Fleur de lis 1369 (Earp 1995, p. 234); Dit Rose early 1370s (Earp 1995, p. 232). On Machaut shorter dits (with emphasis on the Harpe), see also Singer 2012.

PART I An Art of Love

1

Machaut’s Evolving Conception of Good Love Ai, las! tan cuidava saber d’amor, e tan petit en sai!1      (Bernart de Ventadorn)  En l’amoureus brueil, Ce m’est vis, la verge cueil Pour moy batre et me despueil,  Comme aprentis Qui n’a d’avoir joie apris  Lettre ne fueil.2 (Lai 19, v. 69–74)

Medieval lyric poets constitute a melancholy lot. Happy springtime renewals foreshadow a dolorous love never reciprocated and forever unsatisfied. If hallucinations can make winter frost metamorphose into May-time flowers, the wintry reality of a forlorn love quickly thrusts itself onto the lovelorn singer as his or her song moves on to its unhappy, seemingly inevitable conclusion. As the epigraph from Bernart de Ventadorn’s well-known canso on the lark’s flight states, the lover has much to learn, and what he or she learns is that singing for joy is deceptive. The song must end because the joys of love never really begin. Such vexed love corresponds ‘à la volonté du poète de trouver sa joie dans un amour sans possession et sans réciproque; à l’ambiguïté de ses réactions et de ses sentiments, où se mêlent vraie douleur, apparence de la joie, joie réelle au sein de la douleur’.3 Given the uncertainties of such love, Chaucer claims in the voice of his narrator to understand little or nothing about it because he is himself, ‘for myn unliklynesse’ (Troilus, p. 473, v. 16), not a lover. Machaut provides nuance on the theme of ‘unliklynesse’ by means of his alter ego, an aging Guillaume, who is a lover and also writes of the self-inflicted pain that the second epigraph describes metaphorically as a thrashing that punishes his failure to realize the joys of love.4 1 Chansons d’amour, Poem 31, v. 9–10. ‘Alas! I presumed to know so much about love, and yet how little I do know.’ 2 ‘In love’s thicket, it seems to me, I pick the rod in order to thrash myself then strip like an apprentice who has learned none of his lessons on how to achieve joy.’ 3 Zink 1994, p. 77. 4 Bernart de Ventadorn uses the self-flagellation motif in two of his Chansons d’amour (7, v. 29–31; 34, v. 28). The image has a long life; it occurs anew after Machaut in the

22 AN ART

OF LOVE

In the Voir Dit, Guillaume’s ‘unlikely’ figure relives the centuries-old commonplace of self-inflicted violence in troubadour and trouvère poetry by depicting the relationship between the old master poet and his apprentice, Toute Belle. Three factors explain their relationship and clarify the art of love that Toute Belle and Guillaume exemplify: the evolution of Machaut’s conception of good love up to the composition of the Fontaine amoureuse; the poet–patron relationship in the Confort d’ami; and the commonplace role of the dominant lady vis-à-vis her suitor and, occasionally, her lover in Machaut’s œuvre. This is what Toute Belle would have learned about the poet’s art of love when, as a young teenager, she began to read and admire his poetry so much that she sought his guidance for her own artistic ambitions. But before I treat these three factors, I must first briefly identify and elucidate Machaut’s poetic matiere.

Plaisance, Esperence, Dous Penser Plaisance, esperence, and dous penser – the three gifts that Amour bestows on the poet in the Prologue – constitute Machaut’s matiere. This subject matter remains constant in his poetry.5 For example, in one of his lays, a woman’s voice claims (my emphasis) Qu’esperence d’estre amée  Est en moy plantée Et plaisance savourée   Fort enracinée Et fois d’amour embrasée   Florie et germée; Chascune fruit portera, Naissant par douce pensée,  Plaisant et secrée.6 (Lai 11, v. 67–75) [for hope of being loved is planted in me, together with delicious, deeply rooted pleasure and a burning faith in love that is in flower and in germ; each of these will bear fruit, born of sweet thought, pleasant and private.]

In the Voir Dit too ‘Douce Plaisance, Douce Esperance, Douce Pensee’ nourish and sustain lovers battling against Desire (VD, p. 270b/196). Amour’s three gifts require a natural, inborn sens that interprets them. Indeed, sens is one of Nature’s gifts in the Prologue. Without it, the poet risks Bernart de Ventadorn’s Tresor amoureux p. 102: XXV, v. 32–3: ‘on cueille telle verge souvent / De quoy on est batu amerement’ [one often picks the rod with which one is badly beaten]. For other Middle French examples see DLMF, p. 884. 5 On the social backdrop to his emphasis on hope and the special meaning he gives to the word, see Leach 2011, pp. 176–80 (with additional bibliography). 6 See also Lai 13, v. 215–20; Motet 4.



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fate because he will have understood so little of love’s matiere. In other words, sens tells us what Amour’s three gifts mean in his poetry. As I argue here, their meaning evolves from dit to dit in keeping with Machaut’s evolving conception of good love. The Remede de Fortune on Good Love The Remede de Fortune is Machaut’s authoritative dit on good love. Since this dit is the culmination of his evolving conception of good love, I start with it here so that the reader can appreciate where his earlier, more conventional writing on love is heading and how Machaut gradually integrates the Remede’s concept of good love into a relatively coherent system of thought. Guillaume writes the Remede ‘selonc le sens que j’avoie’ (v. 685) [according to my understanding] with the result that the dit is ‘si pres de mon sentement’ (Remede, v. 687) [so close to what I felt]. Moreover, it amplifies Amour’s tripartite matiere in the Prologue – plaisance, esperence, dous penser – in order to distinguish the specific meanings Machaut gives to this matiere from their more commonplace connotations in medieval French love poetry (again, my emphasis). Car vraye Amour en cuer d’amant figure Tres dous Espoir et gracïeus Penser: Espoir atrait Joie et Bonne Adventure; Dous Penser fait Plaisance en cuer entrer.  Si ne doit plus demander  Cilz qui a bonne Esperance,   Doulz Penser, Joye, et Plaisance;  Car qui plus requiert, je di   Qu’Amours l’a guerpi.  (Remede, v. 1994–2002) [For true love in a lover’s heart represents very sweet Hope and gracious Thought; Hope attracts Joy and Good Experiences; Sweet Thought brings Pleasure into the heart. He who has good Hope, Sweet Thought, Joy, and Pleasure must ask for no more. For whoever asks for more, I say that Love has abandoned him.]

Thus does the Remede’s chanson royale summarize the virtuous effects of Machaut’s good love in language that anticipates Amour’s gifts in the later Prologue. Such lovers escape the commonplace pains of love evoked in this chapter’s epigraphs: they have learned how to achieve joy. To explain this transformation, Machaut redefines love in the Remede by drawing on Boethius’s conception of virtue as a natural human good that precludes suffering caused by Fortune. Esperance is spokeswoman for this love.7 7 What follows builds on and, to some extent, revises Kelly 1978, chap. six. See as well Leach 2011, chap. four, esp. pp. 138–64, on the ways Machaut relates verse and music to

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This kind of esperence does not, or at least should not, alternate with desire. Importantly, then, Machaut’s conception of good hope is not modeled on the commonplace but uncertain hope of the courtly tradition, but rather on the theological virtue that is certain. Consequently, the body and carnal ‘delectacion’ are no longer the object of love because, in Boethius’s scheme, the bodily pleasures that lovers desire are false goods. For Machaut, virtue makes the virtuous person lovable and secure in the certain hope of being loved in return. Such good love is chaste; it is also self-sufficient. Indeed, the Remede’s Esperance actually evokes the Boethian distinction between felicity through virtue and desire dependent on fortune. In contrast to Fortune, then, Nature bestows on human beings natural, ultimately God-given virtues that they must activate practically in order to become good themselves. Felicity, or bonneürté, belongs among those goods that cannot be lost although they can be ignored or rejected – an error that subjects the erring person to mutable Fortune. Ultimately, whoever follows Guillaume’s council will follow Reason and attain souffisance, another natural virtue necessary if one wishes to achieve true felicity (Remede, v. 2484–90); there is no other valid delectacion. Guided by Esperance, the Remede lover achieves a good, sure, morally and socially acceptable love: ‘Je ne vueil mie’, she assures Guillaume, ‘que tu penses / Que d’amer te face desfances’ (Remede, v. 2797–8) [I don’t want you to think that I forbid you to love]. Free from Fortune’s domination, true lovers (‘ami vray’, Remede, v. 2801) achieve souffisance because their virtue is rewarded, if not here below, then in the afterlife (Remede, v. 2805–12). Scholars have known for some time that Machaut proposed a new conception of love in the Remede,8 making this dit a watershed when love is portrayed as pure and, therefore, chaste. This is evident when Machaut contrasts good hope good hope; for the Voir Dit in particular, see Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, pp. 63–75. Machaut alludes to Boethius by name in the Remede (v. 982–4), the Confort d’ami (v. 1904–8, 3749– 52), and the Voir Dit (v. 5713/5786). The Confort is bound together with an anonymous translation of Boethius’s Consolation in Chantilly Bibl. Condé 485 and Bern Burgerbibl. A95 (Earp 1995, pp. 107–8); Earp notes other links to the Consolation in Machaut’s œuvre (p. 628 s.v. Boethius). Machaut also makes striking connections between biblical statements and good love in his Fleur de lis; for example, a passage in the Song of Songs (cf. Canticum 2:2 and FLis, v. 51–2) is related to the beloved lady (FLis, v. 43–85). See also FLis, v. 85–96, on the theological virtue faith; v. 146–9 on the lady’s ‘Bien penser, bien faire et bien dire, / Bons parlers, devotes prieres, / Que Nostres Sires a mout chieres’ and ‘toutes ces vertus’ that adorn her [right thought, right actions, and right language, eloquent speech, devout prayers that Our Lord values highly (and) all these virtues]; ‘grace de Dieu’ and ‘merci’ are linked to esperence and souffisance (FLis, v. 379, 414). On esperence and Boethius in late medieval French writing, see Cropp 2005. On the importance of memory in the Boethian scheme, see Huot 2002; on memory’s place in Machaut’s rhetoric, see Enders 1992b; and on rational comfort free from Fortune’s inconstancy, see Jeay 2006b, p. 224. Along with Boethius, Kay 2007, chap. four, treats the influence on Machaut of Aristotle and his medieval translators and commentators; on medieval French translations of Aristotle, see TransMed, vol. 2:1, pp. 61–70. 8 Kelly 1978, chap. six; Brownlee 1984, pp. 49–52; Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, Part One, chap. two; Huot 2002; Leach 2011, esp. chap. four.



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with the desire of one who ‘plus requiert’. Desire asks for ‘more’, a surplus that is a common euphemism in Old and Middle French for sexual intercourse. But in the context of Machaut’s good love, that surplus is a superfluity that is not only excessive and immoderate, but also deceptive. Je ne puis ymaginer Qu’il aiment sans decevance Et qu’en euls trop ne s’avance Desirs. (Remede, v. 2016–19) [I can’t imagine that their love is not deceitful, and that their Desire is not excessive.]

Desire demands too much and becomes deceitful when it seeks to possess the other. After crossing over from good hope to possessive desire, the lover no longer truly loves because desire attacks the beloved’s virtue. This becomes clear in the important role Esperance plays in the Remede. After identifying herself in the dit, Esperance admonishes Guillaume to have faith in her because she is a source of felicity – what she calls ‘beneürté souveraine’, ‘felicité certaine’, and ‘souverain bien de Nature’ (Remede, v. 2467–9). She liberates him from Fortune’s inevitable twists and turns because good love as Machaut now understands the sentiment falls among the ‘biens de vertu’ (Remede, v. 2803). Although ‘natural’, these biens also constitute virtues because, through Nature, they come ultimately from the triune God, not the traditional god of love. C’est bien parfait et souverain Qui vient dou Maistre Premerain, Qui est fin et commencement, Trebles en un conjointement, Uns en .iii. et un tout seul bien, Ou il ne failli onques rien.9 (Remede, v. 2791–6) [It is a perfect and sovereign good deriving from the Foremost Master, He who is end and beginning, triple in one conjunction, one in three and the one sole good in whom nothing has ever been lacking.]

Machaut will expand on this view in the Confort d’ami by locating his good hope among the theological virtues that, like all virtues, come from God.10 There, ­Susanne’s hope becomes the theological virtue alongside faith and 9 Cf. the prayer during a mass in the Remede (v. 3897–907/3895–906) in which Guillaume asks God to preserve his lady’s honor and that he be able to serve her honorably and reasonably. 10 On the divine source of bonneürté, see Remede, v. 2773–96; Confort, v. 1933–47. Cf. Mulder 1978, pp. 53–5; Wallen 1980; Gauvard 1982, pp. 38–9; Ehrhart 1992; Lechat 2005, p. 115.

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charity because her ‘esperence’ together with ‘amour’ and ‘fience’ (Confort, v. 271–2) are placed in God. This view holds as well for all the other examples in this dit (Confort, v. 1561–6, 2254–6, 2873–86; cf. Remede, v. 2773–90). The Remede’s contrast between good hope and possessive desire is attuned to Boethius’s notion of virtue as a natural good not subject to mutable fortune. In order to escape from mutable fortune, however, the virtuous lover will achieve felicity, or bonneürté, only if Reason prevails. Gardes que Raisons te maistrie Et qu’aies en toy pacïence Et la vertu de souffissance, Car beneürtés vraiement Vient de souffrir pacïenment.  (Remede, v. 2486–90) [Make sure Reason guides you and that you have patience and the virtue of sufficiency, for felicity truly comes from persevering patiently.]

Without felicity one is perforce unhappy, unstable, desiring change. Virtuous love is not subject to fortune because it does not desire what the lover does not possess naturally and that another can refuse to grant. In effect, good love as an object of hope is realized not in the body through delectacion but in the mind as souffisance. Such love is self-sufficient because the lover is content with loving de sentement. Near the beginning of the Remede, Guillaume composes and sings a lay to his lady while he is still victim of desire; fearing rejection, he cannot bring himself to declare his love to her.11 Like the dit’s chanson royale, the lay foregrounds plaisence, espoir de joïr, and dous penser. This is the chaste love and hope that Machaut promotes in the Prologue and that Amour’s three gifts imply. But in the Remede, joïr is plaisance, not jouissance,12 and thus virtually free from the compulsion to deceive. Et qui vourroit plus souhaidier –   Je n’os cuidier  Si fol cuidier Que cilz aime de cuer entier Qui de tiels biens n’a souffissanche; Car qui plus quiert, il vuelt trichier.  (Remede, v. 459–64) [And whoever would wish for more, I dare not entertain the foolish notion that he loves honestly who is not content with such goods; for whoever seeks more wants to deceive.]

11 12

Kelly 1978, pp. 100–3, 130–7. Kelly 1978, p. 134.



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Only by abstinence can love become good – abstinence that leads to sublimation. The final stage in the commonplace gradus amoris in courtly literature is the factum, or sexual intercourse. Machaut’s new art of love rewrites this conventional script, allowing for the achievement of chaste love as a natural human good that does not jeopardize the beloved’s honor or virtue. Evrart de Conty’s commentary on his own Echecs amoureux, written after Machaut’s death and perhaps influenced by his dits, describes such love. Those whose love is good ‘ont telle souffisance ou delit … qu’ilz ont de l’un l’autre veir, qu’ilz ne demandent plus, ainz veulent en ce point honnourablement vivre sanz plus oultre requerre, se n’est le baisier et l’acoler par avanture’ (Echecs mor, 199r36–9)13 [have such sufficiency or delight in seeing one another that they ask for nothing more; rather they want to live honorably in this way without asking for more than, perchance, to kiss and embrace]. As in the Remede, the Echecs amoureux exemplifies an ennobling, asexual love between a man and a woman.14 Machaut’s Confort d’ami recommends the Remede de Fortune and a ‘Lay de Bon Espoir’ for a full explanation of good hope in love (Confort, v. 2241– 9),15 while underscoring the place of ‘Bon Espoir’ (Confort, v. 2120, 2249) or ‘bonne esperence’ (Confort, v. 2243) in good love: ‘Qu’en amours n’a si bonne chose / Ne qu’amant doient amer si / Comme esperence, après merci’ (Confort, v. 2254–6) [for nothing is so good in love or that lovers should love so much as hope, after mercy]. In the Confort, merci is souffisance (v. 1703–20). Boethius’s conception of virtue authorizes the link Machaut makes in it and the Remede between good hope and virtuous, self-sufficient love. Building on the Remede, the Confort d’ami embraces a broader social, moral, essentially Christian context that locates good hope among the traditional theological virtues alongside faith and charity.

Machaut on Love Prior to the Remede de Fortune In order to appreciate Machaut’s approach to good love in the Remede and Confort d’ami, we must take a look at the dits that preceded them. They show how the poet came to the Remede’s conception of good love. Machaut depicts a love analogous to that exemplified in Guillaume de Lorris’s part of the Roman 13 The Echecs moralisés likens souffisance in love to the same virtue in acquiring wealth ( 134v1–3, 136r41–v1). Souffisance is therefore morally applicable to whatever kind of life or activity an individual pursues; it brings mesure, or moderation, to all human endeavors. 14 I discuss further Evrart’s conception of this love in chap. 6. 15 The lay in the Remede is about hope in good love; for other lays that Machaut may be referring to, see Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 3, pp. 249–50 n. 2249; Newes 2003; Leach 2011, pp. 180–2 (with additional bibliography). Since each lay they identify treats good love, the uncertainty as to which one Machaut refers to in the Confort need not trouble us here.

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de la rose in his first dit, the Dit dou vergier; there are also interesting developments and comparisons with different kinds of lovers, male and female, in the Dit dou lyon and the Dit de l’alerion. But the evolution leading to the Remede seems to begin with his two debate poems, the Jugement Behaigne and the Jugement Navarre. Since Machaut’s evolving thoughts are critical here, dating becomes an important consideration. Ernest Hoepffner’s chronology for Machaut’s dits has recently been revised because of the uncertain date of the Remede de Fortune.16 Accordingly, I correct my claim in Medieval Imagination that the ‘Jugement Navarre replaces love by desire with love by hope’,17 based on my belief at that time that the Remede preceded the Navarre and, therefore, colored the latter dit’s vocabulary. Now, following Earp’s chronology, I retrace here the evolution of Machaut’s conception of good love in his dits,18 including the Jugement Navarre and, to some extent, his lyric poetry. Although the exact trajectory of Machaut’s changing conceptions of good love cannot be traced precisely, it is clear that early in his poetry he presented love as mainly sexual, and, towards the end, as mainly chaste. The stages suggest a trajectory that clarifies ideas that Machaut considered in his poetry as it became more spiritually anchored. Love in the Dit dou Vergier Modeled on parts of Guillaume de Lorris’s Rose,19 the Dit dou vergier does not promote the virtuous, good love the Remede de Fortune espouses. The dit’s Reason opposes Amour. Referring to her20 torch and its effect, Amour remarks that Cils brandons les tient et destreint, Le cuer leur art, le corps leur teint, Si que raison est oubliée Et mesure s’en est alée.21 (Vergier, v. 561–4) [this torch holds and constrains them, enflaming their heart and making them pale, so that reason is forgotten and moderation is absent.]

In fact, Amour, ever amoral, makes even the prudent (sage) abandon moderation, reason, and rectitude as deftly as she turns a fool into an honorable 16 Earp 1995, pp. 189–94. On the chronology of Machaut’s dits, see the final paragraph in my Introduction. 17 Kelly 1978, p. 139. 18 Cf. Palmer 1993; Ferrand 2006, pp. 473–85. 19 On Machaut’s knowledge of the Rose, see Badel 1980, p. 82, and 1996, p. 475. For additional bibliography, see Earp 1995, p. 206, under ‘Literary Antecedents.’ 20 The Vergier’s Amour is a feminine noun. I discuss the feminine personification Amour in Machaut’s poetry in chap. 4. 21 See also Vergier, v. 291–2, 317–18, 407, 479.



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person (Vergier, v. 305–28). By crossing over and breaking down barriers in this way, Amour is as socially disruptive as the diverse turns of Fortune. This is because Love, like Fortune, is irrational (Vergier, v. 289–304, 405–44). ­Although Amour’s defense is that love can enhance honor if it is loyal (Vergier, v. 467–524), desire and hope agitate in conflict on how best to love (Vergier, v. 695–796). Thus, the Vergier’s Guillaume is torn between desire and hope as he confronts the same obstacles the Rose’s lover faces: Dangier, Peur, and Honte, plus a few others of the same ilk like Cruauté and Doubtance de mespresure (Vergier, v. 689–92). These personified figures emanate from the lady Guillaume loves because, unlike him, she listens to Reason and spurns his love (Vergier, v.  86–7). Spurred on by desire and hope, and thus ready to try anything, he must overcome her rationality if he wants to enjoy her love. Guillaume is aided and abetted by a host of demoiseaux like Vouloir, Celer, and Desir and demoiselles like Grace, Pitié, and Esperance (Vergier, v. 613–22), personifications who confront the lady’s defenses in a kind of debate (Vergier, v. 899–1033). The goal of this implicit gradus amoris is merci. Merci offers ‘joie’ (Vergier, v. 998, 1110) and ‘delit’ to faithful lovers: Cils qui en son cuer norrit Loyauté, Celer, le delit Puet avoir moult legierement Qu’il a desiré longuement.  (Vergier, v. 1121–4) [He who in his heart cultivates Loyalty and Secrecy can very easily obtain the delight he has long desired.]

Loyauté and Celer protect fine amour when merci is granted: ‘l’ameray loyaument’, Guillaume proclaims, ‘Et serviray celéement / Com vrais amis loyaus, parfais’ (Vergier, v. 1263–5) [I shall love her faithfully and serve her secretly like a true, faithful, and perfect lover]. His desire is ‘sans vilein penser’ (Vergier, v. 74) or ‘sans penser folour’ (Vergier, v. 125) because he is faithful and secretive, in this way preserving his lady’s honor even if she loses her virginity.22 Indeed, as defined by Andreas Capellanus, amor sapiens is a prudent love that includes sexual intercourse.23 In the Vergier Amour’s merci is ‘joie’ as jouissance.

Love in the Jugement dou Roy de Behaigne The Jugement Behaigne reports a debate before Jean de Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, organized around the question: who suffers more, a lady whose beloved has died or a nobleman whose beloved proves inconstant? Reason 22 Cf. the references to loss of the flower: Vergier, v. 872 (‘la flour en feroit partir’) and 880 (‘s’en seroit la flour perie’) [he would cause the loss of the flower; the flower would have perished]. 23 Kelly 1968, pp. 131–4; Monson 2005b, pp. 32–4, 305–14.

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argues that irrational love is wrong in and of itself because ‘Amours vient de charnel affection, / Et si desir et sa condiction / Sont tout enclin a delectation’ (JB, v. 1709–11) [Love comes from carnal affection and its desires and habitus are entirely inclined towards delight], delectation being a synonym for the Vergier’s delit.24 This definition of irrational love is a reprise; that is, it paraphrases Andreas Capellanus’s well-known and authoritative version: ‘Amor est passio quaedam innata procedens ex visione et immoderata cogitatione formae alterius sexus, ob quam aliquis super omnia cupit alterius potiri amplexibus et omnia de utriusque voluntate in ipsius amplexu amoris praecepta compleri’ (De amore, p. 4)25 [Love is an inborn malady resulting from sight of and immoderate thought on the beauty of someone of the other sex. This feeling makes one desire above all else the embraces of the other person, and to achieve the complete fulfillment of all love’s commands through their shared desire in mutual embrace]. As there were already French versions of the De amore’s definition in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la rose and Drouart la Vache’s French version of Andreas’s treatise,26 Machaut’s public might well have perceived the resemblance between his paraphrase and their closer translations. Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant, written late in the fourteenth century, provides further evidence that Andreas’s definition remained current in Machaut’s time and beyond (p. 663: v. 8753–60).27 At about the same time, Evrart de Conty’s Echecs moralisés not only paraphrases the definition in the Roman de la rose (139v25–34, 276v13– 25), it offers extensive commentary on the definition authorized by ‘un saiges anciens’ (pp. 541–50) – presumably Andreas himself.28 Thus, the thrashing Machaut evokes in this chapter’s epigraph refers to desire, a source of melancholy, languor (JB, v. 1063), and the absence of strength or virtue if not satisfied (JB, v. 442–4); it also includes hope for carnal mercy (JB, v. 894–910). This is because every lover, whether man or woman, ‘aime mieux assez le corps que l’ame’ (JB, v. 1707) [loves the body rather more than the soul]. Although the Behaigne’s bereaved lady describes her deceased beloved’s noble mind and soul (JB, v. 135–47, 1552–5), thereby placing her love in a noble social context, the nobleman describes only the physical and stereotypical Cf. Calin 1974, pp. 41–2; Kay 2007, p. 113. Cf. Monson 2005a, p. 165 n. 1. 26 ‘Amors … / c’est maladie de pensee / antre .II. persones annexe, / franches entr’els, de divers sexe, / venanz a genz par ardeur nee / de vision desordenee, / pour acoler et pour besier / pour els charnelment aesier’ (Rose, v. 4347–54) [Love is a malady of thought shared by two persons, both of whom are independent and of different sexual gender; it overwhelms people with burning desire, born from deranged vision, to embrace, kiss, and relieve themselves carnally]; the final part of Andreas’s definition on Love’s commandments is not translated into French, which might suggest that there are no rules. All subsequent translations and paraphrases I have seen, including Machaut’s, make the same deletion. Drouart la Vache’s translation is almost identical with Jean de Meun’s except that it includes: ‘Ainsi com Venus le commande’ [as Venus commands] (D’amours, v. 143; the full definition is in v. 138–46). On Andreas’s definition, see now Monson 2005a and 2005b, esp. chap. five. 27 Finoli 2001, pp. 75–7. It is a variant reprise of Jean de Meun’s translation in the Rose. 28 Badel 1980, p. 306 n. 50. 24 25



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beauty of his beloved’s person (JB, v. 286–408). This conforms to the Vergier’s kind of love in which the lady listens to Reason and the male lover seeks to circumvent this obstacle. What is different for Machaut is that ‘vice ou pechié’ (JB, v. 1714) [vice or sin] is inherent in the Behaigne’s carnal love: ‘Il l’estuet’ (JB, v. 1714) [it must be so], and, as the proverb says, ‘moult grant chose a en faire l’estuet’ (JB, v. 607) [necessity has great power]. This is, therefore, the first sign that Machaut’s conception of love is evolving. In the Vergier, as we have seen, Guillaume claims that his love for delight is not vile if it is constant and that, as lover, he is ‘sans vilein penser’ because his love will remain faithful and secretive. This changes when love is identified with vice and pechié. However, Machaut does not directly confront this problem in the Behaigne; its love still follows desire and, from moral, social, and religious perspectives, it is carnal and illicit. It is only in the Remede that the factum stage in the conventional gradus amoris disappears; love as vice and pechié vanishes with it. The nobleman’s unfaithful beloved in the Behaigne is actually a young woman or girl of some fourteen years (JB, v. 407–8). The man’s age is not revealed. In the medieval context her age may or may not be an issue.29 In Froissart’s Meliador Hermondine is not yet fourteen when Camel de Camois falls in love with her and requests her hand in marriage (Meliador, v. 1627). Since she and her family oppose his suit, her age becomes an excuse to delay a decision on Camel’s proposal by a five-year quest at the end of which she should be ready for love and marriage. By the time the quest begins she would therefore be about fourteen – the age of the inconstant Behaigne maiden. This means her marriage to Meliador at the end of the quest takes place when she is about nineteen.30 Meliador is an ‘enfant’ (Meliador, v. 2466) when he begins the five-year quest for her hand. He is therefore older than Hermondine when they marry. Of course, from our modern perspective, ‘sondry usages’ prevailed in Machaut’s time when very young brides of old husbands are not unheard of in the high nobility – one thinks of the late marriages of Charles d’Orléans and Jean de Berry. Medieval literature in farce and nouvelle as well as in more serious commentary attests to the mockery and perils of such loves. At the time Toute Belle first approaches Guillaume in the Voir Dit and they fall almost

29 Fourteen is the age a young man begins to love in the Songe vert, v. 607. In the Songe de la pucelle, the maiden is described only as ‘de jonne eage’ (v. 30), ‘d’enfance … delivre’ (v. 13) and, therefore, entering the age and season of love: ‘L’eage enseigne comme ung doit vivre’ (v. 4) [age teaches how one is to live]. On this dit, see Cayley 2006b. Even earlier, Partonopeu de Blois is thirteen when a woman of some twenty years makes love with him (Eley 2011, pp. 19–21, 32–8). Jean de Saintré is another, less sexually transparent example of young love for an older (but not old) woman (Szkilnik 2003, pp. 59–70). See also BrownGrant 2010, p. 66, on ages in the different versions of Paris et Vienne. 30 Evrart de Conty believes that eighteen is the ideal age for a young woman to marry (Sieper 1898, p. 92).

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immediately in love, she is between fifteen and twenty years of age, or about Hermondine’s age during the five-year quest for her hand in Meliador.31 In the Behaigne debate, the movement towards chaste love is in its initial stages. Reason argues that the woman’s loss of her beloved’s body by death removes the possibility of ‘delectation’, a necessary ingredient in Reason’s definition of love. With the passage of time, Reason argues, anticipating La Fontaine’s fable, ‘La Jeune Veuve’, the lady’s love will fade and, given her youth, she will discover a new body and soul to love. Love will be reborn, albeit love for a new man.32 By contrast, the betrayed man must still confront the physical presence of the beloved he has lost yet still desires. In other words, deprived of hope, he still desires delectation. Consequently, it is determined that he suffers more than the bereaved lady. Since both men and women can be betrayed or bereaved,33 reversing the gender of the victim would, presumably, not alter the Behaigne verdict as to which class of lovers suffers more, the bereaved or the betrayed. A wronged woman would, that is, suffer more than a bereaved man because the beloved she loses would still be alive and desirable, whereas the bereaved man would, with the passage of time, overcome his sorrow and find a new love. La Fontaine’s jeune veuve is no different from a jeune veuf (cf. JB, v. 1108–23, 1676–701),34 or even older ones like Charles d’Orléans and Jean de Berry. Of relevance here, Machaut alludes briefly to Guillaume as a bereaved lover near the beginning of the Voir Dit; Toute Belle ‘resuscitates’ him when he reads her first rondeau (VD, v. 850–67; cf. v. 285–95). The Behaigne debate, then, illustrates sexual love that is not always constant because it is always subject to the suffering caused by desire. In this context, Reason’s reevaluation of love as vice and pechié proves to be a first step in Machaut’s evolving view of fine amour, the only kind of love Reason refers to, unlike Jean de Meun’s Reason in his Rose continuation.35 In Machaut, that is, honor remains essential if good love is to survive (JB, v. 610–11, 658–9); but Fortune too proves to be a real threat, as when the beloved chooses a new love (JB, v. 684–91) or when death occurs. And while Reason, Loyauté, Amour, Beauté, and Jeunesse argue that the wronged man suffers more than the bereaved woman, importantly, the kind of love that makes both litigants suffer, 31 I return to this issue in the Voir Dit in chapter two. Cf. as well Echecs mor, 127v35–128r2, and Chaucer’s own ‘Merchant’s Tale’. 32 In part because of wars and illness, bereavement followed by a new love is a not uncommon motif in the poetry of Christine de Pizan, Oton de Grandson, Chaucer, Alain Chartier, and Charles d’Orléans (Kelly 1978, esp. pp. 177–95). 33 Calin 1974, p. 45. In Machaut’s Motet 7, a woman is left because she has been too harsh. Appendice 8 shows that, as far as infidelity is concerned, così fan tutti is as common as così fan tutte. On bereaved men, see Loange 223/114; Motet 3. 34 In the anonymous Songe vert the bereaved lover finds a new love thanks to the Queen of love. 35 Loves acceptable to Jean’s Reason include friendship, desire for children, charity as love for all humankind, and love of reason (Kelly 1995, pp. 57, 65–70).



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although acceptable to Amour, Beauté, and Jeunesse, does not meet Reason’s or Loyauté’s standards. Reason in particular faults the man for failing to consult her when he began loving (JB, v. 1724–6). Although her criticism implicitly aligns the man’s conduct with the lover’s in the Roman de la rose, making the Behaigne’s love resemble that in the Vergier, Machaut is clearly beginning to question the Vergier’s kind of ‘loyal amour fine’ (Vergier, v. 1274). As illustrated by the Behaigne’s Reason, vice and pechié are inherent in this kind of love. Love in the Jugement dou Roy de Navarre The Jugement Navarre reverses the Behaigne verdict in a new debate that finds in favor of the bereaved woman. But the reversal is more complex than a mere rebuttal. The first and most striking novelty in the Navarre is that Machaut is accused of wronging ladies by writing the Behaigne. This opinion is voiced by a noble lady, subsequently identified as the personification Bonneurté. When Guillaume rejects the accusation, they agree to argue their case before Charles, King of Navarre, and to accept his verdict. In the Behaigne, as we have seen, the issue is: which, the bereaved woman or the wronged man, suffers more. The decision depends on how long and how intensely the one or the other will suffer. Since both men and women can endure these losses, the gender of the sufferer is not at issue. In the Navarre, however, gender is an issue.36 This judgment dit reconfigures the disagreement by means of Bonneurté’s claim that Machaut himself, alias Guillaume here, is guilty because of the judgment he wrote in the Behaigne.37 By introducing gender as an issue, Bonneurté makes gender a relevant factor in evaluating degree of suffering. To be sure, the Navarre may seem to be gender-indifferent at times, since it includes examples of both men and women who suffer the same fates as the Behaigne litigants.38 But in them too the debate turns on the sufferer’s gender, not on the cause of his or her suffering. Critically, then, this change shifts the emphasis from the cause of suffering to the nature of men and women. Does the one gender ‘naturally’ suffer more, regardless of the cause of sorrow, and, if so, why? Guillaume claims that men always suffer more; Bonneurté makes the same claim for women. For instance, Guillaume asks for proof that ‘onques nulle dame souffrist, / Tant son cuer a la mort offrist’ (JN, v. 2557–8) [any lady ever suffered so much that she offered to Blumenfeld-Kosinski 1997, p. 141. Cf. Swift 2008, p. 144; Leach 2011, p. 252. The Navarre does not fault the King of Bohemia who pronounced the Behaigne judgment; rather, it faults the dit’s actual author, Guillaume de Machaut, in the person of his Guillaume. 38 Among the Navarre examples, wronged women include Adriane (that is, Ariadne), Dido, and Medea; men suffering the same fate include a bestiary stork and a cleric from Provence whose beloved marries another man. Bereaved women include Hero (who dies of grief after Leander dies), a girl mortally ill after her beloved dies in a tournament (she would rather have him alive even if unfaithful), Thisbe, and a bestiary turtledove. I discuss these examples in chap. 4. 36 37

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die]. Honnesté’s response falls within the same gender argument: a woman who learns that her beloved has died will suffer a hundred times more in a day than a man will in a hundred years (JN, v. 2616–18). For, Franchise avers, ‘On ne porroit trouver en homme / Si grant loyauté comme en femme’ (JN, v. 2810–11) [one could not find as great constancy in a man as in a woman]. If this is so, Machaut did indeed wrong women when the Behaigne found in the man’s favor. Is this misogyny? Or do the charges made by Franchise and Honnesté – and by implication by Bonneurté herself – make them guilty of misandry? The deployment of the gender claim is obviously a crucial change in the criteria used in the Behaigne for evaluating the intensity of human suffering. The Navarre litigants agree that men and women are not the same emotionally, but they do not agree on the reason for the difference or its impact on the debate. Although Guillaume admits at one point that both sexes can be unfaithful (JN, v. 2826–9), neither party develops this insight; both prefer to focus on an absolute gender hierarchy to advance their case. ‘Il est certain – et je l’afferme,’ Guillaume exclaims, ‘Qu’en cuer de femme n’a riens ferme, / Rien seür, rien d’estableté’ (JN, v. 3019–21) [It is certain, and I affirm it, that a woman’s heart contains nothing solid, secure, or stable]. This is because, Guillaume opines, women are naturally unstable (JN, v. 3029–30) and, therefore, mutable. Being emotionally unstable, they more easily overcome loss than men do, regardless of what the loss may be. Since Guillaume believes that a man always suffers more than a woman, he defends the Behaigne judgment. However, he does so for a radically different reason: by her very nature, la donna è mobile. But misandry is not silent, as Franchise’s and Honnesté’s observations quoted above suggest. The debate is no longer about the causes of human suffering per se; it is about the contrasting ‘natures’ of men and women. Thus, the two personifications replicate Guillaume’s arguments on the intensity of male suffering, but change the gender in doing so. In effect, then, both litigants distinguish between a first cause, gender virtue, and a second cause, the loss of a loved one that can occur ‘Autant es fames comme es hommes’ (JN, v. 2829) [among women as much as among men]. But the gender virtue is decisive: for Guillaume women are naturally more unstable than men; for Bonneurté and her supporters, men manifest naturally weaker virtue. Since the Navarre debate clearly reconfigures the Behaigne trial, it also indicates something of Machaut’s evolving conception of good love, suggesting a crucial tension: whether men and women can love equally well, as the Behaigne implies, or whether there are inherent natural, existential differences that make distinctions necessary, distinctions that would confirm, even justify (but rename) either misogyny or misandry by treating a sexual hierarchy much as, for example, Christine de Pizan uses ‘natural’ social hierarchy in the Livre des trois vertus to claim that a noble woman is and should be more virtuous than a woman beneath her and that this is an acceptable consideration in evaluating their conduct.39 39

Kelly 2007, p. 93.



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Just as importantly, the Navarre debate introduces another significant change in the earlier debate dit: the wronged woman in the Navarre is not only the Behaigne’s bereaved woman, but also the feminine personification Bonneurté.40 By wronging her, Bonneurté argues, Guillaume has wronged women in general (v. 811, 3790–832). Women and men include personifications of masculine and feminine grammatical gender that may embody, implicitly, sexual gender and gender commonplaces. Importantly here, Bonneurté’s position in the debate and the examples her supporters evoke show that she also connotes the word bonneürté’s sense of felicity in the Remede, that is, felicity that is not subject to Fortune’s dominion because it is a natural human virtue and a God-given gift that Fortune cannot remove. ‘Qu’ami vray ne sont pas en compte / Des biens Fortune, qui bien conte, / Mais entre les biens de vertu’ (Remede, v. 2801–3) [For true lovers are not counted among Fortune’s goods, if you evaluate it correctly, but among virtue’s goods]. Similarly, in the Navarre’s description of the personification, La dame a nom Bonneürté Qui tient en sa main Seürté En la partie de Fortune; Car il n’est personne nesune Cui Fortune peüst abatre, Se la dame le vuet debatre.  (JN, v. 3851–6) [The lady’s name is Felicity, she who holds Security by the hand in contest with Fortune. This is because Fortune could bring down no one if this lady wishes to contest it.]

Bonneurté’s domination shows that she lies above and beyond Fortune. From there she regulates universally the lives of those not subject to Fortune, including the lives of lovers. La est Bonneürtez assise Entre ami et loial amie Qui ne vuelent que courtoisie Et ont par certeinne affiance Li uns a l’autre grant fiance.  (JN, v. 3900–4) [There Felicity is in place when a male lover and a faithful female lover want only courtesy and have, by sure oath, great trust in one another.]

A subtle shift is taking place here that suggests that Bonneurté’s alleged misandry should be renamed if Guillaume’s fault is against the moral ideal bonneürté. Bonneurté is primarily a virtue depicted as a woman, but in reality she is an image. 40

On persons and personifications in Machaut, see Ferrand 2004.

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What kind of love, in other words, is Machaut writing about in the Navarre? Love in Bonneurté’s opinion, as quoted above, has as its goal courtoisie – courtly love, we might say today. But what does Machaut mean by courtoisie? 41 While the Navarre’s Bonneurté mediates ‘Entre ami et loial amie’ by locating felicitous love in the realm of a courtoisie beyond Fortune’s sway, this felicity remains ambiguous, as suggested by the examples. The betrayed man’s damsel in the Behaigne has been inconstant, as have Jason and Theseus in the Navarre. Thus, the link between joïr and courtoisie is glossed over. If Machaut’s good love in the Remede is truly chaste, joïr cannot signify jouissance; it can connote only joy in a love that excludes delectacion. Jason and Theseus did not know this kind of love. Cannot the same be said of the Behaigne’s damsel? In addition to revisiting a prior dit’s judgment and introducing Bonneurté as a crucial personification, another new and important factor emerges in the Navarre. Souffisance is, for the first time in Machaut, another agent that removes good love from Fortune’s sway (JN, v. 1287–1304). As Bonneurté’s handmaiden, she ‘n’avoit besoing de riens, / Ne li failloit chose nesune; / Hors estoit des mains de Fortune’ (JN, v. 1292–4) [needed nothing; she lacked nothing. She was free from Fortune’s grasp]. Importantly, the souffisance that the Remede equates with merci is not synonymous with mere courtoisie, although it may characterize a species of courtoisie that is virtuous. Likewise, it is not synonymous with the last stage in the gradus amoris. In Machaut, Souffisance joins Bonneurté who walks hand in hand with Seürté. Allied with Bonneurté and Souffisance, Seürté seems to articulate a moral ideal that moves away from and, indeed, above and beyond mere sexual fulfillment as goal and veers towards a ‘courtly’ or woman-centered definition of love and the suffering love can cause. 42 However, a key example in Bonneurté’s case that I shall develop further in chapter four contrasts, on the one hand, the sorrow of the solitary turtledove that, like the lady in the Behaigne, has lost its mate with, on the other hand, the stork whose beloved as with the earlier dit’s nobleman, has been unfaithful (Navarre, v. 1631–700). Fortune is still operative in the turtledove and stork examples. Critically, Bonneurté does not yet speak of good hope; rather, she distinguishes the intensity of their grief by means of gender commonplaces, not by means of a psychology of suffering. Men use violence to assuage their grief whereas women suffer longer because they are alone in their loss, leading inevitably to the conclusion that women suffer more than men. In Machaut’s Navarre configuration, it is important to note that he marginalizes or excludes from conventional depictions of love both virtue and hope. Neither is prominent in the debate. Rather they suggest mutability in birth, life, its diverse human activities, and death. In other words, some people are merely

41

2011.

On the semantic range of this word in late medieval French, see Colombo Timelli

42 I return to the issue in the Voir Dit in the next chapter. Cf. as well Echecs mor, 127v35–128r2.



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luckier than others.43 When virtue and hope are mentioned, they conform to commonplace usage rather than redefining love in conformity with the moral universe of the Remede. For example, according to Pais, a man condemned to death can always hope for mercy (JN, v. 2151–60). Because he probably will be hanged, his hope exemplifies the uncertain hope of courtly tradition, rather than the secure kind described in the Remede de Fortune. Lovers, by loving, still choose desire, the rod with which they thrash themselves. At best, hope can only make the condemned man’s last moments on the way to the gallows less anguished. Nonetheless, subject to Fortune’s twists and turns, his hope does not prevent the hanging. By contrast, in the Remede hope for love guarantees love by replacing desire for delectacion, which depends on another’s dangier, or power to grant or refuse, by souffisance qui n’a besoin de rien. Many of the examples adduced by both sides in the Navarre debate illustrate dangier’s power – notably, Aeneas, Jason, and Theseus as well as a lady in Provence who abandons her lover without a word and marries another man. Ultimately Fortune still decides even if an individual capable of exercising dangier does not, as with Pyramus and Thisbé or Hero and Leander, whose deaths result from desire; none of them lives on to suffer more. In sum, the Navarre brings together some features of the good love Machaut describes in the Remede, but it does not coordinate coherently Bonneurté’s argument with her examples. Machaut has not yet thought through the plaisance– esperence–dous penser paradigm as the souffisance triangulation and its relation to bonneürté and fortune, although elements of this configuration have begun to emerge. As a result, the Behaigne and Navarre remain contraires choses and the debate proves open-ended despite the judgment against ‘Machaut’ in the Navarre. The Navarre judgment also favors not only the Behaigne’s woman, but also the ‘woman’ Bonneurté, thus meeting Machaut’s goal as poet to praise all women. He has not yet come to terms with women who are not praiseworthy and the figure who exemplifies, as Bonneurté does, the features of the ideal woman and her natural virtues. Importantly, rather than developing an ethic of chaste love, it is the contrast between men and women who suffer from desire that is most prominent in the Navarre. Indeed, both judgment dits are found in many of his manuscripts,44 and when copied together in this manner, the two debates and their judgments constitute a virtual jeu-parti on suffering in love: ‘la

43 In the Remede, Esperance notes that Guillaume has led a more fortunate life than many others (Remede, v. 2593–632); cf. Robertson 2002, pp. 35–7. 44 Palmer 1993, esp. pp. 296–8. There are thirteen known manuscripts (one now lost) of the Confort, twenty-one of the Behaigne (one now lost) (Earp 1995, pp. 218 and 207 respectively). The judgment dits appear together in eight manuscripts. The Behaigne is copied without its counterpart in thirteen others; indeed, more manuscripts are extant for it than for any of Machaut’s other dits (Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 3, p. xviii; Earp 1995, chaps. three and five). No extant manuscript contains the Navarre without the Behaigne (Earp 1995, pp. 207, 209).

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chose est einsi partie’ (JN, v. 864), as Bonneurté puts it.45 Nonetheless, the issues emerge as much more fundamental in the later narrative than in the Behaigne because the Navarre’s litigants invite the reader to consider deeper emotional strains and conflicts regarding the nature of men and women, the sources of love, and the relative place and power of fortune and felicity in human life. As with most jeux-partis, there is no judgment on appeal based on the opposing verdicts of these two dits. Also of interest here, the examples and gender issues in the two contrasting dits suggest that Machaut was beginning to think somewhat more widely about love’s diversities and human differences. We discover some of his reflections in two dits written in the same decade as the judgment dits, the Dit dou lyon and the Dit de l’alerion.

Loves in the Dit dou Lyon The new conception of love that gradually emerges in Machaut’s judgment dits is intimated in his review and evaluation of different kinds of love in the Dit dou lyon and the Dit de l’alerion. These dits display an array of loves, good and bad, characteristic of diverse kinds of lovers. In the Lyon, an elderly, honorable man contrasts good and bad lovers among men before associating them with their female counterparts.46 As in the Behaigne, both men and women exemplify the same virtues and vices. Vis-à-vis the bad or false lover who deceives by fast talk, for example, the elderly man approves of the lover unable to express his feelings because of Peur and Honte, a commonplace in Machaut’s poetry when love includes desire. A variant pairing comprises the strong, silent lover whose fame as knight attracts the attention of worthy ladies,47 while recreant ‘Frere aisié’ (Lyon, v. 1256) [easygoing brothers] boast of their prowess, but are in fact idle except when pursuing sexual favors from women who are willing to have fun with them or whom they deceive.48 Similarly, some women (virtual 45 One manuscript, BNF fr. 1587, treats the Navarre as a continuation of the Behaigne, not as a separate dit or judgment (Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 1, p. 137 n. 1; Earp 1995, pp. 96 n. 31, 151 n. 40). This strengthens the jeu-parti effect of the two opposing verdicts. On the continuation of the debate by later authors, see Swift 2008. 46 Imbs 1991, pp. 127–30; Jeay 2006a, pp. 287–90. A briefer contrastive typology is found in the VD, v. 2196–211, 3727–62. According to the Vergier, v. 247–328 and 401–10, diversity derives from the god of love’s power over all lovers and his moral blindness to the diverse kinds of desires he brings about. By contrast, the elderly man in the Lyon, an authority figure, is not morally blind when he sets out his array of good and bad lovers of both sexes. 47 Perhaps a reference to the tournaments in the Arthurian tradition on account of which ladies are chaster. We find it more explicit in some works written after Machaut, for example, in the Tresor amoureux, pp. 114–15: XXXVI, v. 1–10; 122–3: v. 827–53. In the Echecs amoureux too, Diana recalls this allusion in Wace’s Brut to love among knights and ladies, a reference she and the poem’s commentary assimilate to chaste love (Sieper 1898, p. 30; Echecs am1, v. 2640–95 and pp. 227–8; Echecs mor, 154r9–15, 201v20–37; Kelly 1978, pp. 14–17). I return to this reading of Wace in chap. 6. 48 The Echecs amoureux offers an interesting example of this in its adaptation of Ovid’s



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sœurs aisiées) play with men in various ways, either feigning to be in love or, like the ‘Frere aisié’, seeking amorous attachments to amuse themselves while play­acting love (these types occur in Jean de Meun’s part of the Roman de la rose). As in the Vergier, Loyauté serves as a defining characteristic of good lovers in the Lyon. Again, as in the judgment dits, valorous deeds prove valid love service. Thus, the Lyon’s array of good and bad lovers clearly distinguishes good lovers from those whose caresses are ‘Einsi comme on torche Fauvain’ (Lyon, v. 1716) [just as one curries Fauvel], a reference to the malevolent steed and its sycophants in Gervais du Bus’s Roman de Fauvel. Gender is not an issue. Machaut’s array of loves in the Lyon literally separates good lovers from bad ones by means of the island named ‘Esprueve de fines amours’ (Lyon, v. 1778), or Test of True Love. Since good love is a noble prerogative, false lovers are denied access to this insula amoena. To prove lovers’ constancy or sincerity, they must be tested while on that island. With this element the island signals a change from the locus amoenus it had been earlier, when, as an orchard on a plot of land, it admitted all lovers, good and bad, as in the Vergier, where Amour admits anyone in love, regardless of what kind of love he or she may exemplify. The Lyon transforms the Vergier’s orchard into an island surrounded by a river that marks a clear separation and a sharp distinction between good and bad lovers. In the ‘espreuve de fines amours’, love that is fine is ‘true’ (Lyon, v. 1783–94).49 Other features of love in this dit remain conventional. It lacks, for example, the Remede’s emphasis on bonne esperence as an attribute of good love. Thus, if his lady is ‘mes desirs’ and ‘m’esperence’ (Lyon, v. 216), ‘mes confors’ (Lyon, v. 218), and ‘toute ma bonneürté’ (Lyon, v. 220), she is also ‘ma mort’ and ‘ma maladie’ (Lyon, v. 223); desire still alternates in the traditional way with hope. These contraires choses in conventional noble love show that love still belongs to a ‘mortel vie’, leaving lovers to languish much as they do in the Navarre (JN, v. 1761). Indeed, this distressing life is evident in the faithful lion that gives its name to the dit. The noble lion is tormented by ugly, envious beasts and monsters.50 Within this framework, an expression does emerge in the Lyon that will become important in Machaut’s depiction of good love. As in the Vergier, love service in the Lyon is ‘sans villain penser’ (Lyon, v. 206; see also v. 259, 2198); villain penser here is limited to villeins, or the ‘gens de vilages’ (Lyon, v. 1537)

Remedia amoris. By not joining the expedition to Troy, Egistus was idle. In a variant of ‘make love, not war’, he occupied his time in an affair with Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra and murdered her husband when he returned (Echecs amR, v. 356–98). 49 This is analogous to Chaucer’s art of love, the ‘craft of fyn lovynge’ (LGW, F544; cf. G534; see Kelly 1978, pp. 196–7), except that, for Chaucer, fyn lovynge is also conjugal: ‘namely of wyfhod the lyvynge’ (LGW, F545/G535). 50 In Machaut’s later Cerf blanc, a similar ‘lieus joieux’ (v. 319) includes insects (‘mouches’, v. 465) that pester its white stag much as the envious beasts and monsters torment the lion in the Dit dou lyon.

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[village people].51 Although they are doubtless meant to be more farcical than the aristocratic examples, the peasants have an affinity with bad or false lovers like the ‘Frere aisié’ among the nobility. The shenanigans of both groups are crude efforts to stage a kind of love service. For their part, the villeins crudely grin and ogle the villeine they desire, but then run away if she pays attention to them. Their language too is farcical. ‘La disoit Robin a Marote: / “Par le cuer bien, je t’aimme, sote, / Et se n’i say raison pour quoy”’ (Lyon, v. 1545–7)52 [There Robin said to Marote: ‘I love you, slut, from the bottom of my heart, and yet I don’t know why]. Machaut usually links the term villain with character, as in the phrase villain penser, as well as to the misogynist ruminations Guillaume gives vent to in the Navarre and elsewhere. More specifically, it refers to the last stage in gradus amoris, sexual intercourse. Good love like that found in the Remede is, or should be, sans villain penser. In the Lyon, the only joie Guillaume hopes for is that his service will please his lady, for he loves her ‘sans pensée villeinne’ (Lyon, v. 251–9). This sense of a chaste love is even more precise in the last occurrence of the expression in the Lyon: ‘Or me doint Dieus vie et santé / Pour maintenir son dous service / Sans villain penser et sans vice’ (Lyon, v. 2196–8) [May God now grant me life and health so that I may persevere in sweet service to her, without villainous thought and without vice]. This social and moral context without vice or pechié supports a love similar to the love promoted in the posttroubadour Occitan tradition (discussed in the Introduction) and thereby illustrative of the ‘sondry usages’ of bygone times. Pre-conjugal abstinence becomes a significant motif in many late medieval narratives,53 completing a movement towards a morally acceptable love that some medieval authors find as early as Wace’s Roman de Brut.

51 They are excluded from noble milieus in the Navarre: ‘N’i fu Margot ne Agnesot’ (v. 1151). Variants of this type are the obscene Priape of the Fontaine amoureuse (v. 1675–6) and the violent, physically abhorrent Polypheme in the Voir Dit, who figures in an ominous digression on the ‘Compagnes’ (VD, v. 6738/6811), the bands of marauders that terrorized the French countryside during the Hundred Years War and that Polypheme exemplifies while also illustrating villainous love. According to Lai 9, v. 133–42, love can make both villeins and villains noble, but it does not mention degradation of nobility that the Vergier’s god of love allows. The baneful effects of such ‘mixing of the social orders’ in love are diversely illustrated in Christine’s Dit de la pastoure and the anonymous Jehan d’Avesnes. 52 Machaut does not equate villeins with the poor who can improve and even attain high nobility (cf. Vergier, v. 407–44; Confort, v. 3087–96). Guillaume calls himself a ‘povre homme’ in the Fontaine amoureuse (v. 1261–7). 53 On abstinence in some late medieval narratives, see Kelly 2010b, pp. 20–4. Cf. Gavre, p. 112, lines 7–8: ‘bien me souffira se baisier et acoler le puis, de son amystyé aultre chose ne demande’ [it will suffice if I can kiss and embrace him; I ask nothing else from his love]. These narratives promote abstinence before marriage while allowing private embraces and kisses; in this way these lovers ‘estoient bons et saiges et se vouloient plus gouverner par raison que par leur seulle voulenté’ (Cleriadus, p. 209, lines 331–3) [were good and prudent, and sought to conduct themselves more by reason than by their desire alone].



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There remains the issue of suffering in love that both the Behaigne and the Navarre treat, and that the Lyon’s lion illustrates when tormented by envious beasts. In describing Guillaume’s own suffering when oscillating between desire and comfort, illness and death, the calendre becomes an emblem of the fate he cannot control (Lyon, v. 44–66). If his lady, like this mythical bird, looks at her suitor, his love will be happy; if she looks away, she signals distress and death. The tension is underscored by another bird as well: the chantepleure illustrates the same instability by alternately singing and weeping (Lyon, v. 663–80).54 Suffering in all its intensity persists not only in such emblems, but also in central narrative elements, such as the lion tormented by envious beasts who try to injure it by médisance (Lyon v. 1855–78). Because of envious backbiters,55 ‘maint cuer d’omme et de fame / En sont honni et deceü / Et de leur honneur descreü’ (Lyon, v. 1852–4) [many a man’s and woman’s heart is shamed and deceived and their honor diminished]. But Machaut also presents a solution. The lady who is the beast’s ‘esperance’ (Lyon, v. 2017) encourages him to ignore his envious tormentors or at least pretend indifference to them; if he does so, the problem will disappear (Lyon, v. 2052–76). ‘Qui sueffre, il veint’ (v. 2071) [who endures conquers], a morally framed variant of amor vincit omnia.

Love after the Remede de Fortune: Good and Bad Loves in the Dit De L’alerion The Dit de l’alerion depicts good love allegorically56 by making this most noble, loyal, and trustworthy bird of prey an ally of the honorable eagle, king of birds; it is contrasted with the mutable sparrow hawk57 and the inconstant gyrfalcon. Illustrating different species of lovers, this array of birds resembles the lion and envious beasts in the Dit dou lyon; both illustrate how to overcome the suffer54 This commonplace motif appears notably in the thirteenth-century Prose Lancelot and in Froissart’s Bleu Chevalier (Bertolucci Pizzorusso 1987; Pickens 1998). Cf. Villon’s ‘je ris en pleurs’ commonplace (Poèmes, p. 46: II, v. 6). In Machaut, the chantepleure is a bird that ‘moult souvent chante et pleure’ (Lyon, v. 663–4) [sings and weeps very often]; here music brings joy and poetry grief, another commonplace of Machaut’s poetics (Prologue 5, v. 34–48). 55 Envy vs. love is commonplace in Machaut’s poetry (JN, v. 831–4; Alerion, v. 3535–40; Confort, v. 3531–6, 3875–82; Fontaine, v. 2274–86; Lai 11, v. 157–62, and Lai 23, v. 98–102; Motet 9, v. 41–52; Vir 15, v. 1–4). The monstrous, envious beasts in the Lyon are analogous to Malebouche and Jalousie in the Echecs mor, 262v32–7; cf. 4v39–40. 56 The alerion’s comings and goings anticipate Toute Belle’s own peregrinations in the Voir Dit. As with the alerion, Guillaume loses contact with her until she returns faithfully and reconfirms their love (Jeay 2006a, pp. 304–5). These examples suggest both independence and security in good love. 57 The change (‘mue’, Alerion, v. 1217) of the Alerion’s sparrow hawk is mirrored in Guillaume’s comparison of Toute Belle to the disobedient falcon (VD, v. 8343–6/8416–19), a likening that turns out to be erroneous in her case. Machaut’s raptors are modeled on bookish traditions, not on observation (Van den Abeele 1990, pp. 229–38; cf. Gaudet 1993, p. 62).

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ing associated with loss and thereby ultimately achieve felicity in a good love. Indeed, Machaut implicitly reverses or revises his judgment dits by reconfiguring inconstancy as a human vice. Thus, the Navarre verdict is confirmed with different results for the betrayed lover. For example, inconstant women are not defended by the sincerity of their new love, as in the Behaigne. Compatible with the poet’s new conception of good love in the Remede de Fortune, the Alerion lover who confronts infidelity or inconstancy simply stops loving, the guilty partner having shown him- or herself unworthy. Sexual gender is not an issue. Guillaume has moved beyond the distraught nobleman in the Behaigne and several other conflicted lovers in the Navarre. The good lover does not suffer when good fortune turns bad. Such lovers simply realize that they have made a mistake, then move on. Reason promotes good love in the Alerion (v. 2423–5) and remains an important ally and support for the good lover (v. 4403–8, 4751–6). ‘Certeinne esperence’ (Alerion, v. 2307), or secure hope, is a defining feature of such love.58 Such love is free from the domination of Fortune and even Nature (Alerion, v. 2281–304, 2501–2). However, the lover is discrete in order not to dishonor his lady or even reveal by mood changes that he is in love (Alerion, v. 229–70), avoiding in this way the envious attacks that plague the Lyon lion. Veering from tradition, discretion is easier because love itself is souffisance (Alerion, v. 1201–2, 1698–702, 2071–2). ‘Tel vie est pais et repos’ (Alerion, v. 272) [such a life is peace and calm], the lover having ‘joie apris’ (as the second epigraph to this chapter puts it). The Alerion’s Guillaume no longer seeks rods with which to thrash himself. Thus, the defining elements in the Alerion fit the Remede’s good love. Like the Lyon, the Alerion shows instances of good and bad love, but only the Remede sets out in orderly fashion the characteristic features of Machaut’s good love, the problems it raises, and the redeeming virtues that distinguish it from other, less worthy kinds of love. However, the Alerion contributes to Machaut’s developing understanding of love by teaching how to ‘vivre seculerement’ (v. 2) [live a secular life]. One can lead such a life by Bien penser, bien dire, bien faire Et eschuer tout le contraire, Cils .IIII. poins, je n’en doubt mie, Attraient toute bonne vie.  (Alerion, v. 13–16; cf. Alerion, v. 230–2) [thinking, speaking, and acting in the right way while avoiding all that is contrary to them; I doubt not that these four points attract every kind of good life.]

This brings us back to the Confort d’ami.

58

Cf. Alerion, v. 871–8, 1387–96, 2900–4, 3024–8, 4668–74.



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Good Love and Comfort in the Confort d’ami The Confort d’ami contains a reprise of the Alerion’s four recommendations in decision-making: ‘Bien penser, bien faire et bien dire, / Et eschue tout le contraire’ (Confort, v. 3934–5).59 Charles of Navarre, the Navarre judge, is King Jean II’s prisoner in the Confort d’ami and very much in need of counsel and comfort.60 Guillaume is now the authority figure. He counsels Charles not only on love, but on other topics as well by building his case on a more solid biblical and moral foundation that he essentially summarizes as the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, because this conforms to God’s will (Confort, v. 3937–40). The first part61 of the Confort d’ami offers comfort based on the efficacy of hope and trust in God. Guillaume assures Charles that, ‘se t’esperence / Est ferme en li [Dieu], n’aies doubtance’62 (Confort, v. 423–4; cf. v. 1095–8, 1349–52) [if your hope in Him is solid, have no doubt]. The third part of the Confort treats Charles’s honor. Although an important attribute of good love in Machaut’s other dits, in the Confort Guillaume treats honor in the context of a mirror for princes.63 Of most significance here, the second part on Charles’s love applies the notion of bon espoir for the good love Machaut promotes in the Remede to Charles’s amorous anxieties. Charles is anxious because, separated from his lady while imprisoned, he fears losing her (Confort, v. 2089–91). This introduces problems of interpretation for Machaut’s readers. Thus, if his lady is Charles’s wife, Jeanne de France, daughter of the very king, Jean II, who has imprisoned him, then Charles may have been anxious about his wife’s political fidelity, given her family and the king’s enmity towards him. But, if she is another lady, we must suppose an extramarital ‘good love’ in Machaut’s sense of chaste love; although there is no condemnation of such love, the Confort explicitly condemns breaking the marriage vow (v. 3619–22).64 In presenting this dilemma, however it is to be interpreted, the Confort presents anew the conflict between bad desire like that in Machaut’s earlier dits and good hope characteristic of the love that Esperance advocates in the Remede. To assist the anxious lover, Esperance ‘conforte et solace / Et donne 59 The Dit de la fleur de lis offers an amplified reprise, adding ‘devotes prieres’ to the original four ‘points’ (FLis, v. 146–8). 60 Cf. Palmer 2012. Although known today as Charles le Mauvais, or the Bad, the negative epithet was first appended to his name in the sixteenth century (Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 3, p. i). 61 On the three parts of the Confort d’ami, see Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 3, p. ii; Kelly 1978, pp. 123–30. 62 Therefore, hope in God, as in Machaut’s good love, is not the uncertain hope of a man condemned to death who hopes he will be freed even as he is on his way to the gallows (JN, v. 2151–60). 63 Ehrhart 1992. 64 The status of the unnamed lady recurs as an issue in the Fontaine amoureuse; I discuss it in the next chapter.

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cuer et hardement / Par tout ou elle est vraiement’ (Confort, v. 2748–50) [offers comfort and solace, pluck and courage everywhere she is truly present]. In this kind of ‘courtly love’, bonneürté, or felicity not subject to fortune, is sufficient because it dominates and regulates desire. As in the Remede, good hope in the Confort is a source of honor, souffisance, and ‘tous biens’ [all goods]; no other ‘merci’ is required.65 Importantly, all three sections of the Confort promote good hope as a virtue in diverse secular and religious contexts. Esperance appears as an ever-available guide who recalls reason’s power; she is not the midwife of desire. When all is said and done, good love is modeled on, yet beneath, love for God. Garde toy bien que t’estudie Soit adès tout premierement En servir Dieu devotement, Qu’il n’est amour qui se compere A s’amour.66 (Confort, v. 2764–8) [Take care always to devote yourself primarily to devoutly serving God, for there is no love comparable to His love.]

The importance of this implicit hierarchy of loves for medieval audiences is not only to be found within Machaut’s work; it is also suggested by the fact that there survive more manuscripts of the Confort d’ami than of all Machaut’s other dits except the Jugement Behaigne,67 a preference that attests to its influence in defining Machaut’s thought on love and its place in larger scripts like that in Boethius and, indeed, in the poet’s faith itself. In effect, Machaut’s love poetry ‘is assumed to have a meaning which speaks beyond its own horizon’.68 Good love in Machaut’s dits, then, offers a template or Erlebnismuster for broader moral and social contexts. We find this tendency accentuated in some dits written in Machaut’s wake. For example, the Echecs moralisés opines: ‘il convient dire que la delectacion69 de Dieu est la plus grande et la plus souveraine qui puisse estre’ (Echecs mor, 254v18–20) [It is proper to say that delight in God is the greatest and highest delight possible]. Indeed, as indicated above, the Confort’s third part depicts Charles of Navarre as, potentially, a sort of philosopher king (Confort, v. 1758–67) who should overcome despair by relying on the same virtuous hope (Confort, v. 1779–80) that Boethius and other great philosophers relied upon (Confort, v. 3749–58). As with Boethius, the King of Navarre’s fault is having forgotten this lesson. Like earlier rulers who slid back under Fortune’s sway, Charles, of high birth, forgot his Creator after he acquired Cf. Remede, v. 2003–11; Alerion, v. 2860–904; Lai 8. Susanne exemplifies this love in the Confort (v. 257–72). 67 See n. 44 in this chapter. 68 Butterfield 2002, p. 40. 69 Delectacion here illustrates the word’s broad semantic potential. We often find it in Machaut’s use of amour; with such words, precise connotation depends on context. 65 66



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grandeur, power, and wealth – all false goods in Boethius’s sense because Fortune whimsically grants and withdraws them (Confort, v. 1847–56).70 ‘Resgarde eu livre de Boësse’ (Confort, v. 1904), Guillaume advises Charles; there he will be reminded that Fortune has no power over virtue, a God-given, natural good among humans who embrace it (Confort, v. 1933–78). Charles, then, can retain his strength or vigor (Confort, v. 2078) by relying on Douce Pensee that, as Souvenir, offers the image of his proper role as king and a secure image of the lady in his heart (Confort, v. 2133–208). In this way he can transform desire that would otherwise diminish good hope into morally acceptable ‘plaisence’ (Confort, v. 2209–36). Good hope will also reinvigorate him rather than leave him languishing in his real-life prison (Confort, v. 2237–76). These three attributes correspond to Amour’s gifts to the poet in the Prologue – plaisance, esperence, dous penser – gifts to which the Remede and Confort give specific meaning not only in the context of Machaut’s good love, as in the Remede, but also in the Confort’s social, moral, and religious contexts.

Love and Good Love in Machaut’s Lyrics71 Several of Machaut’s dits wrap their narrative around selected lyrics that become in this intertwined manner each dit’s imbedded sources.72 This ‘wrapping’ suggests how lyrics may anticipate narrative in their depiction of a moment in a gradus amoris – a potential plot, with the vagaries, meanderings, and variants that can emerge in single lyrics. Catherine Croizy-Naquet has aptly described montage with respect to lyric sources and resources in late medieval dits. ‘La strophe lyrique entrelacée, dans un savant jeu de montage, au vers narratif porteur de la fiction romanesque devient un lieu de ressourcement poétique et un lieu d’interrogation sur le je aimant et amant.’73 The Voir Dit develops an especially elaborate narrative context for the lyrics it enwraps, showing thereby, especially with those insertions antedating it, how the lyrics imply a narrative context and their place in it. They are virtual topoi that can be amplified as narrative. The Voir Dit’s letters too are ‘envelops’74 that link lyrics and narrative in the dit’s prosimetrum. In this sense, I examine Machaut’s lyrics here as potential love stories, or ‘textes à narrativité latente’,75 and their relationship to good and bad loves as the Remede and the Confort define them. 70 Numerous examples of Fortune’s mutability in diverse social and moral contexts will be discussed in chapter six on Machaut’s legacy. 71 Cf. now Altmann 2012. 72 On narrative wrapping of lyric insertions, see Kelly 1999a, chap. six; Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 155–60 and passim; Leach 2011 passim. Machaut inserts into the Voir Dit some lyric pieces as reprises of poems found elsewhere in his anthology manuscripts (Lefèvre 2002, p. 234). Hoepffner identifies some of them in the notes to Œuvres, vol. 3. 73 Croizy-Naquet 2004, p. 42. 74 Hülk 1999, pp. 166–7. 75 Zumthor 1980, p. 40; see also Leach 2011, p. 47 (with additional bibliography).

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Although the chronology for Machaut’s lyrics is far less certain than for his dits,76 it is generally agreed that the poet’s lyric production began before the Vergier, his first dit, and continued unabated thereafter. Perhaps in part due to the length of time during which Machaut was writing them, his lyrics are quite diverse in manner and subject, a diversity Guillaume acknowledges (JN, v. 884–7). Of course, medieval readers were accustomed to locating the lyric moment of a specific poem in the larger commonplace contexts the poem implies77 – commonplace contexts such as the gender of the poem’s implied speaker.78 This mode of reading looms large in the Voir Dit’s exchanges of poems and letters. Thus, medieval readers of contemporary lyrics may well seek to decipher what stage in the conventional gradus amoris the lyric illustrates along with any twists in conventional scripts, like, for example, the circumstances the lovers find themselves in (separated, unable to communicate, when meeting), or whether a lover dies, suffers, or is faithful and, indeed, any one of many possible conventions or commonplaces. Such conventional or commonplace motifs are prominent in Machaut’s poems.79 For example, the gender of the speaker in the gradus amoris or continuatio amoris in which the poem is located reveals diverse emphases.80 Generally, men speak more often in the gradus stage, during which women are, conventionally, supposed to keep silent. As with any deeply conventional material, exceptions to the rule stand out. One chanson royale, for example, anticipates Toute Belle’s initiatives when a woman’s voice violates the rule that ‘il n’apartient que dame à son ami / Doie mercy ne grace demander’ (Loange 254/1, v. 33–4) [it is improper for a lady to ask mercy or grace from her beloved]. She does so anyway. In the continuatio phase, however, women’s voices become more frequent during anxious separations. Also veering from the conventional, Machaut adumbrates the narratives in his dits by lyric clusters that may depict exchanges and successive events.81 Such diversity is helpful in evaluating how his lyrics were received and what relation they have to his dits. Indeed, his lyrics 76 Earp 1995, pp. 243–6, 273–7; but see also Plumley 2012, who shows how citation may give insight into lyric chronology or, at least, sequence. The kind of love depicted may offer some hints. For example, Machaut’s poems on good love were probably written about or after the composition of the Remede. 77 Laidlaw 1998, p. 62; Butterfield 2002, pp. 77–9; Taylor 2007, pp. 93–8; Kelly 2011, pp. 391–409. 78 A woman’s voice is heard not infrequently in Machaut’s lyrics; see Loange 26/214, 90/26, 137/12, 175/110 (cf. Leach 2011, pp. 188–90), 181/190, 194/100 (cf. Leach 2011, p. 257), 195/45 (on this ballade see Leach 2011, pp. 206–10), 198/180, 199/11, 212/8, 220/9, 224/215, 225/209, 228/24, 254/1, 263/196, 265/98; Complainte 2, 4 (cf. Leach 2011, p. 239), 5, 10; Lai 11, 13, 17 (cf. Leach 2011, pp. 180–1), 20, 22 (cf. Leach 2011, pp. 170–5, 245); BalNot 6, 10, 20; Rond 18; Vir 15, 20, 24, 37–8; Appendice 19. 79 Attwood 1998, chap. two. 80 Cf. Mahrt 2003. 81 Basso 2009. Leach 2011 offers numerous illuminating interpretations of such clusters as well as of reprises in Machaut’s dits. Particularly striking is the effect of music on how lyrics can be interpreted both within and outside of narrative context (Leach 2011, pp. 202–6).



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find their place in a narrative context not only in the poet’s own dits but also in the insertions of his verse in the anonymous Roman de Cardenois written after the Voir Dit.82 Importantly for assessing their reception, Machaut’s lyrics evoke by and large three subjects common in his dits: desire subject to Fortune’s twists and turns,83 hope in the insecure sense that is commonplace and therefore typical in the troubadour-trouvère tradition (‘espoir sanz nulle sceürté’, JB, v. 186) 84 [hope without any certainty], and, finally, good hope in the sense Machaut links to good love in the Remede de Fortune.85 Thus, while progressing through the Louange des dames and other collections of lays, rondeaux, virelais, and complaintes in Machaut manuscripts, alert readers might note diverse, often subtle lyric approaches to commonplace issues, situations, and sentiments. The result in manuscript anthologies is an array of loves in a variety of amorous contexts – a broad cross-section that includes loves as diverse as those described in the Lyon and the Alerion. Indeed, one sees how desire and hope recur almost obsessively from poem to poem. The correlations evident between lyrics and dits weave the given anthology manuscript into a complex, but coherent montage in an ordonnance that BNF fr. 1584 claims Machaut intended for his collected works.86 We can observe poems that occur in clusters in the Chichmaref edition because it follows the sequence of poems in Paris BNF fr. 22545–6.87 Such clusters form mini-narratives, incomplete short stories, with each cluster focusing on one or the other commonplace moment. Male and female voices may declare love, refuse or grant love, analyze diverse feelings and actions, respond to good and bad fortune, and debate conduct and emotions. The reader or audience considering the clusters might respond, as with jeux-partis, by evaluating, privately or in discussion with others, individual responses to the issues they raise, much as a Meliador maiden does by rejecting a poem’s example despite its artistry because she does not love in the way the poem depicts.88 On such occasions, the 82 See Cocco, ed., Cardenois, pp. 23–35; Speroni 1977, pp. 118–20. Froissart illustrates the same linking and wrapping of lyric verse and of poems that he and others, notably Wenceslas de Brabant, wrote in his dits and in Meliador (Plumley 2009). 83 For example, Loange 22/125, 38/155, 45/2, 48/7, 63/123, 69/40, 70/121, 72/252, 76/51, 140/21, 195/45 (cf. Leach 2011, pp. 198–200), 202/201; Lai 1; BalNot 1–2, 6–8; Vir 1. 84 For example, Loange 17/157, 23/199, 28/105, 32/200, 75/18, 143/28, 145/192, 146/91, 182/29, 210/46, 216/175, 227/13, 228/24, 232/143, 263/196; Lai 7 (cf. Leach 2011, pp. 142–9), 12, 19; BalNot 4–5; Vir 4, 7, 12, 34. 85 For example, Loange 61/148, 107/161, 110/74, 179/124, 191/117 (cf. Leach 2011, p. 255), 242/107, 268/178; Lai 8–10, 14, 18 (also in the Voir Dit; cf. Leach 2011, pp. 181–8), 20–1; BalNot 16, 45; Vir 30, 36–7. 86 Earp 1995, pp. 87, 199 (with additional bibliography). 87 Earp 1995, pp. 90–2, 258–65; cf. Poirion 1965, p. 204. Musical accompaniment can also link sets of originally independent ballades into clusters (Leach 2011, pp. 103–19). Anthologies may even suggest ‘self-criticism’ by Machaut in both poetry and music (Obermeier 1999, pp. 126–30; Plumley 2003a, pp. 357–64, and 2003c, pp. 22 and 25). 88 Kelly 1978, p. 249. On the question of lyrics as entertainment as well as sources of debate, see Bragantini-Maillard 2008, p. 172.

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reader ‘se substitue au JE du trouvère’89 much as characters like the Meliador maiden do in romances and dits containing lyric insertions. Motets offer special instances of such contrasts and debatable points by incorporating them into the motet structure. Thus, Machaut’s motets are a variant kind of cluster. Huot has shown how they juxtapose multiple amorous and, occasionally, religious themes and motifs like those found in lyric clusters,90 as when a given motet confronts Machaut’s good love with erotic desire subject to fortune or with devotion to the Virgin Mary.91 To be sure, when sung, audiences might not readily comprehend the words of diverse motet voices92 unless only one voice sings and, perhaps, only instruments perform the other voices; but this would also silence one or more voices and, therefore, remove the cluster effect from the motet. To counter this impediment, the different voices may also have sung in successive or ‘layered’ performances.93 Of course, the singers themselves would notice the diverse voices as would those who read Machaut’s manuscripts. So would those who heard a careful articulation of verbal and melodic commonplaces like those that express recognizable contrasts. Huot discusses the range of registers in the motet tradition, including diverse religious and secular registers, but especially in those treating amorous and explicitly erotic subjects.94 Machaut figures prominently in this tradition.95 The response and provocation suggested by motets and by the Louange des dames clusters conform to medieval reading habits evident from the twelfth century on – confrontation of works with diverse, even opposing treatments of the same subject that, taken together as contraires choses, might incite individual and audience reflection, speculation, and debate on the matters treated and their implications.96 Importantly, the Machaut lyrics that address the Virgin Mary are significant in the light of the Confort d’ami’s correlation of good love with love for God (and, of course, the Occitan virtual equation of Mary and the lady). A ‘Lay de Nostre Dame’ (Lai 15), for example, addresses Mary ‘Dont j’espoir ma redemption’ (v. 147) [from whom I hope for my redemption]. Along the same lines, the ‘Lay de la fonteinne’ (Lai 16) offers a chanson de change of an uncommon kind.97 Like his counterpart in Froissart’s Joli Buisson, the lover leaves a beloved for a new love: the Virgin queen. His justification is the same as that promoted in 89 Baumgartner 1981, p. 262; cf. Kelly 1978, esp. pp. 248–52; Attwood 1998, pp. 16–17; Kelly 1999a, pp. 222–4. 90 Huot 1994, pp. 229–32, and Huot 1997, pp. 71–2, 103, 192; Leach 2011. 91 Dufourcet Hakim 2002; cf. Brownlee 1995. 92 Perhaps they did not need to in carnival or other festive venues (Page 1993a, pp. 60–4; cf. as well pp. 76–84). 93 Page 1988; Page 1993a, pp. 40–1, 85 n. 73, 101–2, 106; Huot 1997, pp. 19–20; Bain 2012; Clark 2012. On multi-layered signification ‘susceptible of more than one interpretation’ in motets, see Boogaart 2003. 94 Huot 1997. 95 Huot 1994 and Huot 1997, pp. 193–4; Everist 2012, pp. 145–50. 96 Cf. Leach 2011, pp. 119–23. 97 Leach 2011, p. 288.



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the Alerion when a beloved proves untrue; but the new love for Mary does have affinities with that Guillaume has with and for the alerion. Finally, Lai 16 is an even more striking religious version of different ways of loving: Mary loves her son while still loving her new devotee to whom she offers hope of salvation. This change seems less abrupt, however, if one reads Lai 16 in the context not only of the Alerion, but also of the Confort d’ami. Rather, that is, than treat only those who wish to live a secular life, as in the Alerion (v. 2), in the Confort Machaut also begins to think of love in the moral context not only of Boethius but also of his faith. The lyrics that locate Mary alongside secular ladies belong to this context. Mary’s love can extend to many of her lovers just as Machaut’s Guillaume can claim to love all good women for the sake of his own beloved. Machaut’s good love offers a model that, if followed, might have prevented the clerical lover’s insanity in the Navarre after his Provençal beloved married another man. For example, a ballade in the Louange des dames illustrates the middle ground espoused by Attemprance in the Jugement Navare. As a lover tells his lady, ‘devés amer, j’en suis tous fis, / Vo mari com vo mari / Et vostre amy com vostre doulz ami’ [I am quite confident that you must love your husband as your husband and your beloved as your sweet beloved]. He explains that ‘ce poez par honneur faire’ [you can do so honorably] because the extramarital lover ‘ne vous quiert villenie n’outrage’ (Loange 231/187, v. 11–15)98 [asks of you no villainy or outrage]. The Middle French nouns villenie and outrage in Machaut usually connote sexual intercourse in both amorous and erotic contexts. The distinction is not so farfetched as it may seem today when observed in the light of the good love Machaut promotes in the Remede. The poem is another reminder of Chaucer’s caveat regarding love in ‘sondry londes’ and ‘sondry ages’. Outside the context of a chaste love, Machaut’s lyrics evince a sense of loss of what, in Boethius’s view, one does not possess – the object of desire. As false good, the loss of one’s beloved produces languor and grief. For example, in one of Machaut’s ballades a lover languishes because his lady loves another man. The distraught lover asks for an accommodation. Si pri Amours et ma dame honnourée Qu’à moy vueillent faire ceste parçon, Que, se ma dame est de moy miex amée, Qu’elle me laisse vivre en sa prison; Mais je croy bien que la serf en pardon: Si m’en convient dure mort endurer, Quant je li voy autre que moy amer.  (Loange 55/182, v. 15–21) 98 This distinction between conjugal affection and duty on the one hand and virtuous love and love service on the other, prominent in Andreas Capellanus’s De amore, can still be found in the late fifteenth-century Charles de Hongrie: ‘il sera tousjours voustre mary, et je seray voustre seul serviteur et amy … et tout par honneur’ (p. 36) [he will always be your husband and I shall be your sole servant and beloved, and all will be honorable]. On this distinction between the lover and the young beloved’s older husband, see Kelly 2010b, p. 23.

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[I beseech Love and my honored lady to agree to this arrangement for me: if my lady is better loved by me, may she allow me to live in her prison. But I believe I serve her in vain; therefore, it behooves me to submit to harsh death when I see her love someone other than me.]

Desire is a prison; it does not lead to good hope in Machaut’s ideal sense. When the assiduous readers of Machaut’s lyrics consider them in an anthology manuscript and recall various linked themes, the issues raised in the dits might influence how they understand the lyrics, and vice versa.99 The lyric insertions in the Voir Dit contribute to this effect because some of them reappear in the Louange. This too suggests reading or listening habits, notably diverse readings of the same piece in different implicit or explicit contexts. For her part, Toute Belle is an assiduous reader of Machaut’s poetry. She confronts a wide range of commonplace emotions and situations in ‘her book’, the Voir Dit that Guillaume writes for her. Although both strive for a good love, desire and hope, jealousy and devotion, silence and suspicion, separation, proximity, and even intimacy appear episodically, finding expression in the dit’s letters and in lyric exchanges as well as in the dit’s narrative. Thus, all stages in both conventional and chaste gradus amoris find dramatic expression in the Louange des dames. The stability of good love depicted in the Alerion and the Confort d’ami does not survive into Machaut’s next dit, the Fontaine amoureuse. To be sure, the Remede anticipates some instability and oscillation (Remede, v. 4219–47/4217– 45). In the Confort too, the plight of Charles de Navarre shows that maintaining good hope is an ongoing struggle. Still, good hope is essential because it offers comfort and solace while giving courage and strength – in other words, the virtue necessary to carry on (Confort, v. 2743–50). But in the Fontaine amoureuse and the Voir Dit, it does so by fits and starts. We turn in the next chapter to these two dits to see how Toute Belle experiences the comforts and discomforts of good and bad love as apprentice to Machaut’s often highly unstable Guillaume.

99

Leach 2003.

2

The Vicissitudes of Good Love: A Quandary? Biau sire Diex! comment puet ce estre Que je sui si fort mis à mestre   Que departir,   Deguerpir   Ne fuïr Ne puet mes cuers de son dous estre Eins est toudis dessous sa destre  Pour li servir,   Oubeir   Et cherir?1 (Lai 19, v. 75–84) Ainssi la tres noble doctrine Qui tant est precieuse et fine De la belle me doctrina, Qui toute bonne doctrine a.2 (Remede, v. 353–6)

The epigraphs to this chapter pose in dramatic pedagogical language the quandary that emerges in Machaut’s Fontaine amoureuse and, more profoundly, his Voir Dit. Like Esperance in the Remede, Toute Belle in the Voir Dit teaches Guillaume by her good and stable love how he himself should return her love – what the Echecs moralisés calls ‘reamacion’ (271r17). In Toute Belle’s case love is based on good hope and souffisance, virtues that Guillaume describes as characterizing her love for him in this dit that he writes for her about their love. She, Guillaume asserts, teaches him how to love well, not with the traditional grammarian’s rod but by her eloquence and comportment. Like the lover in Lay 19 (also quoted as the epigraph to chapter one), Guillaume, an unstable and badly performing lover, thrashes himself with the rods of desire and jealousy, thereby evincing a possessive love that has, moreover, enslaved and mastered him: he is himself possessed. Robbed of good hope and souffisance by submission to his master, he loses the constancy and trust in good love that Esperance

1 ‘Good Lord! How is it possible that I am so firmly subjected to my master that my heart cannot take leave, abandon, or flee from her sweet person, but is constantly under her domination to serve, obey and cherish her?’ 2 ‘Thus did the lovely woman’s very noble instruction, so precious and refined, teach me, she who has all good learning to impart.’

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propounds in the Remede and that Toute Belle practices and promotes in the Voir Dit. Given this depiction, the Voir Dit as well as the Fontaine amoureuse may well seem a partial retreat from the idealism and the almost superhuman virtue, rationality, and steadfastness Guillaume exemplifies in the Alerion. But, as we have seen, both the Remede and the Confort d’ami warn of the potential instability of love’s see-sawing between bad desire and good hope. By juxtaposing these emotions as contraires choses, Machaut actually defines two kinds of love more precisely, sharpening the distinction between the two emotions and, consequently, between the two kinds of love they exemplify. In the Voir Dit, where, from time to time, Guillaume voices the opposition between Amour and Reason that the Vergier exemplifies,3 Machaut shows by the end of the dit that reason can restore good love provided that it includes good hope and souffisance (VD, v. 8637–41/8722–6). In other words, the rational control of desire by good hope remains essential in the Voir Dit’s depiction of good love, in spite of the great effort it requires, including allowance for temporary or even total failure. Both the Voir Dit and the Fontaine amoureuse focus on this oscillation and its concomitant emotional instability as well as on the comfort that the beloved can provide, comfort that can reduce emotional turbulence whenever desire and hope come into conflict. Both dits conclude optimistically. The Fontaine shows a happy resolution of anxiety, a passage from sorrow to joy that good love alone can bring about (Fontaine, v. 233–4). In the Voir Dit too, Toute Belle ‘est droitement la tresmontainne / Qui cuers au port de Joye mainne’ (VD, v. 125–6)4 [is the polar star that guides all hearts to Joy’s haven]. Like the polar star, her doctrine steers her beloved towards security and comfort even after violent storms break out along the way.

Turbulence and Hope in the Fontaine Amoureuse The Fontaine amoureuse completes what the Confort d’ami begins on the subject of good love by focusing on the unstable balance between good hope and desire in love.5 Both the Fontaine’s hundred-rhyme complainte and the lady’s ‘confort d’amie’ underscore the necessity of good hope whenever desire enfeebles virtue,6 producing a rather violent kind of melancholy like that evident in the nobleman’s lengthy complainte at the beginning of the dit. There he laments his 3 ‘N’i voy rien de bien pour mi, fors que Raison s’acorde a Bonne Amour; mais c’est chose qui ne puet estre’ (VD, p. 570e/438; cf. v. 6531/6604, 8411–14/8484–7) [I see no good for me in this unless Reason is in accord with Good Love; but that’s impossible]. 4 The tresmontainne image recurs for Mary in Lai 16, v. 67, and for a lady in BalNot 35, v. 6. 5 Hoepffner notes that the Fontaine offers on love ‘un développement plus ample de ce qui n’avait été qu’une esquisse sommaire dans le’ Confort d’ami (Œuvres, vol. 3, p. xxxiii). 6 A woman’s voice expresses a similar progression from desire to hope in Lai 10.

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upcoming voyage abroad that will separate him from his lady. ‘Or me part,’ he exclaims, ‘a moult petit espoir’ (Fontaine, v. 295) [now I depart with very little hope] because he fervently desires his ‘dame pure’ (Fontaine, v. 285), claiming he does so ‘sans villennie’ (Fontaine, v. 346).7 Indeed, good love together with ‘Esperence courtoise’ (Fontaine, v. 916)8 restores the lover’s hope before the complainte ends with confidence that love will endure (Fontaine, v. 840–2) and scorn for his misfortune (Fontaine, v. 969–70). Likewise, in her ‘confort d’amie’ his lady uses the same paradigm to console him with ‘Esperance la seüre’ (Fontaine, v. 2267). The restoration of such hope is the basis for her reaffirmation of good love despite grief and desire (Fontaine, v. 803–4). This is enough for Venus to provide the nobleman with Bon confort et vraie esperence D’avoir la joie qu’il atent, Ou de bien et de joie a tant Que l’esperence de l’avoir Vault mieus que de Juno l’avoir.  (Fontaine, v. 2550–4) [good comfort and true hope of realizing the joy he is waiting for, wherein there is so much good and joy that the hope of obtaining it is worth more than Juno’s wealth.]

His Helen will remain true in this rewriting of the Judgment of Paris. With good hope the nobleman departs sure of his lady’s love during his absence.9 Fully comforted by good hope and his lady’s image in his heart, he reaffirms his faith in their good love. There are, of course, problems with this picture of what certainly suggested to contemporary audiences Jean de Berry’s departure for England as hostage so that his father, Jean II, captured at the battle of Poitiers in 1356, could return to France to raise ransom for release from prison. The problems have to do with the identity of two ladies, Venus and the comforting lady, the one fictional, the other obscure. Venus is, of course, a morally ambivalent goddess in medieval literature. In the De planctu Naturae, for example, Alain de Lille distinguishes between a good Venus married to Hymenaeus and thus a supporter of conjugal love and a bad Venus who deserts her husband to frolic adulterously with Antigenius (Antigamus in some manuscripts [Sheridan, trans., Plaint, p. 163 n. 27]), a union that produces not a good Cupid, as with her legitimate husband, but Jocus, a name Sheridan aptly translates as Sport.10 7 Cf. Fontaine, v. 363–78, 385, 424–8, 447–55, 527, 771–2; his goal is honorable: v. 840–2, 2408–9. Cf. the Remede’s complainte because of ‘Mon espoir mendre’ (v. 1332) [my diminished hope]. 8 Cf. Fontaine, v. 460–6, 803–5, 848, 883–906, 923–8, 971–6. 9 Fontaine, v. 2239–47, 2311–18, 2841–6. 10 Plaint, pp. 164–5; cf. Gally 2005, pp. 151–2. Jean de Meun’s Venus cooperates with Genius in bringing about intercourse. According to the Echecs moralisés, Jocus in the Echecs amoureux ‘segnefie la delectacion qui est en acoler et en baisier’ (139r13) [signifies the

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By mirroring the De planctu, the Fontaine’s Venus shares features of Alain de Lille’s alternately moral and immoral goddess.11 On the one hand, she cannot resist peeking between her fingers while covering her eyes as Priape flashes his genitals during the marriage of Thetis and Peleus (Fontaine, v. 1675–84). His extravagance entertains her and the other noble guests all the while they condemn such charivari: ‘qui scet bien ce qu’honneur monte / L’en devroit par tout faire honte’ (Fontaine, v. 2597–8) [whoever knows what honor is should put him to shame everywhere]. But, on the other hand, the Fontaine’s Venus also upholds Machaut’s good love, at least for the nobility. But, when we turn to the nobleman’s unnamed lady in the Fontaine the problem with Venus’s ambiguity (or, perhaps, instability?) resurfaces, although not as farce. Who is this lady whom he must leave? Here I must touch briefly on an issue that I treat more extensively in chapter three: biographical matter in Machaut’s dits. Could Jean de Berry’s lady be his young wife, Jeanne d’Armagnac, or is she another, extramarital lady, or, finally, is she a mere abstraction that transforms the whole narrative into a fictional example of an Erlebnismuster? No definitive answer is possible, but some textual evidence needs to be considered. According to his complainte, the Jean de Berry figure has received no merci from his lady (Fontaine, v. 357–60, 447–50). Moreover, she cannot initiate a declaration of love; that is the man’s role (Fontaine, v. 511–14). He has not revealed his love for his lady to anyone, nor can he because it would displease her; it would be improper for him or her to communicate during their separation, nor would he dare try to (Fontaine, v. 1449–58). Since he cannot talk to her, she knows nothing about his departure (Fontaine, v. 1483–4). This lady hardly sounds like a wife.12 The perplexing uncertainty about the lady’s identity raises anew the question of truth and fiction in medieval poetry and, more specifically, recalls the similar enigma regarding Charles de Navarre’s lady in the Confort d’ami: is she Charles’s wife, Jeanne de France, another woman, or an abstraction of purely exemplary interest? Hoepffner suggests that Machaut simply transformed marriage into a romance commonplace.13 This explanation is plausible. It would illustrate truth in fiction in which an extramarital relation is both image and allegory of a real-life conjugal love. More generally, each member of Machaut’s audiences might consider how the example fits his or her own individual knowledge, beliefs, experience, or relationships conjugal and extraconjugal. This even permits our reading the nobleman’s love in the context of a good love analogous to that in Ballade 231/187, mentioned in chapter one, that advises a lady to pleasure that comes from embracing and kissing] and is identified with the Rose’s Deduit whereas Cupido refers to delectacion in the sense of orgasm (139r10; see also 139r13–21, 198r30–41). 11 Cerquiglini-Toulet, ed., Fontaine, pp. 23–4; Ehrhart 1999, pp. 149–58. 12 The imprisonment of Charles d’Orléans did not preclude communication between him and his second wife, Bonne d’Armagnac. 13 Œuvres, vol. 3, pp. xxix–xxx and 261 n. to v. 2207.



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love her husband as her husband and her beloved as her lover. Does this lesson apply to Jean de Berry, who loves his wife as his wife and another woman as his beloved? May his wife apply the same lesson to her amorous life while her husband is away or at any other time? Here we encounter rich material for diverse audience discussion and debate. Importantly, whatever option one prefers, it can be acceptable in the Fontaine amoureuse if the love it describes is good. In the context of Machaut’s good love, the Fontaine lady’s ‘Confort d’amie’ rests on the same good hope and good love that Machaut promotes in the Remede and in the Confort d’ami. She urges her beloved to take her image with him (she now seems to know that he is leaving); for her part she will cherish his image, Car d’Esperance la seüre Par ton ymage nette et pure Contre Desir et sa pointure Me garniray. (Fontaine, v. 2267–70) [for I shall arm myself against Desire and its sting with secure Hope by relying on my clear, pure image of you.]

Her douce pensee on his image generates the same ‘plaisence’ (Fontaine, v. 2330) from love that her beloved may have by clinging to ‘de mercy / Bonne esperence’ (Fontaine, v. 2333–4) [good hope for mercy]. The meaning of ‘mercy’ depends, of course, on which of the aforementioned relationships one envisages – on whether her mercy is honnête or villain, conjugal or extramarital, or simply exemplary of, for example, souffisance, as in the Remede. Reflecting the evershifting tensions between hope and desire, the Fontaine amoureuse is a fortiori open-ended in its optimistic conclusion because the solution to its quandary depends on how audiences read the principal actors in the light of the good love that the Remede and Confort describe.14

Turbulence and Hope in the Voir Dit Up to its approximate midpoint the Voir Dit follows a gradus amoris15 composed of what Paul Imbs has aptly termed ‘mercis honnêtes’.16 The stages include Toute Belle’s rondeau that initiates her relationship with Guillaume by declaring her reputation-inspired love for him. He too experiences amour par ouïdire after reading her rondeau. There follows an account of their thoughts and

Ehrhart 1999. Brownlee 1984, p. 240 nn. 33–4 and 37. Brownlee more precisely locates the midpoint at Guillaume’s encounter with Esperance after his last meeting with Toute Belle (pp. 123–7; cf. Lechat 2005, p. 195). I discuss further the midpoint in narrative composition in chap. 3. 16 Imbs 1991, pp. 42, 260 nn. 18–19. 14 15

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e­ motions in epistolary and poetic exchanges, their first meeting and sight of one another, and subsequent encounters that include embraces, kisses, and, finally, the mysterious consummation that takes place under cover of Venus’s cloud. Anomalies crop up from the start. First, as we have observed, Guillaume’s and Toute Belle’s gradus amoris recounts the love of an elderly magister who will teach his young, female apprentice how to write better love poetry; in doing so, he and his pupil experience a love that, as Machaut recounts it, exemplifies the same desire–hope conflict that comes to the fore in the Fontaine amoureuse; but, unlike his counterpart in the Alerion, here Guillaume does not manage his magisterial role well at all because his love is highly unstable. A second anomaly arises because Toute Belle initiates their gradus amoris, contrary to the conventional passive role courtly literature assigns to the woman: ‘dame doit en riant refuser / Et amis doit prier en souspirant’ (Loange 254/1, v. 35–6) [a lady is supposed to reject with a smile and a suitor plead with sighs], a role the voice violates, as does Toute Belle.17 Indeed, Toute Belle emerges as one of the more enterprising young women lovers in medieval literature – young women like Nicolete in Aucassin et Nicolete, Liénor in Jean Renart’s Roman de la rose, and Marthe in Ysaÿe le triste.18 Her enterprising spirit inspires Guillaume’s likening of Toute Belle to Semiramis: both ladies dominate and impose order in their respective realms, rebellious Babylon for Semiramis and distressed Guillaume for Toute Belle (VD, v. 4883–972/4956–5045), a notable instance of the application of the same paradigm to analogous conduct in different contexts that we find in the Confort d’ami. In addition to age and Toute Belle’s unconventional role as lover, a third anomaly occurs in the final stage of their gradus amoris, under what we might call Venus’s ‘cloud of unknowing’. The reader learns nothing about what specifically transpires beneath that cloud except for the composition of some verse, a chanson baladée by Guillaume claiming that Toute Belle’s honor is intact (VD, v. 4028–31/4130–3, 4044–9/4146–51), a rondeau by Toute Belle composed at the time Venus’s ‘miracle’ takes place (VD, v. 4170–1/4290–1, p. 372d/280), and, ultimately, the entire Voir Dit itself. Although it does seem that ‘Guillaume discovers … that writing does not reenact or enable lovemaking but, rather, replaces it entirely,’19 there remain real problems in interpreting this episode. Critically, the solution to these problems is essential to Machaut’s notion of good love, especially taking into account that love’s feasibility and credibility 17 According to Loange 201/94, the lady ‘Qui de s’onneur vuet faire bonne garde’ (v. 8) [who wants to keep good watch over her honor] must be ‘en tous fais amoureus couarde’ (v. 7) [a coward in everything she does pertaining to love]. Toute Belle is no coward. For diverse interpretations of this ballade, especially its music, see Hirshberg 2003; Lefferts 2003; Leach 2011, p. 247 n. 122. In Complainte 2 a woman’s voice describes the stalemate that occurs when neither the man nor the woman has the courage to declare love. 18 Cf. Boulton 1990, p. 46; Imbs 1991, pp. 29–30; Attwood 1998, p. 99; Schwarze 2003, pp. 52–3; McGrady 2006a, pp. 52–5; Taylor 2006c. Marthe initiates the relation, like Toute Belle, in a letter that declares her love ‘par oïr dire’ of Ysaÿe’s reputation (Ysaÿe, par. 96). 19 Huot 1987, p. 285; see also Boulton 1993, p. 201; Fasseur 2006a, p. 180.

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in the Voir Dit as well as in a medieval social environment in which a woman’s honor was gravely compromised by even the suspicion not only of an extramarital amorous relation, but even of a pre-conjugal one. Toute Belle’s honor is exposed to the same threat when she forthrightly declares her love for Guillaume not only to him but to the whole world through their poetry and, indeed, the Voir Dit itself. She does so because, as she puts it, there is nothing to hide, an assertion she makes even as Venus hides Guillaume’s rendezvous with her beneath the cloud. If there is indeed nothing to hide, why did Machaut introduce the cloud?20 Both before and after this midpoint episode Guillaume oscillates between desire and hope. His emotional turbulence is punctuated and counterpointed by seasonal changes, weather alternately fair and foul, epidemics, and war. As with the comparison to Babylon’s Semiramis, these ‘natural’ occurrences mirror emotional ups-and-downs that are as strife-ridden as the world roundabout.21 A psychomachia22 involving Desire and Hope engages powerful forces that alternately sustain and overwhelm the lovers. La parlames de nos amours, Des griés, des paines, des clamours Que Desirs fait aus vrais amans Et aus dames qui sont amans; Comment il vient, lance sur fautre, Assembler a l’un et a l’autre; Comme il les assaut et detaille De sa lance dont li fers taille; Comment il les navre et defent, S’Esperance ne les deffent. Mais moult souvent le pris emporte Desirs, quant Esperance forte N’est contre li pour bien combatre: Lors couvient sa baniere abatre Et Douce Esperance estre en fuite Pour ce que scet trop po de luite.  (VD, v. 3521–36/3623–38) [There we talked about our love, the grief, pains, and complaints that Desire inflicts on true lovers and ladies in love; how he comes, lance ready, engaging both of them, how he attacks, cutting them to 20

view.

In the Echecs am2, v. 4652–9, Jupiter hides Io in a cloud to hide their intercourse from

21 According to the verse Echecs amoureux, a person’s état d’âme can influence the elements (Echecs am2, v. 3739–86). For diverse perspectives on natural occurrences in Machaut’s poetry, see Poirion 1982; Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, pp. 39, 72–3, 103; Newels 1989; Zink 1991, pp. 275–80; Ehrhart 1992, pp. 7–10; Cerquiglini-Toulet 1993b, pp. 93–5; Cerquiglini-Toulet, ed., VD, pp. 12–13; Bétemps 1998, pp. 191–2; Boutet 2000; Fasseur 2006b; Jeay 2006b. 22 In the Voir Dit, conflict is also evident in a psychomachia that pits Esperance against Honte and Peur (v. 2082–266/2184–368, 2283–7/2385–9).

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pieces with the lance whose iron point slashes, how he wounds and hurts them if Hope does not defend them. But quite often Desire wins the prize when Hope is not strong enough to fight well against him. Then, obliged to let her banner fall, sweet Hope takes flight because she knows scarcely anything about combat.]

Despite these commonplace tribulations, Toute Belle remains remarkably stable in her sentiments, hopes, and optimism throughout the Voir Dit, successfully countering desire with good hope. In other words, Toute Belle’s love is the same good love that Esperance promotes and that, therefore, she herself exemplifies. Elle souffroit en paciance Pour ce qu’elle avoit esperance Qu’onques ne fu qu’encor ne soit; Car cilz qui telz dolours ressoit Ne se doit pas desesperer Pour Desir, ains doit esperer Que, comment que joie demeure, Encore venra la bonne heure Que de la tresdouce rousee De Mercy sera arrousee Sa tresgrant ardeur et estainte.  (VD, v. 4745–55/4818–28) [She endured patiently because she hoped that it would be true that nothing ever happened that might not recur.23 For whoever endures such sorrow must not despair on account of Desire, but rather hope that, however tardy joy may be in coming, the happy time will still arrive when Mercy’s sweet dew quenches their intense ardor.]

Toute Belle shows that good hope can be stronger than desire. In this scenario, Guillaume is the weak lover. He fluctuates constantly,24 a weakness and, indeed, lack of virtue that he does not deny. Souvent de li me doubtoie Et souvent m’en asseüroie, Ainsi com mes entendemens Faisoit ses divers jugemens. (VD, v. 3341–4/3443–6) [I often doubted her and just as often reassured myself, as my understanding came to diverse judgments.]

23 The translation of v. 4746–7/4819–20 is uncertain. Imbs translates ‘elle avait l’espoir que se vérifierait pour elle le dicton que jamais une chose n’était arrivée qui ne pût arriver ancore’ (p. 421) whereas Leech-Wilkinson has ‘she hoped that what had never been might still come to pass’ (p. 317). 24 VD, p. 78a/34–6, v. 589–600, 635–47, 1100–14/1156–77, 1187–92/1250–5, 1380– 8/1450–8, 1456–7/1526–7, p. 168b/108–10, v. 1644–6/1714–16, 1699–703/1769–73, p. 270b/196–8, v. 2919–32/3021–34, 3241–50/3343–52, p. 308bc/226, etc.

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Elsewhere, Guillaume sententiously explains such instability as normal. Que cilz qui sent l’amoureus point N’est mie tousdis en un point, Ainçois reçoit mainte pointure, Une heure douce, l’autre sure.25 (VD, v. 4622–5/4742–5) [For he who feels the sting of love is never stable all the time, but receives many a jab, sometimes sweet, at other times bitter.]

Unlike Toute Belle, he is weakened when he loses hope. Because of his weakness, Esperance does take flight in his case. Self-reflexively, Guillaume is aware of his weakness. He admits that his instability is a meffait that wrongs both Esperance and Toute Belle. Recovery is possible only when he restores the virtue that governs good love. As he puts it in Letter 21, ‘Si vous plaise a savoir, ma douce amour, que onques ne fui en si grant peril comme j’ai esté, se ce ne fust li souvenirs et li doulz pensers que j’ai eu et ai a vous, car yceulz me donnent et ont donné si grant vertu que, mercy a Dieu et a vous, je sui eschapés des mauvais’ (VD, p. 402a/304) [May it please you to know, my sweet love, that I was never in such great peril as I have been, but, thanks to the memory and sweet thoughts I had and have about you, I receive and have received such great virtue that, thanks be to God and to you, I have escaped from the bad thoughts]. In this case, Guillaume is speaking of the dangers of traveling during the Hundred Years War, using one context to reflect upon a different one. Moral stamina generated from his love for Toute Belle should sustain him during real or imagined perils (VD, p. 404b/304–6). Guillaume’s experience inspires the composition of a Lay d’Esperance (VD, v. 4342–597/4462–717) that he sends to Toute Belle together with Letter 21. Esperance sharply rebukes his claim that she is not strong enough to defeat Desire. ‘Vous m’avez griément meffait, S’en corrigerai le meffait.’ Aprés, aussi com par courrous, Me dist ‘tu’, et laissa le ‘vous’.26 (VD, v. 420–3/4340–3) [‘You have sorely wronged me and I shall correct this wrong.’ Afterwards, as if in anger, she addressed me with tu and stopped using vous.]

25 Similarly, VD, v. 1261–4/1331–4, 1568–85/1638–55, 2872–9/2974–81. He glosses this lesson in Letter 33, pp. 554–6a/428. 26 Another instance of Machaut’s sometimes discriminating use of tu and vous occurs when addressing Toute Belle’s portrait: ‘Moult courtoisement l’avousai’ [most courteously I spoke to her using vous] (cf. VD, v. 8142/8215). Context determines usage. See the analogous question of using tu, but in the different, clerical context of the Rose debate Christine de Pizan instigates (Débat passim) and that in the context of patronage discussed below in n. 132.

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Guillaume forgot that Esperance is a solid bulwark against instability (VD, v. 595–600, 2254–66/2356–68). Now he concedes that ‘Esperance avoit droit / Et je le tort en tout endroit’ (VD, v. 4268–9/4388–9) [Esperance was right and I was totally wrong]; his misdeed is analogous to that which he commits against Bonneurté in the Navarre. Guillaume therefore writes the Voir Dit’s Lay d’Esperance as a virtual amende.27 The meffait occurs because Guillaume, by offering only weak resistance to Desire’s assaults, fails to give Esperance her due as his ‘champions / En toutes tribulations’ (VD, v. 4228–9/4348–9) [champion in all tribulations]. Consequently, in the Lai d’Esperance he acknowledges that ‘Espoir … me fait fort / Contre Desir qui me mort’ (VD, v. 4491–2/4611– 12) [Hope fortifies me against biting Desire]. Yet to learn one’s lesson is not the same as putting it into practice as Guillaume’s ongoing instability shows in the dit’s second half.28

Desire, Languor, and Love The tensions Machaut posits between desire and hope contrast weakness, or langueur, with fortitude, a virtue that produces vigueur. In a ballade in which a lover insists that he has served his lady faithfully, Machaut sums up his conception of languor and its relation to loss of vigor because of all-consuming, yet impotent desire. A man’s voice asserts that he has faithfully served his lady, Comment que j’aie en desirant langui Moult longuement en tristece et en plour; Dont j’ay perdu si le pouoir de my, Que je n’ay mais maniere ne vigour. Pour ce vueil bien morir de la dolour Qui par desir mon cuer d’amer enflame, Au gré d’Amours et à l’onneur ma dame.29 (Loange 6/186, v. 8–14) [although I have languished from desire for a very long time in sadness and tears; as a result, I have lost so much of my self-control that I no longer have normal character or vigor. That’s why I am willing to die from the sorrow that, by desire, enflames my heart with love, with Love’s approval and to my lady’s honor.]

Newes 2003. The distinction between knowing the truth and understanding it is made in the Remede when Guillaume sets out his conception of good love in the dit’s lay, then, perhaps in imitation of Boethius’s memory lapses at the outset of the Consolation’s Book One, Guillaume forgets what he knows in his ensuing complainte (Kelly 1978, p. 132). As with Amant listening to Reason in the Roman de la rose, knowledge easily goes in one ear and out the other. 29 Examples of this state are commonplace in Machaut’s lyrics. Therefore I cite only a few here to illustrate my argument. 27 28

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Here, languor is without hope and thus approaches despair.30 This fits the traditional Erlebnismuster in which lovers in medieval literature conventionally languish while hoping, as it were, against hope (Loange 143/28, v. 19). However, as might be expected in Machaut’s poetry, languor is not entirely as tradition dictates. In the context of Machaut’s good love, it represents the lack of good hope (Lai 21, v. 211–27) that proves debilitating, for good hope actually sustains the lover’s ‘vigour’ (Remede, v. 3285). Thus, although languor may come from the beloved’s désamour, as happens to the Behaigne nobleman, it can also arise when lovers are separated, as in the Alerion, the Fontaine amoureuse, and the Voir Dit. During separations, however, the faithful, truly hopeful lover may, paradoxically, languish ‘en joliveté’ (Loange 166/65, v. 12) [in pleasure], as in Lai 7, in which, thanks to good love, one may   mout liement  Et tres doucement  Amoureusement Languir, sans avoir torment,  Tristesse n’esmay.  (Lai 7, v. 32–6) [quite happily, very gently and lovingly languish without suffering torment, sadness, or dismay.]

In other words, good lovers simply miss one another without fearing inconstancy or indifference.31 By contrast, debilitating languor results from frustrated desire in all love’s stages, whether in gradus amoris or continuatio amoris. Women too languish in a debilitating manner when they lose good hope (BalNot 6).32 Toute Belle, in perhaps her weakest moment, describes how languor weakens her virtue.   Ma vertu afflebie Est si dolereusement Que, sans faire cessement, Tourmenteë et pallie, Maudi mes jours et ma vie Sans avoir confortement.  (VD, v. 8481–6/8560–5) [My virtue is so cruelly weakened that, tormented and wan, I constantly curse my days and my life without receiving any comfort.]

Vertu comprises physical strength and moral force; when it languishes, as here, Toute Belle’s resolve and hope weaken too. There is clearly no joy in her languor. She even contemplates death as an end to what we might call her gradus languoris. 30 31 32

Cf. Loange 47/4, v. 17–24, and 58/57, v. 12; Vir 12, v. 31–41; JB, v. 489–91, 1755–9. Leach 2011, pp. 144–9. Leach 2011, p. 245 n. 115.

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This commonplace ‘vertu afflebie’ – ‘Quia amore langueo’ (Tenor to Machaut’s Motet 14) [for I languish in love] – is equivalent to moral and artistic impotence, a variety of aecidia that medieval poets often identify with dying. As the Remede puts the matter, ‘il me vaut trop mieus morir / Pour vous a un cop que languir’33 (Remede, v. 4191–2/4189–90) [it is far better for me to die once and for all than to languish]. Although Chartier’s Belle Dame sans mercy claims that hardly any lover actually dies a love death, languor is an almost universal kind of dying in medieval literature. Love, by Andreas’s definition, is a moribund malady; for Machaut, languor is one of its symptoms. Perhaps more importantly for the apprentice poet reading the Voir Dit, languor is also assimilated to poetic impotence; love and poetry are again deeply intertwined. At the outset of the Voir Dit, Guillaume’s languor prevents him from writing poetry until Toute Belle enters his life (VD, v. 61–70). And, like him, Toute Belle is unable to write the third stanza of the virelai in which the foregoing lines on her ‘vertu afflebie’ appear (v. 8488–91/8573–6). The experience of languor as an impediment to composition is an important illustration of the close link between Machaut’s arts of poetry and love and of their breakdown when one or the other art fails.

Continuatio Amoris in the Voir Dit The Venus cloud episode concludes Guillaume’s gradus amoris (I discuss this crucial episode below). If love endures afterwards, the new phase becomes what Andreas Capellanus calls continuatio amoris, a stage with its own commonplace features. Medieval narratives treat this phase less often, in part because of the impossibility of love outside marriage (the lyric model); or because lovers marry and live, presumably, happily ever after (the romance model) – although, of course, exceptions to the ‘happiness forever after’ script do exist: Erec and Enide, Yvain and Laudine, as well as the Dame de Fayel and her husband in Jakemes’s Châtelain de Coucy and couples in the two late medieval narratives, the Seigneurs de Gavre and the Comte d’Artois.34 Christine de Pizan’s dits also focus on the fate of all lovers, including wives, who languish because of separation, doubts, jealousy, loveless marriages, bereavement, and a disturbing inability to communicate and trust. But for unmarried lovers, there is no single commonplace gradus for this often gloomy continuation into realms in which, according to Andreas Capellanus’s broad script, love is never stable: it must ever grow or it will inevitably decline (De amore, Book Two). In the Voir Dit, various paths are open to Guillaume after the Venus cloud ‘consummation’. He can abandon love as folly for diverse reasons. Or he can go on wavering, as before, between desire and good hope. Finally, he can claim

33 34

Cf. Loange 58/57, v. 8–12. Kelly 1999a, pp. 231–42; Kelly 2004b, pp. 357–61.

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that he erred and seek anew a good love like his counterpart in the Alerion, leaving Toute Belle to an alleged fickleness analogous to women who playact love in the Dit dou lyon and the Alerion. He can also seek a new love like his counterpart in the Roman de la rose. But, unlike the Rose’s lover, Guillaume is not a womanizer. He never even considers this option. Machaut’s aging Guillaume may have inspired Erlebnismuster that we find in some poets who wrote after him. As we shall see in Part III, as they age, lovers in Froissart’s Joli Buisson, Evrart de Conty’s Echecs amoureux, and Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant contemplate different routes analogous to the contemplative life, the active life, and the voluptuous life.35 The Echecs lover chooses the path that leads to a Garden of Deduit, a reprise of the Rose’s locus amoenus. Once there, he is advised by Courtoisie to avoid vilonnie (Echecs am1, (II) v. 3872–81; Echecs am2, v. 210–19). The Echecs moralisés uses the occasion to amplify on the three pathways open to him, basing the distinction on the kind of plaisance the lover seeks (Echecs mor, 133v38–137r12). Thus, readers encounter: the indiscriminate lust of those who, like the Rose’s Amant, are commeres, or busybody lovers36 who, along with constant lovers who seek physical pleasure but remain loyal, and finally, chaste lovers who eschew delectacion in favor of what Machaut calls good love.37 Love is a quest and the routes are determined, as in Arthurian quests, by the character of the quester, whose responses to encounters along the way define the kind of love life he or she chooses. Jacques Le Goff’s notion of the ‘long moyen âge’38 authorizes my drawing the following comparison of medieval lovers’ continuationes amoris with a seventeenth-century novel that illuminates, I believe, Toute Belle’s and Guillaume’s vicissitudes with an image that would have been comprehensible in Machaut’s time. The Voir Dit’s narrative is a virtual carte de Tendre, the fictional topography depicted in Madeleine de Scudéry’s Clélie (1654–60).39 Her novel suggests the same commonplace script for a gradus amoris followed by a continuatio amoris that we find in the Voir Dit, complete with three paths by which one falls in love: love by reconnaissance, by inclination, and by estime. In Toute Belle’s case, love is tendre sur estime, whereas Guillaume’s love for 35 In Echecs am1 (I) v. 681–98, the choice is allegorically exemplified by Paris’s Judgment (Sieper 1898, pp. 14–27, 139–49); Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant errs until learning the folly of young love (p. 43: v. 107–12, and 665–8: 8801–64); on life in the religious and matrimonial orders in Thomas’s dit, see Ruhe 1984; Ward, ed., Chevalier errant, pp. xcii– xciii. 36 Kelly 2007, pp. 121–2 n. 58; these commeres are analogous to the Lyon’s frères and sœurs aisiés. 37 On these choices, see Echecs mor, 163v48–164r43, 164v24–37, 271v36–272r8. I discuss them further in chap. 6. 38 Le Goff 2003, chap. two. 39 On what follows, and for a reproduction of the carte de Tendre, see DeJean 1989. For a similar description of different kinds of innamoramento in the topography of Froissart’s Meliador, see Bragantini-Maillard 2008, pp. 167–8.

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her recalls tendre sur reconnaissance because Toute Belle ‘resuscitates’ him more than once, ‘miracles’ for which he never tires of expressing gratitude.40 But, along the way, lovers may stray into diverse byways – dead ends like oubli, méchanceté, or indifférence. All is not necessarily well for those who complete any of the three acceptable versions of the novel’s gradus amoris. Dangers and unknown or unforeseen obstacles – a ‘mer dangereuse’ leading to ‘terres inconnues’41 – lie ahead. The similarities between the carte de Tendre in Clélie and the gradus and continuatio amoris in the Voir Dit offer a virtual map of the progress and vicissitudes of Machaut’s lovers. Casting light on their uncertain future, the hopes and perils lovers confront as they seek to preserve a good love in the face of doubts, the carte adumbrates the misunderstandings, jealousies, instability, and médisance that may befall lovers as they continue on their uncertain way into love’s ‘terres inconnues’. Thus, as in the carte de Tendre, the Voir Dit’s continuatio amoris inaugurates grave troubles and emotionally charged debates that transpire partly in Guillaume’s mind, sometimes as dreams, but that also engage outsiders and, of course, Toute Belle herself. Since the lovers do not meet again after the Venus cloud episode,42 this segment offers parallels with the separation that begins at the end of the Fontaine amoureuse. Fraught with problems, the Voir Dit’s continuatio includes Guillaume’s doubts and his hopes in Toute Belle’s constancy; these markers of his own mutability and instability stem from desire and jealousy, two possessive obstacles to good love. That is, Guillaume is a virtual ‘human oxymoron’.43 The oxymoron ‘esperance desesperee’ (Rose, v. 4268) featured in Jean de Meun’s description of love aptly encapsulates Guillaume’s emotional instability throughout the Voir Dit, alternately secure in his hope and tortured by 40 VD, p. 80b/36, v. 825, pp. 124b/74, 154e/96: v. 1510/1580, 1859/1946, 2120/2222 (according to Honte, a personification of Guillaume’s sentiment). On resuscitation through love, a commonplace in Machaut’s dits, see De Looze 1988, pp. 203–4. 41 Cf. Leach 2011, pp. 210–20, on ‘Fortune’s Tempestuous Seas’. The dangers in sailing abroad evoked in the Fontaine’s Ceyx and Alcyone example (v. 543–4, 695–8) are as great as traveling overland in time of war and during storms in the Voir Dit, v. 5446–59/5519–32, 6542–635/6615–708. In the Tresor amoureux, the god of love explains that Espoir guards lovers ‘de peril en haulte mer’ (TAm, p. 65: v. 429); cf. as well ‘Il est en peril par amer / Comme celui qui est en mer / En petit vaissel à l’orage’ (TAm, p. 195: v. 1911–13) [He is in peril in love like the man who is at sea in a small boat during a storm]; ‘les yaues parfondes … pevent signifier les perilz et les paines et les grans pensees parfondes dont les amans sont souvent travailliés’ (Echecs mor, 262r49–v1) [the deep waters can signify the perils, pains, and anxieties great and profound that often torment lovers]. I am not, of course, claiming direct influence of Machaut on Clélie, but rather a mutually illuminating kind of pre-modern psychological analysis and their analogies; the three ways commonplace in the medieval works and Clélie illustrate a common medieval and early modern psychology of love. 42 As noted in chapter 1, separation is a commonplace motif in Machaut’s lyrics, whether a given poem falls into a gradus amoris or continuatio amoris. Christine de Pizan highlights the grave problems caused by separation in all her love-narrative dits (Kelly 2007, pp. 129–40). On the perils of separation according to Andreas Capellanus, see Monson 2005b, pp. 223–36. 43 I borrow this expression from Enders 1992a, p. 12.

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desire and anxieties that give rise to jealousy and languor. In the dialogues and debates of their continuatio amoris, these soul-splitting emotions are depicted in debates that take place not only in Guillaume’s mind but also between him and various figures, including Toute Belle, some acquaintances, a roi qui ne ment, and a priest. Through its debates, the dit offers lessons on good and bad loves in the dual contexts of apprenticeship and, importantly here, Machaut’s linking his art of love to his art of poetry (see chapter five on debates in Machaut).

Apprenticeship in Love and Poetry In the Voir Dit, Machaut/Guillaume is ‘un je qui enseigne’.44 As poet, he teaches the art of poetry to his pupil, Toute Belle. But she too is ‘un je qui enseigne’. She teaches an art of love. The master–pupil roles reverse when the pupil in the art of poetry becomes the dispenser of doctrine in the art of love. As virtuous master, Toute Belle promotes and exemplifies Machaut’s good love and the art by which it is practiced. Guillaume does indeed have a lot to learn and understand about Machaut’s principal subject. Guillaume is grateful for Toute Belle’s love and esteem despite his age, physical defects, and infirmities. Indeed, the young woman, a teenager between fifteen and twenty years old (VD, v. 2050/2152), loves the poetry of a sexagenarian who has lost the use of one eye45 and is afflicted with gout and other ailments and infirmities, further confirmation, if needed, that physical attraction is not the source of Toute Belle’s affection.46 Guillaume also fears that Toute Belle will find him inferior because she is noble even though she does assert that his social standing is not an obstacle to her love (VD, v. 1265–72/1335–42, 1295–9/1365–9, pp. 150–2c/94–6). Despite her beloved’s Chaucerian unliklynesse, she confesses: ‘je ne vous aimme point pour biauté ne pour plaisance que je veisse onques en vous, ains vous aime pour la bonté et bonne renommee de vous’ (VD, p. 160b/102) [I don’t love you for any beauty or pleasing features that I ever saw in you; rather, I love you for your goodness and your fine reputation]. Her tendre sur estime is based on Guillaume’s writings and fame.47 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, p. 165. The Middle Ages associated being borgne with impotence (Cerquiglini-Toulet 2001a, pp. 187–91), an important factor when interpreting the two bedroom episodes in the Voir Dit. Cf. Jeay 2006a, pp. 312–13; Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, in Poétiques, p. 94. 46 In Andreas Capellanus’s terminology, her love is a chaste amor sapiens, deriving from her appreciation of Guillaume’s poetry, not an amor simplex based on physical charms. In this respect, Guillaume is a lover like the deformed King of Hungary Andreas gives as an example of such love (Monson 2005b, p. 244). The issue also arises in the thirteenth-century romance Sone de Nansay (Lachet 1992, pp. 261, 709–10). Guillaume’s love evinces similarities and contrasts with Polypheme’s love for Galatea, a Voir Dit example that I discuss in chapter four. 47 ‘L’admiration amoureuse de [Toute Belle] s’appuie sur l’estime générale dont le maître est déjà entouré’ (Poirion 1965, p. 203). See also VD, v. 210–12, p. 94d/46–8, v. 1876– 91/1973–93, p. 432b/326, v. 8962–3/9047–8. 44

45

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Thus, Toute Belle begins to love as an aspiring pupil who wants Guillaume to teach her how to write the kind of poetry she admires and wishes to imitate. Of Machaut’s writings, she seems initially to know only some lyrics, not the dits (VD, p. 162f/104). However, the gender difference in the Voir Dit48 opens up a distinctly new scope to Machaut’s admonition in the Remede to anyone learning an art: ‘Aimme son maistre et son mestier / Sus tout’ (Remede, v. 9–10) [love one’s master and his craft above all].49 The admonition conjoins the twin arts of poetry and love, in the Remede and the Voir Dit, as the complementary relation between poetry and love that Machaut’s Prologue describes: to write de sentement one must also love de sentement.

Confort in Love and Apprenticeship Perhaps Guillaume’s age and condition play a role as well in the Voir Dit’s emphasis on the confort d’amie motif that Machaut develops in the Fontaine amoureuse. This ‘comfort’ is a form of Boethian consolation that restores harmony between lovers when they confront life’s and love’s vicissitudes.50 At the outset of the Voir Dit, for example, Guillaume states that ‘doucement sui confortés / Par elle’ (VD, v. 45–6) [I am gently comforted by her]. Comfort comes as love is granted; it is Toute Belle’s ‘comfort’ that often ‘resuscitates’ him. Indeed, confort d’amie is a recurrent, almost obsessive motif in the Voir Dit;51 the personification Esperance also comforts Guillaume on occasion while assuring him of Toute Belle’s ongoing comfort if Guillaume keeps his good hope alive (VD, v. 2218–21/2320–3).52 The Voir Dit’s Guillaume certainly seems to require a lot of comfort. This is obvious if one compares the prominence of the motif in the Voir Dit with its place in Machaut’s earlier dits. In the Alerion Guillaume requires no comfort whenever his ‘lady birds’ prove inconstant. He simply stops loving them. For her part, Toute Belle is at a loss to explain why she is called upon so often for comfort. ‘Sachiés que je me merveille moult pour quoy vous faites telz plains ne telz clamours, ne pour quoy vous menés si dure vie’ (VD, p. 414a/314)53 Fasseur 2006a, pp. 162–4. The difference is obvious if one contrasts Guillaume’s relation to Toute Belle with Machaut’s relation to his other known pupil, Eustache Deschamps (cf. Page 1977; Earp 1995, pp. 55–8). 50 Boulton 1993, pp. 198–200; Lechat 2005, pp. 140–1. 51 VD, v. 43–6, 226–35 (by Amour), 746–51, p. 140d/86, v. 1248–60/1311–23, 1403/1473, p. 172a/110 beginning, v. 1551–3/1621–3, 1959–63/2061–5, 2807–12/2909–14 (by a bevy of ladies and maidens Toute Belle sends), 2893–4/2995–6, pp. 270b/196 (by her image), 276c/200, v. 2945–6/3047–8, 2986–90/3088–92, pp. 286b/206–8, 290b/212, v. 3247–50/3349–52, pp. 672b/524, 782e/620. 52 VD, v. 2177–83/2279–85, 2254/2356, 2266/2368, p. 308c/226 (together with Toute Belle’s ‘ymage’), v. 4258–60/4378–80, 4488–93/4608–13, 4949–52/5022–5. 53 A motif borrowed perhaps from Boethius (Consolation, Book I, prose 2), but found 48 49

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[Know that I greatly wonder why you complain and carry on so, and why you lead such a hard life]. Given his alleged good love, it should suffice to make him confident if she grants him merci honnête, or pure love. Unlike his more positive role vis-à-vis his insecure patrons in the Confort d’ami and the Fontaine amoureuse, in the Voir Dit Guillaume finds it difficult to live by the standards Machaut promotes in the Remede, the Confort, and the Alerion. In the Voir Dit, he surrenders too easily to desire: his love is more often possessive and jealous than confident and serene. Comforting his or her master is hardly a pupil’s duty (not surprisingly, Legrand never mentions it in the Archiloge Sophie). In Toute Belle’s case, however, her comfort functions like music: it gives pleasure.54 Indeed, Toute Belle identifies music as a source of comfort. Thus, in a complainte she writes that she suffers because Guillaume’s absence deprives her of comfort, although Esperance does help her ‘a little’ (VD, v. 1383/1453).55 She therefore asks Guillaume to include music with the poems he sends her; he frequently does so.56 This is the only kind of confort d’ami – that is, Guillaume comforting Toute Belle – that she requests; she does so almost as frequently as her poet seeks comfort. Only once, in Letter 40, does she explicitly complain that he fails to comfort her (VD, pp. 674cd/526). Comfort as reassurance is a commonplace request by male lovers in Machaut’s lyrics. Pour ce pri qu’en bon espoir Et en gracieus confort Me meinteingne main et soir Celle dont tous li biens sort.57 (Loange 28/105, v. 17–20) [That’s why I beseech her from whom all that is good springs to keep me in good hope and gracious comfort morning and evening.]

Comforting may even benefit the woman in love. In Machaut’s Lay 10, for example, a woman’s voice despairs at the prospect of a long separation; then, while consoling her beloved, she recovers hope and overcomes desire. But she does so on her own. Machaut’s other lyric women sometimes comfort their also in Esperance’s remonstrances in the Remede (Kelly 1978, p. 132). 54 Zeeman 1988, pp. 824–7, 833; cf. Lukitsch 1983, pp. 263–4; Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, in Poétiques, pp. 33–5. On music and versifying, Nature’s gifts in the Prologue, see Mulder 1978, pp. 73–124; Leech-Wilkinson 1993a and 1993b, pp. 133–40; Huot 1997. 55 See also VD, v. 8485–6/8564–5, p. 748c/592. 56 VD, pp. 72bd/30, 78–80b/36, 94bc/46, 96fg/48, 128r/78, 138ab/86, 140e/86, 146/92 (‘y a chant’), 154f/96, 162f/104, 182/120 (‘y a chant’), 186–8ce/124, 21–2, v. 2499–510/2601– 12, pp. 404b/306 with 408c/308, 424f/320, 460f/346, 506d/388–90, 522k/400, 5241/400, 540e[f]/416, v. 6249–50/6322–3, pp. 570f/438, 572i/440, 574/440 (‘y a chant’), v. 6411– 20/6484–93, pp. 588/452 (‘y a chant’), 594f/456, 668/522 (‘y a chant’), 782d/620. 57 See also Loange 9/197, v. 17–19; 48/7, v. 11–20, 36–7; 58/57, v. 19–20; 71/169, refrain; 74/99, v. 1–2; etc.

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languishing lovers (cf. Loange 74/99, v. 1–7). The Virgin Mary too comforts ‘viriliter’ her devotees (Motet 23, v. 46). Machaut’s poetry also comforts his patrons, as Guillaume does in the Confort d’ami and the Fontaine amoureuse.58 In the Voir Dit, the love-poetry allegory explains Toute Belle’s relation to Guillaume in the confort d’amie context. As his amie, she becomes master of the pupil, Guillaume, because his love is unstable and therefore unreliable, precisely because he doubts her love or suspects her of inconstancy. Guillaume evinces little of the virtuous, rational stability we observe in his counterpart in the Alerion, where good love is supreme and languor insignificant or entirely absent. The basis for Toute Belle’s authority, then, is her steadfast and lucid illustration of what Machaut means by good love and good hope in the Remede and Confort. She can be hurt, but she never loses her stability, her awareness of who she is and what she is doing, or the quality and character of the love she feels for her poet. She assures Guillaume near the end of the dit that ‘sui tousjours en un propos de ce que je vous ai promis’ (VD, p. 746a/592) [I am ever fixed on what I promised you]. If the Voir Dit’s poet proves unworthy, she will terminate their relationship, as Guillaume does in the Alerion with the sparrow hawk and gyrfalcon. But unlike that dit’s male lover, she vows never to love again if Guillaume proves unworthy of her good love. This likens her both to the turtledove in the Jugement Navarre and to Christine de Pizan as widow, but not to the Alerion’s Guillaume. To substantiate these assertions, let us look more closely at Machaut’s complex representation of Toute Belle, her thoughts and her actions.

Toute Belle’s Good Love Throughout the Voir Dit, but especially in its continuatio amoris, Guillaume and Toute Belle wander on uncertain paths through the terres inconnues of their carte de Tendre. Various persons intervene to offer diverse explanations for the real or alleged stability or instability they perceive in Guillaume’s or Toute Belle’s character and conduct. Although Guillaume is the final intradiegetic judge in deciding whether to continue loving Toute Belle, much as he is for the diverse allegorical birds of prey in the Alerion, the reader can find him- or herself seated on the extradiegetic judge’s bench evaluating commonplace opinions on love among men and women as they emerge and are exemplified in the Voir Dit’s continuatio amoris. The dit ends with reconciliation and a positive affirmation of good love. But that does not terminate the love story of Guillaume and Toute Belle. Nor does it pronounce final judgment on the issues it raises. Is Toute Belle’s love truly constant? Will Guillaume remain sure of her constancy, or will he again slip into doubts, jealousy, and misogyny? Guillaume’s last words in the dit promise undying love, even after death (v. 8997–9009/9082–94). But for 58

Calin 1994, p. 213.

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their love to survive death, their feelings must remain stable and their love virtuous as the Remede de Fortune construes such love. This is Toute Belle’s hope. Guillaume tells us near the beginning of his relationship with Toute Belle that ‘La bele me purifia / De tous vices’ (VD, v. 870–1)59 [the lovely woman purified me of all vices]. Although Guillaume does not name the vices he refers to, surely, in a fourteenth-century context, they would include the lust that undid Susanne’s old men in the Confort d’ami, or the carnal delectation that is the object of love in the Vergier and the Behaigne in which one loves the body more than the soul. When the body no longer dominates good love, virtue regulates the relationship and the chaste lovers’ love is good. Consequently, as seen in a number of Machaut’s lays, good love is honorable. For example, a lady De tous vices est lonteinne Et procheinne De pris, de grace et d’onnour,60 N’en li n’a tache vileinne: Tant est sainne, Pure et de haute valour.  (Lai 5, v. 23–8) [is far removed from all vices but near to worth, grace, and honor; nor is there any trace of villainy in her, so whole is she, pure and of high worth.]

These virtues make the beloved lovable (v. 29–32) and the love itself pure. In another lay, a man’s voice affirms a love so noble and pure that it rejects anyone who ‘pense à laidure’ (Lai 8, v. 112) [has in mind something despicable]. In still another lay, a woman’s voice expresses similar convictions. Affirming her happiness in loving the ideal man (Lai 9, v. 51–8), she asserts that any other man seeking her love    pert bien sa peinne  En moy qui se peinne Que sans pensée villeinne N’aimme mon amy D’amour pure et seinne.  (Lai 9, v. 87–91)61 [is wasting his time with me trying to prevent me from loving my beloved with a pure, wholesome love and no thought of villainy.]

While I find no reference to any homme pur in Machaut’s poetry, men’s love, whether personified or not, is described as pure.62 Equally pure and unadul59 Cf. VD, v. 4447/4567: ‘Car tous vices en despueil’ [for I rid myself of all vices on account of her]. 60 In the Alerion, honor is an eagle that defends women against seduction (v. 3619–56). 61 See also Lai 1, v. 91–5; 3, v. 175–7; 7, v. 84–8; 14, v. 175–80; 20, v. 19–26. 62 Loange 172/64, v. 1; 242/107, v. 1; 265/98, v. 9; 267/56, v. 2; Lai 8, v. 107–8; 21, v. 86.

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terated are other sentiments and thoughts, notably loyauté,63 volenté,64 bonté,65 beauté,66 douceur,67 plaisance,68 and grace.69 Likewise, in the Voir Dit, Toute Belle’s love is a ‘loial amour pure’ (v. 6502/6575). She uses the same attributes elsewhere to describe her love. ‘Veuilliez savoir,’ she tells him,   par esprouver L’amour qui en mon cuer demeure, Et vous verrés et sans demeure Que dessus toute creature Vous aim d’amour leal et pure.  (VD, v. 2586–90/2688–92) [Please learn by testing the love dwelling in my heart and you will see straight away that, more than any living creature, I love you with a constant, pure love.]

Later, her confessor vouches for the purity and constancy of her love. ‘Car je vous jur loialment qu’elle / Vous aime d’amour vraie et pure / Par deseur toute creature’ (VD, v. 8797–9/8882–4) [I swear to you faithfully that she loves you above every living creature with a true and pure love]. By persevering in such love, lovers achieve ‘parfaite souffisance … hors des dangiers de Fortune’ (VD, p. 780b/620) [perfect sufficiency beyond Fortune’s domination]. Souffisance is a merci honnête.70 Indeed, Machaut’s self-sufficient love mirrors the pure love promoted in late Occitan verse according to which good love for a woman should be as pure as love for the Virgin Mary, a comparison Machaut too uses to describe the pure love a devout believer might feel for Christ’s mother, the ‘Vierge pure’ (Lai 15, v. 69). Importantly, the moral, chaste sense of ‘purity’ is also apparent in references to Toute Belle as a dame pure and monde.71 Equally ‘pure’ are her ‘ymage’ (VD, v. 1588/1658) and her ‘bonté’ (VD, v. 6196/6269). Consequently Toute Belle and Guillaume experience ‘plaisance pure’ (VD, v. 3376/3478, 5075/5148) [pure pleasure], ‘envoiseüre … trespure’ (VD, v. 4485–6/4605–6) [very pure enjoyment], and ‘pure … douceur’ (VD, p. 426i/322:31) [pure sweetness]; their pleasure is ‘honnourable esbatement’ (VD, v. 3822/3923)72 [honorable revelry], analogous to that evoked by a woman’s voice in Loange 175/110: ‘la merci qui ainsi me refait, / C’est de veoir seulement et oïr / Mon cuer, m’amour et quanque je desir’ (v. 22–4) [the mercy that Loange 2/44, v. 17; 25/118, v. 20; 41/55, v. 8, 45/2, v. 11; Lai 9, v. 174. Loange 7/151, v. 6; 133/79, v. 17; Lai 3, v. 196 (voloir). 65 Loange 8/205, v. 4. 66 Lai 11, v. 51. 67 Lai 19, v. 95; Vir 30, v. 21. 68 Lai 13, v. 252. 69 Loange 175/110, v. 3; Vir 12, v. 50. 70 VD, v. 1035–47/1063–75, pp. 150b/94, 154e/96, v. 3712–26/3814–28, 3747–62/3851– 64, 3820–2/3922–4, 4050–61/4158–69, 4071–3/4185–7, 8630–41/8715–26. 71 VD, v. 620, 1701/1771, 4979/5052, 6196/6269, 6222/6295, 6272/6345, 6456/6529. 72 This describes the Lendit revelry that I discuss below. 63

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restores me in this way comes only from gazing on and hearing my heart, my love, and all that I desire].

Toute Belle’s Tresor The Voir Dit refers frequently to Toute Belle’s tresor, which, for reasons that will become clear, I translate here as her treasure-trove.73 She has even given Guillaume the key to it, a gift she frequently reminds him of.74 The image is certainly suggestive in a positive sense. In another passage that describes the treasure-trove, Machaut likens Toute Belle’s beauty to precious stones. Her superiority over all other women is comparable to that of the ‘escharboucle’, the mythical stone that shines brightly in total darkness (VD, v. 119–20, p. 426i/322). Machaut continues as follows: C’est en or li fins dyamans Qui donne grace a tous amans; C’est li saphirs, c’est li esmaus Qui d’amours puet garir les maus; C’est droitement la tresmontainne Qui cuers au port de Joye mainne; C’est l’esmeraude qui resjoie Tous tristez cuers et met en joie; C’est le fins rubis d’oriant Qui garit toulz maulz en riant; Briefment, c’est la rose vermeille Qui n’a seconde ne pareille.  (VD, v. 121–32) [She is the pure diamond encased in gold that bestows its grace on lovers; she is the sapphire, she is the enameling that can heal the harm love causes; she is rightly the polar star that leads hearts to joy’s haven; she is the emerald that renews and restores joy in all sad hearts; she is the pure ruby of the rising sun who assuages all grief with her smile. In short, she is the red rose that has no second or any other flower like it.]

Her treasure-trove is beneficent and restorative,75 and a source of those biens that comfort lovers in grief or distress. An earlier floral comparison preserves

73 VD, p. 186a/124, v. 2665–80/2767–82, 4071–3/4185–7, 4122–33/4242–53, pp. 372b/280, 424e/320, 426i/322, 434 ce/326–8, 448b/338, 450g/340, 508e/390, 520g/398, 568–70d/438, 576d/442, 606b/464, 740g/586, 768d/610, 770h/612, 782e/620. 74 VD, v. 4120–6/4240–6, pp. 424e/320, 434c/326, 508e/390, 568d/438, 576d/442, 740g/586, 748c/592. 75 These precious stones together with the polar star and rose that shine like them are valuable not for their price but for their beneficent and even medicinal effects (cf. VD, v. 6455–60/6528–33; and, in Thomas Paien’s ballade, v. 6429–36/6502–9).

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the image of beneficent effects: ‘c’est la flour de tout le monde, / Brief, tous li biens en li habunde’ (VD, v. 457–8) [she is the flower of the whole world; in short, all that is good abounds in her]. Toute Belle’s goodness radiates roundabout as her virtues. These are as visible to her beloved as she wants her love to be to all others. Only the beloved holds the key that can reveal her virtues. In Guillaume’s case, that key is his poetry and, in particular, the Voir Dit itself, a dit that depicts Toute Belle in all her splendor. All the biens that emanate from these precious stones prove resplendent in their expression of Toute Belle’s virtues. She lavishes her biens on Guillaume just as he reveals the secrets of his art of poetry to her. As Guillaume puts it, ‘tout le bien de vous est le mien, et le mien si est le vostre’ (VD, p. 458d/346) [all good that comes from you is mine, and all mine is yours]. How this reciprocity works out is explained in a mono-rhymed litany that details the biens that Guillaume draws from Toute Belle’s ‘tresor de joie’ (VD, v. 3116/3218). Son bel acueil enhardissoit Mon cuer qui pour li gemissoit, Sa douceur fine adoucissoit Mes tresdoulz maulz et garissoit, Son oeil sur moi resplendissoit Et doucement me nourrissoit, Sa grant biauté m’embellissoit Et trop forment m’abellissoit, Son doulz parler m’assagissoit Par le bien qui de li issoit, Sa bonté me beneïssoit, Son noble cuer m’anoblissoit, Sa franchise m’affranchissoit, S’umilité m’asservissoit, Sa largesse m’assevissoit, Sa leesce m’esjoïssoit, Sa cointise m’acointissoit Et son gent corps m’agencissoit, Son maintieng d’amours florissoit; Sa maniere m’enrichissoit, Ne riens nulle n’amenrissoit Son tresor pour bien qui s’ysoit.  (VD, v. 3119–40/3221–42) [Her fair welcome emboldened my heart grieving on her account; her exquisite sweetness alleviated and healed my profoundly sweet suffering; her eye shone on me and gently nourished me; her great beauty made me attractive while pleasing me enormously; her sweet speech made me prudent by the good that emanated from her; her goodness blessed me, her noble heart ennobled me, her free and noble manner made me free and noble, her sense of propriety and place brought me into her service, her largess satisfied me, her joyous ways filled me with joy, her graceful bearing made me graceful, and her genteel self made me genteel, her bearing blossomed with love,

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her comportment enriched me, nor did it diminish in the least her treasure-trove because of the good that issued from it.]

Toute Belle’s biens bespeak an ennobling and bountiful love. Her goodness is a fount of largess and wellspring of comfort. Elsewhere, Toute Belle’s biens include souffisance (VD, v. 1043–7/1071–5) and mercy (VD, v. 4073/4187), itself souffisance (VD, p. 150b/94). Her treasure-trove is both an image and a source of virtue and gentility (VD, v. 3251–64/3353–66). Opening it can be publicly recognized, but only Guillaume can reveal its bounty. He does so by writing the Voir Dit. With her poet-lover as conduit, Toute Belle graciously lavishes her biens on all lovers (cf. VD, v. 6096–105/6169–78), something that toute belle, or any woman beautiful as she is beautiful, may do. Thus, she gives all her treasure to Guillaume (VD, v. 2665–756/2767–858). He, in turn, incorporates her gifts before broadcasting them through his poetry; her beauty is the beauty of virtue, not of the body, although, of course, virtues can beautify even the aging, impotent, and ugly Guillaume (VD, v. 3125/3227). As Toute Belle’s biens, through Machaut’s poetry, spread beyond the beloved to reach others, they manifest bonté, both as ‘goodness’ and as, in the sense of its English-language derivative, ‘bounty’. On doit prisier les choses belles Seulement plus pour le bien d’elles Qu’on ne fait pour nulle autre chose Qui soit dehors ou ens enclose.  (VD, v. 3385–8/3487–90) [One must value beautiful things principally for their goodness alone rather than for any other thing exterior to or enclosed within them.]

Thus, to complete his evocation of Toute Belle’s beneficent treasure-trove Guillaume reverts to the commonplace that beauty expresses bonté (p. 150b/94, v. 3129/3231), an inner goodness deriving from virtue. Pour ce di veritablement Que li sages communement Aiment les gens pour leur bonté Assez plus que pour leur biauté, Car grant biauté est une grace Des menres que Nature face.76 (VD, v. 3431–6/3533–8) [For this reason I say truthfully that the wise commonly love others for their goodness far more than for their beauty. For beauty is among the least of the graces that Nature bestows.] 76 Toute Belle too founds her love on Guillaume’s ‘bonté’ as well as his fame (VD, p. 160b/102); given Guillaume’s age and unattractive features, her love actually illustrates these lines.

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These words repudiate the Behaigne nobleman’s view that one loves the body more than the soul (JB, v. 1707). Nature’s ‘graces’ fill Toute Belle’s inexhaustible treasure-trove and, accordingly, make her an exemplar of ennobling love and of all the goods that proceed from such love (VD, v. 6119–20/6192–3). It is noteworthy that in the Voir Dit’s ‘Lai d’Espérance’ Bon Espoir too is a treasuretrove who offers all the biens that Toute Belle does to the good lover (VD, v. 4568–81/4688–701). Toute Belle and Lady Esperance are complementary, the one as sovereign exemplar, the other as personification of a powerful, bounteous virtue.

Bed Scenes in the Voir Dit If Toute Belle’s mercy is souffisance, preserving the purity and chastity of their love should be sufficient ‘plaisance’ – plaisance pure, and, thus, honnourable esbatement – even in bed. Shortly before the Venus cloud episode, a bed scene occurs during the Lendit fair77 that evokes a carnival setting78 with food and drink al fresco that Guillaume enjoys with Toute Belle and two other young women. Ambiguously, after the collation a tipsy reveler guides Guillaume and the three damsels to a chamber, much as today, perhaps, a taxi driver might take revelers to a hotel room for an afternoon assignation. In this, the only scene in which Guillaume and Toute Belle are unambiguously described as lying together on a bed, they are not alone. Another woman lies on the bed with them (VD, v. 3659–65/3761–7); a third woman, Toute Belle’s sister, reclines on an adjoining bed (VD, v. 3656–8/3758–60). All are fully clothed. Throughout the week they spend together they are always in the company of Toute Belle’s sister, even in bed (cf. VD, v. 3823–32/3925–34). The scene borders on the farcical when Toute Belle pulls her elderly poet to bed between herself and one of the other young women. Dieus scet que de la gesir C’estoit mon plus tresgrant desir, N’autres pastés ne desiroie,79 D’autre avaine ne hanissoie.  (VD, v. 3679–82/3781–4) [But God knows that to lie there was my greatest desire by far. I desired no other dainty, nor did I whinney for any other grain.]

Yet he resists – ‘elles m’i tirerent a force’ (VD, v. 3677/3779) [they pulled 77 The foire de lendit, or Lendit fair, began in the eleventh century at Saint Denis (RobertH, vol. 1, p. 1117); see also Leech-Wilkinson, ed., VD, p. 728 n. 3685. 78 Cf. Page 1993a, pp. 50–1; Crane 2002, chap. five; Dufournet 2008, pp. 79–92. No Machaut manuscript known today illustrates any part of this episode (Earp 1995, p. 178). 79 Pasté has an analogous erotic connotation in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Nouvelles 10).

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me there forcibly] – exclaiming ‘On m’efforce!’ (VD, v. 3678/3780) [they are violently abusing me]. The verb can also signify rape in Machaut’s French. Nonetheless, the episode fits into the context of Machaut’s good love; there is no lovemaking, only some affectionate foreplay that leads to nothing more than innocent touching and kissing. Guillaume lies immobile between the two maidens. During the Lendit festivities, in other words, we witness what Guillaume calls elsewhere ‘honnourable esbatement’. Helpful here, in the Echecs moralisés Evrart de Conty comments on such displays of affection among chaste lovers. ‘Veulent en ce point honnourablement vivre sanz plus oultre requerre, se n’est le baisier et l’acoler par avanture, qui … sont aucunesfoiz en ceste amour de bonne foy octroyé et souffert, et raisonablement, car c’est signe certain que l’amour est entre eulx plainement confermee’ (199r37–42) [They wish to live in this matter honorably without requesting any more beyond perchance kissing and embracing; these are occasionally granted and allowed in good faith in this kind of love; this is reasonable, for it is a sure sign that their love is fully confirmed]. Guillaume’s immobility exemplifies this moral evaluation. La vi je d’Amour la maistrie, Car j’estoie comme une souche80 Delez ma dame en ceste couche, Ne ne m’osoie remuer Nient plus c’om me volsist tuer.  (VD, v. 3694–8/3796–800) [There I saw how powerful Love is, for I lay there like a stump alongside my lady on that bed, nor did I dare move anymore than I would have had someone wanted to kill me.]

In spite of the carnival season, then, this bedroom encounter, as Machaut depicts it, exemplifies Machaut’s good love. Toute Belle’s honor is preserved intact because to love and express that love affectionately, but not sexually, is not only sufficient, it is a merci honnête and thereby not only morally acceptable but also to be hoped for. The second bed scene largely hidden under Venus’s cloud may well elicit skepticism with respect to Machaut’s idealization of human love and Toute Belle’s tresor. To be sure, in the virelai that Guillaume writes while under the cloud, he asserts categorically that

80 Elsewhere Guillaume likens his state to an old stump lying useless in a swamp because he lacks the sentement needed to compose poetry (VD, v. 843–9). In the Lendit episode, the comparison with a stump suggests innocent rather than erotic play. Cf. ‘La fui longuement delés elle / Plus simplement c’unne pucelle’ (VD, v. 3689–90/3791–2) [There I lay beside her for a long time, more innocently than a maiden]. On the moral value of exposing oneself to temptation while resisting it as a sign of virtue, see Jaeger 1999, chap. ten.

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La fu bien l’onnour gardee  Et la renommee De son cointe corps joli, Qu’onques villeine pensee  Ne fu engendree Ne nee entre moi et li.  (VD, v. 4044–9/4146–51) [There the honor and reputation of her charming, joyous self were preserved, for never was any villainous thought conceived or born between us.]

As a result, ‘onques Honneur ne souffri’ (VD, v. 4065/4179) [Honor never suffered], an important piece of information since ‘Honneur l’entree / Ot dou tresor de mercy’ (VD, v. 4072–3/4186–7) [Honor kept the entry to her treasure-trove of mercy]. In similar language, Toute Belle describes the event after Venus’s cloud has lifted.  Tresdoulz amis, En nos cuers la deesse a mis Amours qui tousdis croistera Ne jamais ne s’en partira.  (VD, v. 4100–3/4220–3) [Sweetest beloved, the goddess has lodged in our hearts a love that will ever grow and never depart from them.]

If this is so and the last stage of their gradus amoris is virtuous, honorable souffisance (VD, v. 4050/4158), as Guillaume claims, a notion that in Machaut’s love vocabulary excludes sexual gratification, then their love remains pure and chaste even under Venus’s cloud. But is this so? When Venus covers Toute Belle’s bed with her cloud, Guillaume stands as if stymied81 outside Toute Belle’s little window.82 There is not even innocent Cf. Guillaume as the Lendit’s ‘souche’. In the scene in which they disappear under Venus’s cloud, Guillaume is described as looking in from outside her ‘fenestrelle’ (VD, v. 3902/4004 [little window]; cf. Huot 1993a, p. 262). Toute Belle’s bed is next to the window (VD, v. 3902–5/4004–7), and another woman is present in her bedroom (VD, v. 3906–9/4008–11). Guillaume nowhere says he enters her room through the little window to join Toute Belle in, on, or beside her bed, but only that they embrace when separating (VD, v. 4116–19/4236–9). (On the window motif in Machaut’s poetry, see Bétemps 1998, pp. 312–15; Drobinsky 2003b.) The two surviving manuscript illustrations of the scene (see Earp 1995, p. 178; see now the manuscripts online in Resources) are of no help in interpreting ‘what happened’. In BNF fr. 22545, fol. 162v, reproduced on the cover of the Imbs-Cerquiglini edition, Toute Belle is partially exposed while Guillaume kneels before her bed inside an abstract space; there is no window, but another maiden is present and alert. In BNF fr. 1584, fol. 255r, Guillaume and Toute Belle lie on a bed as Venus spreads her cloud over them; both are fully clothed and neither the second maiden nor the window is depicted. This illustration is reproduced in Voir Dit, ed. Leech-Wilkinson, p. 266; on diverse interpretations of the text by manuscript illustrators and anthologists see McGrady 2012. In a third bed scene that Toute Belle dreams of, she goes to 81 82

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touching, as in the Lendit bed, for ‘pooir n’ai que je m’avance / De li touchier, car j’ai doubtance / De son courrous’ (VD, v. 3952–4/4054–6) [I am unable to advance so far as to touch her for I fear her anger]. This mirrors Guillaume lying like a stump on the Lendit bed. For her part, Toute Belle shows no more fear or restraint than she does on the Lendit bed. Of course, in that episode Toute Belle does touch Guillaume and urge him to embrace her (VD, v. 3704–11/3806–13), but in the mode of souffisance (VD, v. 3712–24/3814–26), not villenie. They conform to the occasional display of affection described in the Echecs moralisés and elsewhere in late medieval literature.83 Although Toute Belle is lying exposed84 when Guillaume comes to her bedroom window (VD, v. 3919–23/4021–5), their amour pure serves as a variant of Andreas Capellanus’s amor purus.85 As in the Louange ballade quoted above, veoir and oïr in both instances comprise souffisance.86 Thus, from outside her window Guillaume speaks to and observes Toute Belle, narrating that petit de li m’approchai, En sa grant biauté regardant, S’onneur et son estat gardant, Qu’autrement faire ne l’osoie Pour son courrous que je doubtoie.  (VD, v. 3911–15/4013–17) [I drew a little nearer to her, gazing upon her great beauty while preserving her honor and her status; I didn’t dare do otherwise for fear of causing her anger.]

At that moment, Venus’s cloud overspreads the scene. Why does Venus need to hide such pure lovers from us readers? Indeed, how credible or even plausible is Guillaume’s assertion that ‘Honneur l’entrée / Ot dou tresor de mercy’ in the virelai that he writes under Venus’s cloud if Machaut needs to cloud the scene by as suspect a goddess as Venus? If for an answer we try to lift Venus’s cloud to see what transpires in the last stage of the lovers’ gradus amoris, we discover no single answer, but only possible answers, each of which identifies a different kind of love. As Brownlee has observed, Guillaume’s bed to help cure his malady; the meeting is chaste and another woman is again present (VD, p. 506c/388). The bed scenes in the Lendit episode and beneath Venus’s cloud recall the analogous clandestine meetings of the Duke and his lady in Christine de Pizan’s Duc des vrais amants, where another woman is always present (Kelly 2007, pp. 129–36); however, Christine’s lovers never lie in bed together. 83 Kelly 2010b, pp. 21–4. 84 If that is what ‘N’elle prins nul autre atour n’a / Fors que les euvres de Nature’ (VD, v. 3919–20/4021–2) [she had no other adornment than Nature’s handiwork] means. Semiramis is described in the same language (VD, v. 4883–6/4956–9), not because she is naked, but only unkempt. There is no textual evidence for ‘the two of them meeting naked in bed’ (Leach 2009, p. 92). 85 Monson 2005b, especially pp. 305–14; cf. Lukitsch 1983, pp. 267–8; Imbs 1991, p. 46. 86 The Echecs moralisés lauds visual delight as sufficient in good love (199r22–200r7).

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‘Machaut has structured the scene so that the precise nature of the final step in Guillaume’s gradus amoris (the factum) remains elegantly and insolubly ambiguous.’87 Of course, as Machaut writes in another place, ‘Aucuns dient qu’on ne puet dame amer / Si loyaument qu’il n’i ait villonnie’ (Loange 217/17, v. 1–2) [some say that one cannot love a woman so faithfully that there is no villainy in it]. But he adds that such people ‘ne scevent les secrez esprouver / De vraie amour et d’amy et d’amie’ (v. 3–4) [don’t know how to sound the secrets of true love between lovers]; they cannot distinguish ‘bonne amour’ in Machaut’s sense from ‘fole amour’ that includes villonie (v. 17–22).88 In this context, Toute Belle is not a belle dame sans mercy. However, her mercy is souffisance, not jouissance. It is merci honnête. That interpretation of the Voir Dit bed scenes points to a broader late medieval conception of good love as abstemious souffisance. If this is not how love is conceived by Machaut, then Guillaume’s ideal is a fausse semblance, a lie that hides beneath Venus’s cloud the commonplace fait accompli in the traditional gradus amoris. We readers, like our medieval counterparts, must read this fiction covered by a cloud as an involucrum or integumentum. We must, that is, distinguish between Guillaume the lover in the Voir Dit and Machaut the poet who wrote the poem, or (quoting Brownlee again) between Guillaume’s ‘inadequacy as a lover’ and Machaut’s ‘consistent success as a poet’.89 Machaut’s poetic success lies in his ability to pose consistently the problem of good love. Perhaps this is the framework in which Deschamps considered him to be ‘Plus qu’Ovide vray remede d’amours’90 [a truer love remedy than Ovid], suggesting a comparison of the Remede de Fortune to Ovid’s Remedia amoris. Like the Remede lovers, the Voir Dit depicts Guillaume and Toute Belle as scrupulously avoiding delectacion, a false good in the Boethian context of the Remede. As Toute Belle puts it in explaining that they do not need to hide their love,   je veul bien c’on voie Nos amours par rue et par voie, Car puis qu’il n’i ha que tout bien, Il me plaist et se le veul bien.91 (VD, v. 2753–6/2855–8)

87 Brownlee 1984, p. 241 n. 46; see also Calin 1974, pp. 189–91; Sturges 1986; Cerquiglini-Toulet 1993b, p. 76. 88 According to Loange 219/130, in order to defend her honor the lady should flee ‘villenie’ (v. 2) if suitors ask for it. 89 Brownlee 1984, p. 108; similarly, Leach 2011, p. 131. 90 Ballade 447 in Œuvres Deschamps, vol. 3, p. 259. See Cerquiglini-Toulet 1993b, p. 41; Miney-Mahy 2011, pp. 178–80. 91 Cf. Alerion, v. 4789–92: ‘Amez, si comme j’ay amé. / Vous n’en porrez estre blasmé, / Mais bonnement vous loera / Qui Bonne Amour congnoistera’ [Love as I have loved. You cannot be blamed for that; whoever understands Good Love will give you honest praise]. Those who don’t understand will have a different opinion about love and lovers in the Voir Dit; see ‘Other Readings’ below in this chapter.

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[I want people to see our love in street and lane; for, since there is only good in it, this pleases me and is very much what I wish for.]

Interestingly, readers of the Voir Dit are more privileged. They see Guillaume and Toute Belle not only ‘par rue et par voie’, but in or alongside two different beds. Christine de Pizan had this kind of love in mind in her early writings, a love in which lovers never make love but use their affection as inspiration for a virtuous, even chivalric life.92 But her opinion changed; therefore, Christine frames the issue differently in the Livre du duc des vrais amants, a dit written some fifty years after the Voir Dit: ‘Car poson qu’il n’y ait meffait de corps; si ne le croyent mie ceulx qui seulement orront dire: tele dame est amoureuse’ (Duc, p. 174)93 [For let’s suppose that there was no carnal misdeed; those will never believe it who merely hear say that a certain lady is in love]. Inserting this threat as reprise into her later Livre des trois vertus94 that she bases in part on her own experience, Christine recognizes that slanderous gossip is inevitable. The loss of Toute Belle’s honor as a result of slander is apparent in the second part of the Voir Dit when people begin to criticize her conduct and mock Guillaume’s own actions and naiveté: ‘Amis, vous batés les buissons / Dont autres ont les oisillons’ (VD, v. 7530–1/7603–4)95 [My friend, you are beating the bushes whose birdies others catch]. Ironically, they slander precisely because Toute Belle wants everyone to know about their love (VD, v. 7550–7/7623–30; cf. pp. 672–4b/524–6). As Christine claims, calumny is inevitable, even when there is no ‘villainy’. In effect, Toute Belle’s bold resolution to make their good love widely known fails due to misogyny: Toute Belle must be inconstant and unfaithful because she is a woman. We are back among the commonplaces of Guillaume’s own misogyny in the Jugement Navarre. But before examining this misogyny, let us look once again at Venus’s cloud.

The Voir Dit’s Quandary: What Was There to Hide under Venus’s Cloud? The question remains. What did Machaut the poet achieve by hiding his lovers under Venus’s cloud?96 We can begin to answer this question by locating the episode in the diverse scripts possible for the kinds of love the dit refers to, testing them against textual evidence not only in the Voir Dit, but also in Machaut’s corpus that medieval readers might have known if they read the 92 In the Rose debate, Christine approves chaste love, perhaps influenced by Machaut’s writings (Kelly 2007, pp. 108–9). 93 Machaut evokes dramatically in Loange 104/241 and 201/94 the lady’s loss of honor when it becomes known or even suspected that she has taken a lover. 94 Trois vertus, p. 113. 95 This phrase occurs as well in JB, v. 1826–7. 96 Cf. Huot 1987, pp. 285–6.

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Voir Dit in anthology manuscripts. We are, in short, seeking the truth Machaut sought to tell through the Voir Dit’s fiction. With Venus’s cloud, our poet has opened the issue so that his audiences can contemplate diverse continuations possible in his open-ended fiction – open-ended because it is to survive death, either in the first circle of Dante’s Hell with Paolo and Francesca or in Heaven with Beatrice and Dante. Clearly, the cloud is not needed to hide a mere kiss. They have already exchanged kisses, including once in a church (VD, v. 2848–9/2950–1) and again when lying together on the Lendit bed (VD, v. 3708/3810); they kiss for the last time in the Voir Dit at their leave-taking after the cloud lifts (VD, v. 4116– 19/4236–9). A kiss, therefore, hardly needs to be hidden under a cloud because ‘de baisier et acoler est pou de chose, car autant en emporte le vent’ (Gavre, p. 126: 40–1) [kissing and hugging matter little for they are gone with the wind]. It may be that figuratively the cloud suggests that they are enveloped by love. But that love could still be either honorable or carnal. Even Toute Belle’s parting words do not disambiguate the cloud: ‘En nos cuers la deesse a mis / Amours qui tousdis croistera97 / Ne jamais ne s’en partira’ (VD, v. 4101–3/4221–3) [The goddess has placed a love in our hearts that will grow ever more without ever going away]. Is she referring here to Machaut’s good love that could indeed survive beyond the grave and go with them into Heaven, or to the ‘meffait de corps’ Christine condemns and that the Roman de la rose illustrates with Venus as goddess of female arousal? Those who, trusting Machaut’s faith in good love, are confident that no misdeed occurred beneath the cloud will believe the episode to be as innocent as the Lendit episode. On the other hand, some readers (like those identified above in Loange 217/17) will believe that love cannot avoid carnal villonie; they will find Guillaume’s claim that Toute Belle’s honor and, therefore, her virginity survive intact under Venus’s cloud to be not pure love but pure fiction. Since no definitive answer is possible on the basis of Machaut’s description of this scene, as Brownlee notes, the interpreter who argues otherwise is reading into this episode his or her own convictions or prejudices. But isn’t this ambiguity, as Brownlee also suggests, Machaut’s achievement in the Voir Dit?98 Since neither Guillaume nor Toute Belle tells us any more about what transpired under Venus’s cloud than that they wrote some poetry extolling their honorable love, then the reader alone can judge the consequences of the diverse possible readings of the cloud episode and the likelihood that their love can plausibly survive even into Heaven, as Guillaume foresees.99

97 Necessary if their love is to endure according to Andreas Capellanus, De amore, p. 356 (rule 4); cf. De amore, pp. 276–90. 98 Cf. as well Leupin 1993, pp. 185–7, 190–2; Taylor 1993; Attwood 1998, pp. 107–8. 99 On active reader roles, see Calin 1978, pp. 184–6; De Looze 1984, esp. pp. 153–4, 157, 160 n. 18; McGrady 2006a.

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Aprés ma mort, de cuer fin La servira mes esperis; – Or doint Dieus qu’il ne soit peris – Pour Li tant prier qu’Il appelle Son ame en gloire Toute Belle.100 (VD, v. 9005–9/9090–4) [After I die, my spirit will serve her with a pure heart – may God grant that it not perish – and beseech Him to call her soul in glory Toute Belle.]

This issue is crucial in evaluating Toute Belle as Guillaume’s guide and master in love, especially as she promotes and exemplifies the good love proffered in the Remede de Fortune. At the beginning of the Voir Dit Guillaume states that he will faithfully love Toute Belle ‘si mourrai en son service / Sans villain penser et sans vice’ (VD, v. 248–9) [I will die in her service without villainous thoughts and without vice]. In Machaut’s dits these words connote chaste love. Their spiritual context is conveyed by Toute Belle herself, who believes that God foresaw their love before they met (VD, v. 1964–71/2066–73) – ‘Et puis que Dieus la volut faire / El’ ne puet qu’a bonne fin traire’ (VD, v. 1972–3/2074–5) [and since God willed it, it can only come to a good end] – suggesting that their love is providential. Likewise, in her complainte she predicts that her love will survive death: ‘Et s’il couvient m’ame du corps partir, / Ja ceste amour pour ce ne finera, / Qu’aprés ma mort m’ame vous amera’ (VD, v. 1391–3/1461–3) [and if my soul must leave my body, that will not cause this love to end, for after death my soul will love you]. Since Guillaume proclaims at the end of the Voir Dit that even after death he too will continue to love Toute Belle, these lines paraphrase and 100 Sublimated and therefore sublime love ‘will be realized fully in heaven’ (Jaeger 1999, p. 113), as in VD, v. 822–5: ‘on dit, quant elle finera, / Qu’en paradis sainte sera, / Car bien puis dire en verité / Que .II. fois m’a ressuscité’ [it is said that when she dies, she will be a saint in Paradise, for I can truthfully state that she brought me back to life twice]; and p. 152c/96: ‘aprés mort, tresdouce, en vous amer / Seront mi sort’ [after death, sweetest beloved, my fate will be to love you]. Elsewhere Guillaume suggests that her beauty is more pure than physical, since even ‘aprés mort mon ame l’amera / Pour sa biauté’ (v. 1692–3/1762–3) [after dying my soul will love her for her beauty]. See also p. 154e/96, v. 1690–6/1760–6, 6189–202/6262–75, 8947–51/9032–6. Love beyond the grave seems to be the hope of the woman in the ‘Lay de plour’ Guillaume may have offered as the first of three ‘amendes’ (JN, v. 4177) he had to pay for writing the Behaigne: ‘Humblement mes cuers supplie / Au vray Dieu qu’il nous regart / De si amoureus regart / Qu’en livre soiens de vie’ (Plour, v. 207–10) [my heart humbly entreats the true God to look on us so lovingly that we be inscribed in the Book of Life]. These are the lay’s last lines. Cf. Lukitsch 1983, p. 268; Huot 2002, pp. 184–6). In Lai 9, called ‘Le paradis d’Amour’, the ‘parfaite souffisance’ (v. 116) of ‘amour pure’ (v. 91) prevails ‘sans pensée villeinne’ (v. 89). In Lai 16, called ‘Le lay de la fonteinne’, a man’s voice asks the Virgin Mary to save him from Hell, lest Satan inscribe his name in the ‘livre de mort, moy mort’ (v. 197) [book of death, after I have died]. By contrast, in Lai 12, called the ‘Le lay mortel’, Médisance (cf. v. 9) banishes a lover from ‘paradis’ (v. 49–53), leaving him in a kind of Hell ‘Avec les chetis / Et hors de toute priere’ (v. 56–7) [among the wretched, beyond any prayer].

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mirror the dit’s optimistic prologue.101 Neither she nor Guillaume foresees a fate like that of Paolo and Francesca. They also announce the beginning of a new cycle of love that is both a gradus amoris never brought to sexual climax and a continuatio amoris still threatened by oscillations between good hope and unstable desire. Machaut adumbrates this cyclicity in rondeau 15: ‘Ma fin est mon commencement / Et mon commencement ma fin’ [my end is my beginning and my beginning my end]. In Heaven, might not this cycle, now well beyond Fortune’s Wheel, become pure consummation in a timeless eternity?102 The references to an eternal love are crucial given that Machaut’s earlier dits describe love as ending with death.103 The view is fundamental to the Behaigne verdict in the jeune veuve context. Prior to the Remede de Fortune, death is the limit of hope for love. Only the Ovidian example of the metamorphosis of Ceyx and Alcyone in the Fontaine amoureuse carries their halcyon days of yore over into a ‘fabulous’ afterlife.104 In Machaut’s world, the Voir Dit lovers must remain honorable and chaste, as Guillaume’s Letter 31 implies: ‘quant a vostre honneur garder, je l’aimme autant comme je desire paradis, ne ja jour de ma vie ne penserai ne ferai le contraire pour chose qui aviengne’ (VD, p. 522i/400) [as for preserving your honor, I love it as much as I desire Paradise, nor will I ever think or do the opposite no matter what happens]. His words are consistent with the virtuous and pure fine amour Machaut evokes at the beginning of the Voir Dit (v. 1–42), a kind of love founded on good hope (VD, v. 9–11). Thus, from beginning to end of the Voir Dit, good love, when actually believed and practiced, leads to ‘parfaite souffisance … hors des dangiers de Fortune’ (VD, p. 780b/620) [perfect sufficiency beyond Fortune’s dominion], not to self-destructive, mutable desire that falls among Boethius’s false goods and biblical sins. This viewpoint too is in harmony with Guillaume’s judgment when, at the beginning of the Voir Dit, he looks back over ‘toute m’aventure, / Qui ne fu villainne’ (v. 39–40) [my entire adventure that was not villainous]. In this context, again, Toute Belle’s tresor represents the virtues Guillaume as lover and Machaut as poet have the key to reveal.105 Love, becoming virtuous, finds its place in a higher wisdom fostered by Boethius and acceptable by the standards of contemporary religious morality.106 This interpretation is consistent with the good love Machaut promotes in the

Imbs 1991, p. 25. Cf. Jeay 2006a, pp. 303–6; Jeay 2006b, pp. 223–4; Cerquiglini-Toulet 2012. 103 Vergier, v. 1266–75; JB, v. 1716–19; Lyon, v. 207–12, 277–8; Alerion, v. 4641–8. 104 Cf. Drobinsky 2005. 105 Cf. Holzbacher-Valero 1982; Victorin 2001, pp. 35–7. 106 Badel 1980, pp. 91, 93–4; Wolfzettel 1994, pp. 53–5; Ferrand 1996; Trachsler 1998, pp. 211–14; Galderisi 2002–3; Fasseur 2006a, pp. 192–4. Froissart takes a different tack from Machaut; in the Joli buisson de jonece, he first appears to be rejuvenated by love, but then replaces his lady with the Virgin Mary, perhaps emulating Machaut’s defense of replacement in the Alerion. In Lai 16 (a poem Froissart may have known), a man leaves a harsh lady for Mary. 101 102

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dits he wrote prior to the Voir Dit. For example, in the Alerion honorable love is loyal. The lady and her beloved always return to one another after separation. Jamais ne se porroient si Eslongier, qu’il ne retournassent, C’est a dire qu’il ne s’amassent Autant comme devant ou plus, Car l’atente y met le seurplus, Parmi les poins de loyauté Qui soustiennent vraie amité. (Alerion, v. 3710–16) [Never could they go so far apart that they would not return, that is to say that they would not love one another as much as before, or more so, for waiting adds to the stock of loyalty that sustains true love.]

This might very well be what awaits Toute Belle and Guillaume after the end of the Voir Dit.

Other Readings The seurplus referred to in the Alerion passage just quoted is an ambiguous word in medieval literature, serving often as a synonym for intercourse.107 Moreover, this seurplus includes paradise, itself an ambiguous locus amoenus in courtly love poetry.108 In the Roman de la rose ‘il n’est nus graindres paradis / d’avoir amie a son devis’ (Rose, v. 1297–8) [there is no greater paradise than having a girlfriend at one’s disposal]. These intertextual links remind us of other, less chaste readings of the Voir Dit and the Venus cloud episode.109 Here I would like to consider those readings of the Voir Dit that interpret against its literal grain. Taking into account the intertextual knowledge readers might bring to bear in attempting to understand the relationship of Guillaume and Toute Belle, I garner these readings from statements in the Voir Dit itself that may be seen as undercutting its promotion of good love while playing on the ambiguous amalgamation of fiction and truth in the dit’s mélange. I begin with the first issue: the possible context for divergent readings.110 107 The Echecs moralisés explicates this sense of seurplus (Echecs mor, 228v12–26, 234r27–32). 108 Gally 2009. 109 The vision of coitus as paradise is an analogy fraught with problems in its medieval moral context (Leupin 1993, p. 195; Kelly 2010b). They can be resolved only if, as with Machaut’s invention of good love, the lower implies the higher – that is, a love possible in Heaven. It is opposed to the ‘heavenly’ path through energetic copulation that Genius depicts in Jean’s Rose, where the higher implies the lower in Genius’s sermon. On this medieval condition and its moral implications, see Kelly 2006b. 110 For diverse readings of the same narrative matière, see Sturges 1991, esp. pp. 100–24; Heinrichs 1994. Later readers ‘rewrote’ Machaut’s Voir Dit (McGrady 2006a), from

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In the ‘Gloss’ to her Advision,111 Christine de Pizan states that poetic language ‘puet avoir mains entendemens, et lors est la poisie belle et soubtille quant elle puet servir a plusieurs ententes et que on la puet prendre a divers propos’ (Advision, p. 3:10–12) [can have many meanings; then poetry is beautiful and subtle when it can offer several meanings112 and can be interpreted in diverse ways]. She goes on to develop several ways in which her own Advision’s letter may be read, offering readings that are distinct but credible to her way of thinking. They may even include contrary or opposing meanings, what Christine calls ‘anti­ frasis, c’est a dire au contraire de ce qui est dit’113 (Advision, p. 10, lines 262–3) [antiphrasis, that is to say a meaning contrary to what is said]. Christine ends her ‘Gloss’ by inviting her readers to persevere in search of meanings beyond what she writes, for ‘qui a droit les lira et entendra les trouvera corespondans et semblables’ (Advision, p. 10, lines 282–3) [for whoever reads them rightly will find that they correspond and are similar to one another]; this is subtle reading of subtle poetry based on the principle of contraires choses. It is particularly apt when dealing with love, a matter that the author’s and the reader’s sens interpret by reference to his or her own knowledge, experience, and convictions. As Christine de Pizan notes, even contrary scripts, as contraires choses, can be mutually illuminating and, therefore, complementary. Thus, readers might gloss the Voir Dit with the Roman de la rose in mind, essentially equating love with lust. If so, Venus’s cloud is indeed necessary because Guillaume and Toute Belle had sex, an act rarely described literally in medieval court literature. Such readers may have in mind lovers whom the Echecs moralisés singles out as ‘bestial’; their goal is to have sex with as many members of the opposite sex as possible. They are ‘bestial’ because, driven by lust, they abandon the rational faculty that distinguishes humans from beasts (Echecs mor, 203r14–20). Indeed, philosophers, we are told, say that ‘la vie voluptueuse et delitable est vie bestial, et … ceulx qui ainsy les delectacions corporeles enssuient plus que raison n’enseigne doivent estre appellés bestes ou bestiaulx et pire de home’ (Echecs mor, 134r17–20)114 [the voluptuous life devoted to delight is bestial, and those who pursue bodily pleasures more than reason teaches must be called beasts or bestial and unworthy of being called human]. Some of Toute Belle’s detractors do see her in this light: ‘vous batés Deschamps to Paulin Paris in the nineteenth century. New readings proliferate over time and, indeed, over centuries. On Christine de Pizan’s reading of Machaut’s Judgment poems, see Altmann 1992 and Slerca 2008; on Oton de Grandson and Machaut, see Bétemps 2002. For reception of Machaut in English literature, see Wimsatt 1991b; Calin 1994. For a ‘Robertsonian’ reading of Machaut’s dits, see Heinrichs 1990. For a modern feminist reading, see Gaudet 1993 and 1997. 111 See Reno 1992. 112 Ententes can also imply different purposes the work intends to meet. 113 In effect, reading against the grain. 114 The Echecs moralisés aligns voluptuous ‘beasts’ with other ‘beasts’ that ignore reason to pursue other pleasures, notably gluttony, itself often a companion to lust (104r19–21, 131r25–32, 135v9–17, 203r14–23, 229v21–30).

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les buissons / Dont autres ont les oisillons’,115 they claim. These men draw the same misogynist picture of women as jilted lovers do elsewhere. In the Roman de Troyle, for example, Criseida’s infidelity is in Troyle’s eyes outright bestiality.116 Analogous to the Lyon’s ‘frere aisié’ and the busybody lovers Christine de Pizan calls commeres, these lovers reject not only the chaste love that Machaut extols in the Remede, but also erotic love in which desire is directed to only one person. Bestial love is the context of Jean de Meun’s Roman de la rose. If Venus’s cloud does hide the commonplace consummation of a gradus amoris, then both Guillaume and Toute Belle will slide, more or less deeply, into desire, ‘bestiality’, and sin. Their protestations of good love become hypocritical as a new script emerges, one closer to what a Faux Semblant might exemplify. That is, if readers believe that Guillaume and Toute Belle are lying about the chastity of their love and about their experience beneath Venus’s cloud, then Toute Belle’s confessor also masks an ecclesiastical Faux Semblant when he proclaims the purity of her love.117 According to Chrétien de Troyes some two centuries before Machaut, the ‘joie’ of love ‘an conte ne doit estre dite’ (Charrette, v. 4677, 4681) [should not be told in a tale], joie formulating an obvious reference to sexual intercourse that must not be explicitly described; Chrétien makes this appeal for decorum at the moment Lancelot joins Guenevere on her bed in Gorre. Machaut too writes that ‘Tous voirs ne sont pas biaus a dire’ (VD, v. 7779/7852) [it is not fitting to relate all that is true]. On the other hand, Toute Belle justifies her wish that everyone know about her love for Guillaume ‘Puis qu’il n’i ha vice ne tache’ (VD, v. 4147/4267) [since there is neither vice nor stain on it] in her relation with Guillaume, a claim she makes after the Venus cloud episode. Yet, Guillaume intriguingly asserts that if there had been a sexual meffait, they would have concealed it (VD, v. 4148–51/4268–71), and then insists that there really was nothing to hide (VD, p. 450h/340). Still later he claims, paradoxically in a work named Voir Dit, that ce n’est pas necessité Que quanqu’on dit soit verité; N’en ce qu’on dit n’a pas le quart De verité, se Dieus me gart. (VD, v. 7979–82/8052–5) [it’s not necessary that everything one says be true, nor that even a quarter of it be true, so help me God.]

115 Like some men noted in Chrétien’s Yvain who believe women’s friendly reception expresses amorous interest (v. 2454–65), the detractors seem to interpret social courtesy, and more particularly Toute Belle’s declaration of her relation to Guillaume or courtesy towards other men, as evidence of promiscuity on her part. 116 Kelly 2010b, p. 21. 117 Cf. VD, v. 8563/8648. Cf. Cerquiglini-Toulet 2001a, pp. 197–8; Fasseur 2006a, pp. 171, 185 n. 48.

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As a version of the Liar’s Paradox, Machaut’s various teases are quite effective: what I report is true; if it were not, I wouldn’t tell you; however, it’s true. We are fully enmeshed in the quandary Venus creates with her cloud, not even offering us so much as the peek she permitted herself at Priape’s antics during the Fontaine amoureuse’s charivari. In the Remede de Fortune, Guillaume refers to ‘partures’, the mock love debates he participates in with some ladies (Remede, v. 3881–2/3879–80). He seems to have in mind jeux-partis, a commonplace variety of earlier medieval lyrics. Various women engage him in these debates during which ‘je leur respondoie / Moult loing de ce que je sentoie, / Car tousdis leur fis dou blanc noir’ (Remede, v. 3883–5/3881–3) [my replies were very far from what I was feeling, for I continually turned white into black for them]. Of course, the jeuparti precludes interpreting his fictions here as deceptions, since, according to the rules of the game, a respondent may be obliged to defend an opinion he or she actually opposes. If we read the Voir Dit quandaries as jeux-partis, then white may well be made to seem black, as the fable of the truth-telling crow suggests, a beast that, like La Fontaine’s hapless ass, is ‘blackened’ for telling the truth. ‘Blackening’ becomes poetic antifrasis on these occasions. Another approach to the quandary is to consider the portrait that Toute Belle sends to Guillaume. If the image is ideal, must reality conform to it? ‘Supposons qu’elle soit fausse / Envers vous’, her image asks, referring to but not identifying with Toute Belle, ‘et qu’elle vous fausse, / Le doi je … pour ce comparer?’ (VD, v. 7687–9/7760–2)118 [let’s suppose she is false to you. Am I to pay for that?]. As with the Alerion’s false raptors, an ideal is not falsified just because some do not live up to it. Thus, the distinction between an ideal image and reality can be definitive.119 But the image denies the separation: ‘elle n’i a courpe, / Si fait grant pechié qui l’encourpe’ (VD, v. 7699–700/7772–3) [she’s not guilty, and whoever accuses her of it commits a grave wrong]. On the other hand, Toute Belle does not think ill of Guillaume’s love. However, if his love proves false or unworthy, she will never love again and she will dissuade everyone, male and female, from loving because, like Christine de Pizan, she would now be convinced that Machaut’s good love is an impossible goal in life (I return to her threat at the end of this chapter). The Voir Dit’s fable of the crow suggests that ignorance is bliss and that it should not be disturbed or corrected. The Venus cloud episode allows readers such ignorance. As a paradox it also leaves the verdict with the reader. On the one hand, if the factum did occur, Guillaume and Toute Belle are indeed

118 For a striking historical example of this contrast between ideal description and sordid reality, see Latzke 1979. 119 This alters the Navarre identification of the ideal or the abstraction with the woman it defines, as we have seen regarding Bonneurté in chap. 1: an ideal does not always correspond to reality, nor does it have to.

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sliding down the same slope as the lovers in the Roman de la rose.120 Machaut’s projection of Guillaume as a domineering lover who would punish his lady as brutally as the falconer does an errant falcon is another step in that direction, perhaps reminding the reader of the abusive husband in Jean’s Rose.121 Thus, if Toute Belle has become changeable, Guillaume ought to treat her ‘felonnessement’ by denying his heart and speaking abusively (‘rudement’) to her (VD, v. 8391–2/8464–5). If, moreover, their love is redolent of Faux Semblant, protestations of fidelity, constancy, and abstinence become as meaningless as they do in the Rose or with the playacting lovers in the Lyon. If this script seems credible to readers, opening Toute Belle’s tresor with her lover’s key may be read as an allegory analogous to the conjointure of Rose’s reliquary and Amant’s pilgrim staff in Jean de Meun’s dream vision.122 The Voir Dit does offer a moral middle ground like that which Mesure promotes in the Navarre. Machaut’s good love would fill that space as an ideal. However, it is a human ideal subject to fluctuation or, at best, perhaps, the ‘frémissement agréable d’une sensibilité, qu’il importe de maintenir dans un état d’équilibre perpétuellement instable’.123 Guillaume’s emotional turbulence towards the end of the Remede, and the lovers’ anxiety in the Fontaine and in the entire Voir Dit illustrate such instability. The open-ended continuation in all three dits allows for oscillation to recur and, in the worst scenario, for instability to prevail.124 In the context of Machaut’s œuvre, lovers will inevitably oscillate between unstable desire and solid hope. However, in Letter 44 Toute Belle refers to herself as ‘celle qui sui tousjours en un propos de ce que je vous ai promis’ (VD, p. 746a/592; cf. p. 778a/618) [the one who am always committed to what I’ve promised you] – words Guillaume confirms in Letter 45: ‘ce que vous me mandés et escrivés est pure verités’ (VD, p. 766b/610) [what you communicate and write to me is pure truth]. As indicated above, she exemplifies at the end of the Voir Dit a stable love despite obstacles and uncertainties, including Guillaume’s own instability. Indeed, his instability and lack of trust could cause her to terminate their relationship like his alter ego in the Alerion (VD, v. 6209–20/6282–93, pp. 560–2a/432, 674c/526), just as Guillaume had contemplated doing ‘S’il est voirs ce qu’on m’en a dit.’ One gives up on and dismisses recalcitrant or incompetent pupils who drop out before achieving mastery of the art they set out to learn. Such action on Toute Belle’s part would conform to the Alerion pattern, except that this time the mutable one is Guillaume who, in Jacques Legrand’s words, as master ‘est a reprendre 120 Huot 1993a, pp. 256–67, discusses the implications of this reading modeled on Jean’s strategies in the Roman de la rose. 121 Cf. as well Arthur’s brutal treatment of a lady in the Chevalier du papegau because she ‘dares to demand that he make a fool of himself for her sake in a tournament’ (Taylor 2006a, p. 514). 122 Calin 1994, pp. 222, 225; De Looze 1997, pp. 99–100. 123 Quote attributed to Paul Zumthor, without indication of source, in Mulder 1978, p. 72. 124 Cf. Beer 1980, pp. 30–1; Calin 1994, pp. 203–5.

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par sa propre parole’. If the Alerion claims that ‘juenesse amoureuse / Puet estre souvent dongereuse / En dame moult legierement’ (Alerion, v. 337–9; my emphasis)125 [youth in love may often become domineering in a lady], Machaut does not depict this defect as universal among young women, as the alerion shows. In the Voir Dit, Toute Belle assures Guillaume that she keeps guard over her Dangier from whom they have nothing to fear (VD, pp. 570e/438, 576d/442, 604b/462). The threat in the Alerion is youth, not gender (Alerion, v. 356–7). Amour dongereuse, if I understand the attribute correctly as referring to dangier, can corrupt the young woman’s honor if she proves fickle or unstable in love (Alerion, v. 364–72).126 For his part, Guillaume too is colored by how he judges Toute Belle. Regardless of what may or may not have happened in Machaut’s life, the reader, who can know no more than what the Voir Dit relates, must contemplate the diverse Erlebnismuster that may unfold in and beyond the end of the dit. These are the mers dangereuses and the terres inconnues of the Voir Dit’s carte de Tendre. They blend truth and fiction, but the mix is unstable and readers must weigh the options against the actual Voir Dit narrative. In doing so, we are reading the dit as Christine suggests that we should read subtle compositions.

Humility in an Anomalous Apprenticeship Late medieval dits often conclude with a quandary, appealing to a highborn authority for resolution, but rarely reporting the authority’s judgment.127 The judgment dits are an obvious exception to this rule, although the Navarre’s reversal of the Behaigne verdict does remain open-ended in manuscripts that include both of them. The traditional irresolution found in many late medieval dits may obtain as well when we consider the kinds of love the Voir Dit refers to. The perplexing amour disproportionné128 between a young woman and an aging, frail poet invites reflection. As farce, it suggests plots along the lines of Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale about January and May in The Canterbury Tales. Yet the images of Guillaume as old, ugly, and/or impotent lover alongside Toute Belle as vibrant young woman vanish as potential actors if their chaste love

125 As noted above, the nobleman’s unfaithful beloved in the Behaigne is only fourteen years old. 126 The Rose’s Dangier has led scholars to interpret the notion as only villainous, although medieval usage favors the word’s positive sense as legitimate, even noble authority (Kelly 2010a, pp. 94–6). Chartier’s Belle Dame is an example of such dangier, she who ‘Dessoubz l’estendart de Danger’ (BDsM, v. 152), ‘laisse Dangier m’assaillir’ (v. 644) [under Dangier’s standard … lets Dangier assail me]. Dangier’s ‘standard’ suggests a noble, moral personification, not the Rose’s club-bearing villein. 127 Badel 1988a, p. 99; Kelly 1999b, esp. pp. 8–12. 128 Cf. chap. 1, n. 29.

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is truly founded on mutual admiration for the poetic art each practices and for which their pure love serves as an allegory and an illustration – a virtual textbook example of the same art of love poetry that Machaut sets out in the Remede de Fortune. Can Guillaume pull himself together and practice the love that Toute Belle and the poet Machaut teach and promote? The question remains open for private readers or audiences to answer in their own ways. Machaut’s chaste love is an ideal goal available for individual choice. Answers will doubtless vary. As the Echecs moralisés puts it, ‘est certain que chascun porte en soy son dieu d’amours, en la maniere ... que chascun porte en soy sa nature et sa fortune’ (98v32–4) [it’s certain that everyone harbors his or her own god of love, in the same way that each person has his or her own nature and fortune]. The Middle Ages does not come any closer to individual subjectivity in audience reception than in this amorous, albeit compelling polytheism. Although Machaut depicts Guillaume as master in the art of poetry, in the art of love Toute Belle emerges as the master in his art of love; on the literal level, she is the good, virtuous lover whereas Guillaume is the unstable, often bumbling, weak, or languishing lover. She exemplifies good hope while more often than not he illustrates unstable desire. Importantly, this dovetailing of their roles eliminates that ‘sovereignty’ that is incompatible with the equalizing, albeit ennobling character of Machaut’s good love. As one woman’s voice puts it in the Louange des dames, En .ij. amans qui s’aimment signourie Estre ne doit, einsois doivent avoir Un cuer, une ame et une maladie, Une pensée, un desir, un voloir.  (Loange 263/196, v. 9–12) [Between two lovers who love one another lordship must not obtain; rather, they must have one heart, one soul, and one malady, one thought, one desire, and one will.]

Good amorous relations are not based on signourie, or overlordship, but on equality and compatibility because the two share the same heart and mind, hope and goal – in effect, Guillaume and Toute Belle serve the same god of love despite his wavering faith. As in Andreas Capellanus’s De amore, good love does not mirror the husband’s authority in marriage, an inequality Machaut hints at mockingly in one Voir Dit passage (VD, v. 2829–40/2931–42). Accordingly, the woman’s beloved should evince a humility that equalizes their love, or, as a lyric woman’s voice puts it, ‘Se vo grandeur vas moy ne s’umilie’ (Loange 263/196, v. 1) [if your grandeur does not humble itself towards me], love becomes impossible. This applies to Guillaume’s love too. His fits of desire – what Toute Belle calls ‘le haussage / De Desir’ (VD, v. 1754–5/1836–7) [Desire’s uppishness] – by which he would dominate Toute Belle fashion his thoughts on overlordship as a desire for domination. It is illustrated by the falconer Guillaume considers as model for himself while attempting to gauge and

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control Toute Belle’s feelings and actions.129 Guillaume wishes to impose his own dangier on her, not use it, as Toute Belle does, to preserve and defend their love. As such, Guillaume’s dangier is closer to that of the club-bearing villein personified in the Roman de la rose. The Voir Dit illustrates a transition from signourie in love to humility in the way Guillaume and Toute Belle address one another in their letters. Although Guillaume addresses Toute Belle as his sovereign lady in all their correspondence through Letter 10, this salutation disappears in his subsequent letters.130 Letter 11 puts a stop to such language. ‘La souverainnetté se taist et unité131 parole,’ Guillaume exclaims, ‘pour ce que vous dittes que vostre fait est li miens, et li miens est li vostres’ (VD, pp. 270–2c/198) [overlordship falls silent and unity speaks because you say that what is yours is mine and what is mine is yours]. This is evident too in their poems that express a mutual and identical love. In this good love the beloved and his lady constitute a unity, precluding servitude and fostering humilité, ‘vertu par laquelle le sujet fait abnégation du sentiment qu’il peut avoir de sa valeur et de sa supériorité’; Jacqueline Picoche goes on to explain that such humility ‘rend possible la communication entre les personnes ... et permet à la vie de reprendre paisiblement son cours’.132 This occurs when Guillaume stops seeing himself as dominating falconer. Beginning with Letter 11, then, Guillaume addresses Toute Belle as ‘mon tresdoulz cuer’ (p. 268a/196: beginning); in subsequent correspondence, she is his amour, cuer, and suer while he is her cuer and ami. However, when Guillaume suspects Toute Belle of infidelity he addresses her in Letter 42 with more reserve as ‘Ma treschiere et seule dame’ (p. 728/578). After sorting matters out, he addresses her as before in Letter 45, his last epistle in the dit: ‘Mons tresdoulz cuer, ma douce suer et ma treschiere dame’ (p. 766/608) [my very sweet heart, my sweet sister, and my very dear lady]. She too addresses him once again as ‘mon tresdoulz cuer, ma tresdouce, vraie et loial amour’ in Letter 46 (p. 778/618), See chap. 1, n. 57. In Letter 2, Guillaume’s first, he asks Toute Belle not to address him as her ‘seigneur’. He rather depicts himself as her ‘serf’ and ‘ami’; but, as he explains, ‘quant Signourie saute en place, Amours s’en fuit’ (VD, p. 80e/136) [when overlordship springs up, Love takes flight]. On the other hand, Guillaume refers to Toute Belle as ‘mon dieu souverain’ (VD, v. 565) and as ‘ma souveraine maistresse’ (v. 817), implicitly recognizing Toute Belle as his overlord. 131 On unité, the TrLF refers to Latini’s Tresor: ‘l’office de Nature est en acorder ces choses descordans et enywer les desigueles, en tel manière ke toutes diversités retornent en unité’ (Tresor, p. 82: I.99.3) [Nature’s office is to accord what is dissonant and to level what is not equal such that all diversity returns to oneness]. Cf. Messelaar 1963, p. 366: ‘Unité’ in Latini’s Tresor is the ‘qualité de ce qui forme un tout unique par la liaison des parties’ and the ‘qualité de ce qui est un, de ce qui n’a pas de parties’. 132 Picoche 1976, p. 75; see in general pp. 71–7. Such humility obtains in love, pedagogy, and social relations between inferiors and superiors like those between Guillaume and his patrons in the Confort d’ami and the Fontaine amoureuse. There he addresses noblemen using tu (Confort, v. 21–6), a positive usage here, or as ami, despite their obvious social inequality. Here, humilité is related to courtoisie (Colombo Timelli 2011, pp. 14, 17–22). 129 130

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but not as mon seigneur. They constitute once again an ‘unité’. In the Voir Dit all goes well as long as both remain ‘humble’ and foster open communication. When Guillaume’s suspicions tempt him to impose his dangier in the falcon comparison, unity and its concomitant ‘humility’ are lost and haussage returns. Before moving on to Machaut’s art of poetry in Part II, we would do well, I think, to recall once again Chaucer’s words on love in different times and places: ‘wordes tho / That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge / Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake him so’. Today the Voir Dit, like all Machaut’s œuvre, illustrates such ‘out-of-date’ speech that was indeed spoken and written in the late fourteenth century. Chaucer goes on to assert that his predecessors ‘spedde as wel in love as men now do’. How well they ‘spedde’, whether today or in other times, is shown as much by the tribulations of Guillaume and Toute Belle as by those of Troilus and Criseyde.133 As Guillaume puts it in Letter 31, ‘il n’est chose qui n’aveingne’ (VD, v. 1147/1210, p. 520g/398) [there is nothing that doesn’t happen].134 If the beloved becomes unfaithful or inconstant, he or she destroys the unité of good love. Nonetheless, the Alerion lover evinces an almost Corneillian sublimity when he experiences a beloved’s unworthiness without any of the Behaigne nobleman’s grief. Such extraordinary stability is absent in most of Machaut’s poetry, including his lyric poetry, the Remede and Confort, and, especially, the Fontaine amoureuse and Voir Dit. Toute Belle herself does not always remain so stable when confronted with Guillaume’s doubts and suspicions.

A Radical Alternative to Unstable Love At one low point in their relationship, Toute Belle gives voice to deep anxiety and near despair. The passage deserves full citation. ‘Et s’il est ainsi que vous m’aiés de tous poins ainsi guerpie et sans ce que je l’aie desservi,’ she exclaims, ‘et que vostres cuers soit si crueus vers moi que je n’i puisse trouver confort ne amour, je sui celle qui me doi plaindre de vous plus que ne fist onques nulle fame de son ami, et plus que ne fist Medee de Jason’ [And if it is true that you have wholly abandoned me without my having deserved it, and that your heart has become so mean to me that I may find no comfort or love in you, I am she who has more right to complain about you than any woman has on account of her beloved, and more than Medea did on account of Jason]. Her despair suggests that, if Guillaume’s love fails her, no ‘good love’ is possible. And she continues: se il est ainsi que Amour, que j’ai si longuement et si loialment servi et en qui j’ai mis cuer, pensee et amour, me tolt la riens ou monde que j’aimme Cf. Jaeger 1999, pp. 137–44. In the Dit dou lyon (v. 1244), the same expression refers to diverse loves, both good and bad, male and female. 133 134

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plus chierement, dont elle m’avoit promis bien et parfaite joie, je la renie et renunce de tous poins a li et a son service, ne jamais sa serve ne serai en tele subjection, ne moi ne nulle autre fame que je puisse destourner; ne jamais bien ne plaisir ne ferai a nul homme que je saiche qui aime par amours moi135 ne autre fame sur qui j’aie pooir, ainçois leur ferai tout l’anui et tout le destourbier que je porrai, et tout en despit d’Amours qui tant de maulz m’a fait. (VD, p. 674c/526) [if it be true that Love whom I have served so long and so faithfully and to whom I have given heart, thought, and love, takes from me the one person in the world whom I love most dearly, with whom she had promised me wellbeing and perfect joy, I reject and renounce her in every way as well as any service to her, nor shall I ever be her servant in such subjection – neither I nor any other woman whom I can turn away from her; nor shall I ever do any good or pleasure to any man whom I know to be in love with me or with any other woman over whom I have authority. Rather I shall cause them all the displeasure and discomfort that I can – and all that in defiance of Love who has done me so much wrong.]

In her anguish, Toute Belle’s words anticipate the radical rejection of chaste love as a feasible ideal by Christine’s Sybille de Monthault and Chartier’s Belle Dame sans mercy. Yet the Voir Dit does seem to stake Machaut’s claim that good love should be possible, all the while evoking the dire consequences of its failure and adumbrating the radical denial and rejection by Christine and Chartier’s Belle Dame of its ideal status. But Machaut does not go that far. In the final analysis, the Voir Dit proclaims in its literal love story the same good love that Machaut fosters in the Remede and the Confort. The faith in its survival into the afterlife befits his emphasis on chastity and honor. Readers both medieval and modern may doubt its feasibility or point out its faults and its defects in practice. To do so may even turn the literal level into an allegory of sin and deception, especially on Toute Belle’s part. But readers must always, especially in the multisecular context of medieval scholarship and criticism, bear in mind how different we and our world are from those who wrote so long ago and far away. This is for Christine – and I would argue for Machaut too – how one reads subtle medieval poetry. It is therefore to the art of that poetry and Toute Belle’s apprenticeship in that art as Machaut practiced it that we turn in Part II. We shall now be looking at the other side of the same coin in the Voir Dit’s allegory of love and poetry. In this context Guillaume assumes the role of capable master in the poetic art, not of troublesome, recalcitrant, or bumbling pupil in the art of love. Toute Belle becomes an especially good pupil because she loves de sentement. The art of poetry she learns is Machaut’s. His is a poetry that illustrates diverse arts of love and, indeed, the art of all the loves and what the Echecs moralisés calls all their 135 Cf. Toute Belle’s alleged refusal to accept Deschamps as her beloved after Machaut’s death (Earp 1995, pp. 57–8).

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gods of love that Machaut treats in his corpus. In other words, we will not leave Machaut’s art of love behind in discussing his art of poetry. This will allow us to probe further issues treated in Part I and, at the same time, analyze further the allegedly good or uncertain love of Guillaume and Toute Belle.

PART II An Art of Poetry

3

The Scope of Toute Belle’s Art of Poetry In hoc etenim opere litteralis sensus suauitas puerilem demulcebit auditum, moralis instructio perficientem imbuet sensum, acutior allegorie subtilitas proficientem acuet intellectum. (Anticlaudianus, p. 56)1 Ores vient le fort, et les beles et subtives fictions. (VD, p. 566b/436)2

Although the Remede de Fortune has long been seen as an advanced art of poetry because it contains examples of the most common fixed forms in late medieval French,3 the Voir Dit is an even better illustration of the art, and for several reasons. First, it too contains numerous examples of commonly used fixed forms, including lyrics that are models for poetic responses to them. Second, its prose passages are epistres (VD, v. 494) or art letters illustrating the art of prose composition in the epistolary mode. Third, common poetic images such as Fortune and her Wheel and dream vision, and poetic modes like exemplification and allegory, contribute to the dit’s subtlety while illustrating a more advanced art and greater diversity than the Remede does. The moral instruction and allegorical subtlety extolled by Alain de Lille in this chapter’s first epigraph echo Machaut’s reference in the second epigraph to the subtlety of a significant portion of the Voir Dit. For these reasons, my discussion of the late medieval art of poetry in Part II of this book relies primarily, but not exclusively, on this dit. A consummate and truly original work, it takes the reader through the major features of the late medieval art of poetry in a narrative that relates an advanced apprenticeship in that art.4 Subtlety in invention becomes a prominent desideratum in French poetry during the late medieval period.5 It is especially prominent at the time of the so-called ‘translation movement’ inaugurated by Charles V that made more 1 ‘For in this work the sweetness of the literal sense will sooth the ears of boys, the moral instruction will inspire the mind on the road to perfection, the sharper subtlety of the allegory will whet the advanced intellect’ (trans. Sheridan, pp. 40–1). 2 ‘Now comes the difficult part, including the beautiful, subtle fictions.’ 3 Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 2, p. xxv; Patterson 1935, vol. 1, p. 82; Kelly 1991, pp. 160–1. 4 Fasseur 2006a. Cf. Bétemps 2001; Taylor 2007, pp. 46–53; Gally 2010, pp. 33–4. 5 Boucher 2003.

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widely available the clerical learning of the late Middle Ages; by the same token, the new vernacular learning led to greater subtlety in poetic composition.6 Of course, translating from Latin into French was complex because of the difficulty of the subject matter, the absence of an adequate learned vocabulary in French, and the lack, but not total absence, of a clerical education among the laity. Moreover, the translations revealed new subject matter that often included topics abstruse or unfamiliar to lay audiences unaccustomed to such language and subjects. Consequently, one approach was to introduce, as Machaut does in the Confort d’ami, new subjects into traditional discussions of love. At the same time, authors foregrounded imaginatio, or the faculty of imagination traditionally a part of poetic invention in the vernacular tradition. Finally, the jeuparti motif common in court literature provided a familiar format to debate new subjects in the traditional love context.7 A redefinition of logic to fit these developments is evident in Deschamps’s Art de dictier. ‘Logique est … une science d’arguer choses faintes et subtiles, coulourees de faulx argumens,8 pour discerner et mieulx congnoistre la verite des choses entre le faulx et le voir, et qui rent l’omme plus subtil en parole et plus habille’ (Art dictier, pp. 54–6) [Logic is a science of argumentation that uses fictive, subtle subjects, colored with fictional examples in order to discern and better distinguish falsehood from truth; it makes one more subtle and adept]. This is what I have elsewhere discussed as the logic of the imagination.9 Perhaps this kind of logic is best expressed by Nicolas Oresme in a gloss to his translation of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics: ‘Persuasion est raison vraysemblable non pas evidente, et induit a soy assenter a la conclusion; mais elle n’y contraint pas’ [Persuasion is credible, albeit not obvious argumentation that inclines one to accept its conclusion, but does not force one to do so]; this logic is not the logic of mathematics or formal logic ‘qui est tres certainne, neccessaire et evidente’ (Ethiques, p. 107)10 [that is very sure, necessary, and evident]. Poetry as voir dit expresses truth couched in fictional discourse. Thus, the art of poetry comprises rhetoric as an art of persuasion distinct from formal logic, mathematics, or scientific method; it is an art of invention. I return to this fundamental feature of Machaut’s art of poetry below in discussing the final stages in Toute Belle’s apprenticeship. But first things first.

Lusignan 1986, esp. chap. four. I return to this movement in chap. 6. Bouchet 2008, chap. seven. 8 This is argumentum in the rhetorical sense of a verisimilar, albeit contrived fictional narrative; see Curtius 1954, pp. 448–9; Cizek 1994, pp. 263–70; François Cornilliat, in Poétiques, pp. 42–3, esp. n. 132; Mehtonen 2006. For the history of this term in rhetoric, see HWR, vol. 1, esp. cols. 889–96. 9 Kelly 2011, pp. 179–98, with additional bibliography. 10 Cf. the epigraph to chap. 6. 6 7

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Her Master’s Voice: Poetic Apprenticeship in the Voir Dit Surely the most original feature of the Voir Dit narrative is Toute Belle’s apprenticeship in Machaut’s art of poetry. Although Guillaume does not set out formally and systematically the secrets of Machaut’s trade in the Voir Dit, we can extrapolate principles by following Toute Belle’s progress in writing verse and prose in this dit, and by drawing on material in Machaut’s works that precede and lead up to it – that is, in Machaut’s entire œuvre as it takes shape in his anthology manuscripts. By examining in narrative succession the poems attributed to Toute Belle in the Voir Dit and intradiegetic commentary on them in the dit’s verse and letters, we can follow her progress in writing both poetry and prose under Guillaume’s aegis. As her magister, Guillaume either praises or suggests improvements on what his apprentice submits for evaluation. His interventions meet the desire for instruction that Toute Belle expresses when first corresponding with the poet. ‘Je vous envoie un virelay lequel j’ai fait; et se yl y a aucune chose a amender, si le veuilliez faire, car vous le sarés miex faire que je ne fais, car j’ai trop petit engien pour bien faire une tele besongne. Et aussi ne eu je unques qui rien m’en aprist’ (VD, p. 94ef/48)11 [I am sending you a virelai that I wrote. And should there be anything in it that ought to be amended, please do so, for you will know how to compose it better than I do, since my ability to invent is not up to carrying out such a task. And, furthermore, I never had anyone teach me how to do it]. Toute Belle is confident that ‘je en apenroie plus de vous en un jour que je ne feroie d’un autre en .I. an’ (VD, p. 96f/48) [I would learn more from you in a day than I would from another in a year]. In turn, she reviews Guillaume’s poetry and commentary and claims that ‘chose qui vient de vous … m’a amendee et amende de jour en jour’ (VD, p. 162h/104) [what you send me has improved me and continues to do so from day to day]. She learns not only from her master’s corrections but also by studying and imitating Guillaume’s poetry. Guillaume seems to favor face-to-face instruction: ‘les .II. choses que vous m’avés envoïes sont tresbien faites a mon gré; mais, se j’estoie .I. jour aveuc vous, je vous diroie et apenroie ce que je n’apris onques a creature, par quoy vous les feriés mieulz’ (VD, p. 154f/96) [the two pieces you sent me are very much to my liking; however, were I to spend just one day with you I would tell and teach you what I never taught anyone, so that you would write them even better]. The editors of Evrart de Conty’s Echecs moralisés offer some circumstantial evidence about oral instruction by a ‘précepteur’ using a vernacular poem, in this case Evrart’s own Echecs amoureux.12 Latin marginalia found in 11 See as well VD, p. 140e/86: ‘y veuilliez amender ce qui y sera a amender’ [please correct whatever needs improvement]. For his part, Guillaume asks Toute Belle to correct any imperfections she finds in the Voir Dit he is writing about their love (VD, p. 558e/430), a task she accepts and carries out (VD, pp. 600b/460, 782f/620–2). 12 Guichard-Tesson and Roy, ed., Echecs mor, pp. lxi–lxiii; Guichard-Tesson 2007, pp. 287–8. As the editors note (pp. xiii and xiv), two of the six manuscripts of this commentary

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the Venice manuscript of the poem13 suggest topics that a preceptor may use as notes while teaching a pupil studying the poem.14 They also provide a sort of index and reference for the topics treated in the poem. Likewise, the more elaborate and systematic Echecs moralisés may reflect the content of that oral instruction.15 Since the extent of the lessons that Guillaume gives orally to Toute Belle about his art of poetry are not recorded in the Voir Dit, we should read it as Toute Belle might have done, by studying its modes and styles together with occasional comments by Guillaume on his art there and in Machaut’s other dits. Like the marginalia in the Echecs amoureux, they are clues as to some features of his art of poetry. In the Introduction, I show how antecedent models are imitated in medieval composition when pupils move beyond the basics taught in formal treatises. In this respect, the Remede de Fortune functions as a model art of poetry for those who have progressed beyond the technical phase illustrated by the various arts of the Second Rhetoric. The Voir Dit comprises an even more extensive model of what its author deemed exemplary composition. In the last analysis, Machaut’s entire œuvre can be studied in this manner in anthology manuscripts. The Prologue, Machaut’s last dit, sets out the art he practices in broad strokes and clear language. Love, personified as Amour, gives Guillaume the matiere with which to write ‘Nouviaus dis amoureus plaisans’ (Prologue 1, v. 5) [new, pleasing love poems], as Nature intended when she fashioned him as a love poet. Amour’s commonplace subject matter, ‘Dous Penser, Plaisance et Esperance’ (Prologue 3, refrain), acquired the special meanings for Machaut that I discuss in chapter one. Amour’s matiere implies an Erlebnismuster that includes past, present, and future stages in love. Thus, Dous penser, aided and abetted by Souvenir, recalls the beloved, producing plaisance by means of the mental image of her and its concomitant association with ideals and commonplace attributes; this leads to good hope – esperance – for the future, a good hope made possible by souffisance and chastity in the present (Prologue 5, v. 56–65/170–8). It is this virtual gradus amoris that Machaut integrated as model into his art of poetry and from there into his subsequent compositions. At the beginning of the Voir Dit, Guillaume is depicted as languishing because of melancholy and artistic impotence. Then, thanks to Toute Belle, he recovers dous penser, plaisance, and esperance – he can write again. Reading the Voir Dit that Guillaume wrote for her, Toute Belle would perceive, first, a common(there is also one fragment) include Legrand’s Archiloge Sophie: BNF fr. 143 and BNF fr. 1508, another important source on the art of poetry and its pedagogy. 13 They are found in this one of the two extant manuscripts, and reappear with some modifications in John Lydgate’s Middle English adaptation, Reason and Sensuallyte (GuichardTesson and Roy, ed., Echecs mor, p. lxii). See also Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (II), pp. 95 (3782-G), 96 (3812-G), 108 (4067-G), 121 (4698-G), 123–30. On the Echecs amoureux manuscripts, see chap. 6, n. 155. 14 Guichard-Tesson and Roy, ed., Echecs mor, p. lxii; cf. Minnis 2001, pp. 300–1. The marginalia are reproduced in both Kraft’s and Raimondi’s editions of the Echecs amoureux. 15 Guichard-Tesson and Roy, ed. Echecs mor, pp. lxii–lxiii; Guichard-Tesson 2007.

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place gradus amoris that extends from initial epistolary contact to the two bed episodes. The ensuing continuatio amoris focuses on vicissitudes finally overcome and renewed hope in the afterlife evoked in the dit’s final lines. Oscillation between hope and desire as well as the anxieties that accompany this narrative are depicted in debates, internal dialogues, and digressions as well as in fixed forms and prose epistles. If Toute Belle as lover reads the dit as an account of the love between her and Guillaume in the context of Machaut’s good love, she will discover, as apprentice in the art of poetry, exemplary descriptions of love’s progress and obstacles. In addition, Machaut’s Louange des dames and other lyric collections were obviously at her disposal, as they are the source of her admiration for Guillaume’s artistry prior to their initial contact. Often disjointed in appearance, each love lyric Machaut wrote fits, as we have seen, into an implicit gradus or continuatio of the kind of love it depicts, be it love as desire, Fortune’s kind of love, and/or love based on good hope. These species of love in gradus and continuatio amoris provide Erlebnismuster in the Voir Dit’s lyrics and narrative that Toute Belle, as apprentice, can and does imitate.

An Apprentice’s Code of Conduct Just as the art of poetry has a moral context that informs Legrand’s depiction of the proper relation between master and pupil, so too, in the Alerion and the Remede de Fortune, Machaut lays out a code of conduct for apprentice love poets, allowing us to compare that instruction to the relationship between Guillaume and Toute Belle as master and apprentice in the art of poetry and its sister art, the art of loving de sentement. Thus, the Alerion’s bestiary allegory uses a not uncommon subject in dits on love and poetry:16 falconry, including the training of the falconer. In this dit Guillaume is the apprentice who learns about falconry by listening to and observing experienced falconers and conversing with them about their skills (Alerion, v. 132–68). As apprentice in the falconer’s art, Guillaume is similar to Toute Belle as she reads, discusses, and imitates Guillaume’s love poetry and prose in the Voir Dit.17 Machaut’s general instruction on conduct at the beginning of the Alerion is addressed to those who practice any art ‘pour vivre seculerement’ (Alerion,

16 For example, Jean Acart de Hesdin’s Prise amoureuse, Gace de la Buigne’s Roman des deduis, Gaston Phebus’s Livre de chasse, the anonymous Livre du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio, and the Dit du faucon. On hunting in late medieval allegory, see Van den Abeele 1990; Strubel and Saulnier 1994; Leach 2007, chap. four. 17 Unlike Toute Belle, the Alerion’s Guillaume does not tell the falconers his intention to learn from them. Poets studying the art of poetry in his dits would also be practicing it without the immediate, direct instruction that Guillaume offers Toute Belle. If Deschamps was also mentored by Machaut, the pedagogy would describe his apprenticeship too, although the love de sentement of master and pupil might require a different narrative and Erlebnismuster.

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v. 2)18 [in order to lead a secular life]. ‘Bien penser, bien dire, bien faire / Et eschuer tout le contraire’ (Alerion, v. 13–14) [think, speak, and fashion/act well and avoid all that is contrary to them] is the first requirement. As we have seen,19 the admonition recurs in the Confort d’ami (v. 3934–5) where Guillaume, as magister, sets out a moral philosophy of life and love for Charles of Navarre. Applied to the art of poetry, these admonitions outline the conventional passage in medieval poetics – a gradus poetriae, so to speak – from conception through language to versification that expresses the conception in a finished poem. Accordingly, Geoffrey of Vinsauf advises his pupils to begin with a mental image before putting the image into words: ‘Est prius archetypus quam sensilis’ (Poetria, v. 48) [its mode of being is archetypal before it is actual (Nims, p. 20)]. In language anticipating Machaut’s instruction in the Alerion and Confort, the Poetria nova continues: ‘sitque prius in pectore quam sit in ore’ (v. 59) [let it exist in the mind before it is on the lips (Nims, p. 20)]. Bien penser and bien dire in this sense lead to poetry: ‘Materiam verbis veniat vestire poesis’ (v. 61) [let poetic art come forward to clothe the matter with words (Nims, p. 20)]. Consequently, ‘Cautius ergo / Consule materiae, ne possit probra vereri’ (v. 69–70) [Give careful thought to the material, therefore, that there may be no possible grounds for reproach (Nims, p. 21)]. And, as we have seen in the Introduction, when a pupil has achieved bien faire, there is praise, as exemplified in the Voir Dit: Guillaume admires Toute Belle’s first rondeau because it contains no redites or other vices – Geoffrey’s ‘probra’ or possible grounds for reproach or correction. In the Alerion, three stages mark the poem’s ordonnance or disposition: ‘Commencement, moien et fin. / De ces .III. se doit enfourmer / Qui bon ouvrage vuet fourmer’ (Alerion, v. 26–8)20 [beginning, middle, and end. Whoever wishes 18 See the Introduction on the context of the medieval poetic tradition exemplified in Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova. Brunetto Latini adapted features of Geoffrey’s art of invention in his Livre dou tresor (Kelly 1969, pp. 126, 133–4). The Poetria nova and commentaries on it as well as Latini’s Tresor remained in use beyond the fifteenth century (Woods 2010); the same is true of the Anticlaudianus and its curriculum, summarized in this chapter’s epigraph. Woods argues convincingly from this evidence that the Poetria nova was one of the most significant and widespread exemplars of the poetic art from its composition early in the thirteenth century into the Renaissance (Woods 2010, pp. 47–9). Similarly, Alain’s literary works continued to be read to the end of the Middle Ages and beyond (Woods 2010, p. 48); extant manuscripts date from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries (Raynaud de Lage 1951, pp. 34–6; cf. Bossuat, ed., Anticlaudianus, pp. 14–25). These analogues show Machaut’s place in the paradigm for invention French authors drew from the medieval Latin tradition that linked God’s creation to Nature’s inventions and the artist’s simulations (see, for example, Echecs mor, 10v39–12v6, 16v46–17r7) while illuminating features of the late medieval poet’s art in the French Second Rhetoric that adapted the Latin tradition to the vernacular language and milieu (Kelly 1991, pp. 158–9). 19 I discuss these lines for Machaut’s art of love in chap. 1, pp. 42–3; here I apply them to his art of poetry. 20 This admonition is conventional; see Poetria, v. 71–7; Tresor, p. 328: III.11.3; Kelly 1991, pp. 68–71.

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to fashion a good work should know about these three parts]. His words mirror dispositio, that is, the order or sequence to be followed in composition that Geoffrey treats after invention in the Poetria nova: ‘Ecce sequens series praesumit ab ordine cursum’ (v. 78)21 [the treatise to follow begins its course with a discussion of order (Nims, p. 21)]. Importantly here, we find this order in the beginning–midpoint–conclusion scheme in the gradus and continuatio amoris of the Voir Dit. In the Alerion, Machaut develops this advice, applicable both to the training of the artist and to the fashioning of a work of art, by discussing the education and character of the gifted artist. The principle of order applies as well in lyric composition. Every rondeau, including Toute Belle’s, authoritatively imposes this order on its content. After the initial refrain, or ‘proposal’, each of the two subsequent parts moves as ‘confirmation’ by partial or total restatement of the initial refrain.22 In this way the repeated refrains bracket the two developments that constitute the poem’s ‘examination’. Thus, Toute Belle states in her opening refrain or proposal that she loves Guillaume faithfully although she has never seen him (VD, v. 203). Her first confirmation states her regrets because of their separation: ‘Et dit que a son gré pas ne vit / Quant vëoir ne vous puet souvent’ (VD, v. 206–7) [And she asserts that she is not pleased when she cannot see you often]. In the second confirmation she justifies her love sight unseen by Machaut’s fame, ‘Quar pour les biens que de vous dit / Tous li mondes communement / Conquise l’avez bonnement’ (VD, v. 210–12) [for because of the good opinion that everyone has of you, you have won her fair and square]. The rondeau is simply structured to provide a beginning, middle, and end, moving in coherent progression or ordonnance from the opening refrain to its concluding restatement. The paradoxical origin of her love sight unseen becomes comprehensible when the full refrain returns at the end of the rondeau: Guillaume’s artistic biens are widely known and acknowledged; this explains how Toute Belle came to love him: she loves him because he is a good poet and, therefore, a good man. She knows that he is a good man not only because of his reputation, but also because he writes good poetry about good love. Consequently, she now wants to imitate his poetry. Further commentary on apprentice conduct is found at the beginning of the Remede de Fortune. There Machaut states that whoever wishes to practice an art – in the Remede’s context this includes the art of poetry and the art of love – should meet twelve requirements.23 The requirements fall under four heads. First, the apprentice must possess a natural inclination ‘ou ses cuers mieus le tire’, and talent ‘ou sa nature l’encline’ (Remede, v. 4–5) [whither his heart draws him [and] his character inclines him]. These requirements are what

21 Geoffrey represents metaphorically the three conventional parts by the ship-voyage, from setting sail through mid-course to safe arrival in port (Kelly 1991, pp. 94–5; Kelly 1992, pp. 66–7). 22 Terminology borrowed from Page 1993a, pp. 163–9. 23 Cf. Schilperoort 1936, pp. 47–8; Gallo 1999, pp. 35 and 36.

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Machaut’s Prologue calls Nature’s gift of sens, a natural prerequisite that places the writer ‘apart’ while distinguishing him or her as a ‘natural’ love poet. Second, the apprentice should love, honor, and obey the master by dutifully following his instruction. The Voir Dit exemplifies this admonition by mirroring the master–pupil relation not only in the art of writing poetry, but also in the mistress–suitor relation in the dit’s literal love story, in which, as we have seen, Toute Belle emerges as ‘master’ much as Esperance does in the Remede and the Voir Dit. ‘Doulz amis,’ Esperance admonishes Guillaume at one point in the Voir Dit, ‘retien ma doctrine, / Car en bonne foi te doctrine’ (VD, v. 5981–2/6054–5) [Sweet friend, learn what I teach, for I teach you in good faith]. This too exemplifies the proper relation between master and pupil. Third, the apprentice must persevere with ‘Soing, penser, desir de savoir’ (Remede, v. 21) [care, thought, desire to learn]. Toute Belle too is depicted as persevering in this task: ‘Et se vous saviez bien la bonne volenté que j’ai de faire chose qui vous plaise, vous ne m’escririés plus que je y mecisse paine a la faire; que, par ma foi, j’ai si grant pensee et si bonne volenté, que je ne cuide mie que nulle creature la puist avoir plus grant’ (VD, pp. 284–6b/206)24 [And if you knew the good will I have to write something that may please you, you would no longer tell me that I should strive to do so, for, in faith, I am so firmly possessed by that thought and will that I don’t believe anyone could be more so]. Fourth and last, the apprentice should begin early in life, ‘Ains qu’en malice son courage / Mue’ (Remede, v. 24–5) [before his heart is perversely corrupted] and innocence is lost. The Alerion illustrates what happens when innocence is lost by the example of a boy whose irascible nature contrasts with that of a gentler young man (Alerion, v. 17–117). Unless corrected early on, the former’s character and inclinations will harden and his actions and words will grow ever more malicious. In the Voir Dit, on the other hand, Toute Belle’s steady, clearsighted view of love, its duties, pleasures, and vicissitudes, receive emphasis. She, like the good-natured boy, exemplifies those who, from early on, are Amoureus, dous et amiables Et en tous leurs fais aggreables, Si pleins de debonnaireté Qu’il ont a chascun amité.  (Alerion, v. 99–102) [loving, gentle, amiable, and agreeable in all that they do, so full of gentility that they enjoy everyone’s friendship.]

Emphasized by contrast with Guillaume, who shows the opposite nature and inclination by his jealous doubts and recurring suspicions, Toute Belle must frequently correct and console her beloved. One might come to the conclusion that Machaut’s earliest dits depict a Guillaume not corrected early enough and consequently corrupted by traditional medieval love poetry, a corruption that 24

See also VD, pp. 94bef/46–8, 140e/86, 162h/104, 318a/232, 540e/414–16.

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emerges again in the Voir Dit whenever his good love reverts to the possessive drive of the Dit dou vergier. These four requirements in the Remede anticipate a general conception of the artist and artistry, whether one studies Armes, amours, autre art, ou lettre. Car chose ne puet si fort estre, S’il veult, qu’il n’en deviengne mestre, Mais qu’il veulle faire et labeure A ce que j’ay dit cy desseure. (Remede, v. 40–4) [arms, love, or another art or kind of writing. For nothing can be so arduous that he cannot become a master if he wishes, provided he be willing to act, working to achieve what I have told him to do above.]

‘Il’, or ‘he’, becomes Toute Belle, or ‘she’, in the Voir Dit.

The Scope of the Late Medieval Art of Poetry The Voir Dit, then, is clearly not only a love story; it is also a model of the forms, modes, and styles, from rondeau to dit, that Machaut uses to write love poetry. Toute Belle’s gradual mastery of his art of poetry contains a gradus and continuatio analogous to the commonplace stages in the art of love. That is, like the art of love, the art of poetry requires that she learn the rudiments of the art, ever improving and striving for greater mastery as she becomes aware of the possibilities suggested by the model works that Machaut wrote and now writes for her. No longer in need of systematic instruction like that in the arts of Second Rhetoric, Toute Belle can appreciate and imitate model works like the Voir Dit and its lyrics. But she does need guidance in the imitation of models, especially with respect to more demanding lyric pieces like the virelai. Let us review Toute Belle’s progress in the lyrics she sends to Guillaume and his poetic responses to them. To put this survey in context, we must turn again to the Remede de Fortune. This dit contains an array of fixed forms common in fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury lyric poetry: a lai, complainte, chant royal, ballade, virelai or chanson baladée, and rondeau as well as a few less common kinds of poems, a prière and a refrain.25 While the French arts of the Second Rhetoric support the emphasis on fixed forms by their focus on stanza structure and interrelationships, line

25 Refrain studies focus on the ways familiar refrains are deployed in new poems, how they are adapted to new material, their role in audience reception, and their musical value; see Doss-Quinby 1984; Butterfield 2002, esp. pp. 75–102. Incipits may exhibit analogous functions (Rosenberg 2006); on incipits in Charles d’Orléans’s anthology manuscript, see Kelly 1978, pp. 218–22.

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length, rhyme, and some figures and tropes,26 some arts of poetry go beyond mere explanations and examples. Thus, Eustache Deschamps’s Art de dictier refers to the natural gift or talent (lines 123–5) that, as indicated above, Machaut evokes in his Prologue as the poet’s sens.27 Poetries also belong to the late medieval art of poetry.28 These collections of examples summarize the deeds of figures drawn from the Ovidian tradition, romances, historical and pseudo-historical material, biblical narratives, and elsewhere. There are extensive lists in Jacques Legrand’s Archiloge Sophie (pp. 156–226) as well as in some treatises, notably the anonymous Règles de la seconde rhétorique.29 Such material serves in poetry to exemplify the truth or opinion that authors express – as Deschamps puts it in his definition of logique quoted above, to express truth in ‘choses faintes’ or ‘faulx argumens’ that serve as examples. The depiction of truth in fiction is, then, a component of Machaut’s art of poetry. The examples may include apparently or allegedly autobiographical information like that found in the Voir Dit. Indeed, my distinction between Machaut and Guillaume in the Introduction as well as the difficulties often encountered in distinguishing between them come about because of the poet’s reconfiguration of autobiographical material.30 Poetries in this broad sense are a major source, or, more accurately, resource, for invention in late medieval dits. As such, these collections are analogous to the lists of examples mined for sermons in the ars praedicandi tradition.31 I discuss more fully Machaut’s art of reconfiguring examples in chapter four. Suffice it to note here that both lists, those in poetries and for sermons, are no more than that: collections of narrative resumés that the poet or preacher can draw on and reconfigure in order to develop, amplify, or otherwise explain narrative and/or thought. In such poetries, ‘l’exemplum n’est plus enchassé dans un texte englobant, mais au contraire extrait de son contexte, isolé, transmis à part, séparément’.32 Poems themselves may contain numerous examples that can also be mined and rewritten once they have been severed from the original work.33 Thus, the Ovide moralisé comprises a vast poetrie;34 this is especially

Langlois 1902, pp. vii–ix; Patterson 1935, pp. 114–28. Varty 1965, p. 167. 28 Langlois 1902, pp. viii–x; Patterson 1935, pp. 10–11; Jung 1971; Poirion 1988; François Cornilliat, in Poétiques, pp. 37–47. Cf. Méchoulan 1988, especially pp. 219–21; Moss 2002, esp. chap. two. 29 Langlois 1902, pp. 39–48, 65–72, 97; cf. pp. xxi–xxix. 30 On such ‘autography’, see pp. 174–9. 31 Bremond [et alii] 1982, p. 56; in general, see pp. 57–68. Cf. Zink 1976, pp. 204–10, 535–7; Polo de Beaulieu 2001. 32 Bremond [et alii] 1982, p. 56. 33 John of Salisbury’s Policraticus was drawn on in this way for examples (Moos 1988b, pp. 134–43). 34 Jung 1994, p. 149; Blumenfeld-Kosinski 1997, p. 137; Jung 2001, pp. 29–30. The anonymous author of the Ovide moralisé wrote as a preacher (Jung 1994, pp. 150, 160–7); his fables might serve as resources for both sermons and poetry. 26 27

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evident in those manuscripts that eliminate or abbreviate the moralizations.35 In this sense, Toute Belle might study Guillaume’s examples in the more subtle part of the Voir Dit as well as in the Morpheus or Fontaine amoureuse that he sends her; she also knows the Roman de la rose and the Prose Lancelot (VD, p. 162g/104), works replete with potential examples that the new writer could draw on and rewrite. Toute Belle’s proficiency in writing verse when she first contacts Guillaume implicitly locates her in a graded scale of instruction and learning common in medieval schools.

Proficiency: Toute Belle’s Progress from Rudis to Provecta One sense of Latin rudis is evident in the Voir Dit’s use of Middle French rude. Prior to Toute Belle’s first contact with and ‘resuscitation’ of Guillaume, the unproductive poet’s ‘petit engien … estoit tous arrudis’ (VD, p. 80b/36)36 [feeble capacity for poetic invention was absolutely incompetent]. He overcomes the defect by love service that allows him once more to write good poetry (VD, v. 810–13). In love service, poetic impotence is best understood in the context of contraires choses. Rudesce shows lack of the art of gentility: ‘autant me valoit’ in that state, Guillaume confesses, ‘A faire une tresgrant rudesce / Com de faire une gentillesce’ (VD, v. 839–41) [it mattered as much to me to do something uncouth as it did to act nobly]. Before Toute Belle’s rondeau reaches him, he is, as poet, no better than an old stump sunk down and lying useless and unproductive in a bog (VD, v. 843–9). Likewise, in another context, Guillaume excuses himself for writing rudement, although this time he is so overwhelmed with joy that ‘je vous escris plus rudement, nicement et mal sagement que je ne deusse’ (VD, p. 126i/76)37 [I write to you more inelegantly, foolishly, and imprudently than I should]. Further on, Toute Belle herself writes ‘rudely’ to him because he no longer loves her as he ought (VD, v. 5792–6/5865–9). As model, he is no longer an imitable or inspiring poet. Importantly, in Toute Belle’s admonishment, rudement conjoined with adverbs like durement and diversement bespeaks a master’s harsh reprimands for a badly performing pupil (VD, v. 5894–9/5967–72, 5988– 6003/6061–76). Later, when Guillaume begins to listen not to his master in love, Toute Belle, but to other voices, his language and poetry become discourteous and misogynist. As Toute Belle’s confessor tells him, he has been heeding false teachers.

Jung 1996. On this languorous état d’âme, see VD, v. 292–5, 824–41, pp. 150c/94, 184a/122, v. 2473–81/2575–83, p. 368b/278, v. 5542–3/5615–16, 7462–72/7535–45, 7736–8/7809–11. Cf. Confort, v. 3233–4. 37 Cf. VD, pp. 422a/318, 736a/584. 35 36

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Vous vous estes desenflés En parlant moult diversement De Toute Belle et rudement. Ne sai qui ce vous ha apris.  (VD, v. 8751–4/8836–9) [Your character has diminished by your speaking of Toute Belle in such an ugly, uncouth manner. I don’t know who taught you to do this.]

Only after correction can he begin again to write estimable poetry. The term rude, then, proves significant in the art of poetry. Both Guillaume and Toute Belle refer to badly composed or expressed verse, correspondence, and speech as rude, especially when speaking of any love that is not, or is no longer, good love.38 In this sense, the word forms another link between the medieval Latin tradition and late medieval vernacular poetics. A comparison of the two proves enlightening for the progress of Toute Belle’s apprenticeship under Guillaume’s tutelage. In the Latin scholastic tradition, rudis refers to the as yet uneducated, untrained pupil beginning instruction in composition and, by extension, to his or her compositions:39 the uneducated rudes in Gervase of Melkley; the less advanced, or minus provecti, in Matthew of Vendôme; and those advanced into quadrivial studies, or in quadrivio promoti, mentioned in the glosses to the Timaeus attributed to Bernard of Chartres,40 John of Salisbury’s authority on pedagogy in the Metalogicon. Indeed, Gervase of Melkley’s instruction was intended to ‘rudem animum informare’ (Ars versificaria, p. 3, line 25)41 [to give shape and knowledge to the uncultivated mind]. A commentary on Martianus Capella attributed to Bernardus Silvestris places poesis first in its graded curriculum. It offers the rudiments, a necessary first step in preparation for more advanced studies in the trivium, quadrivium, and beyond: ‘Prima enim studii rudimenta poesis suscipere debet, ut … poemata proposita erudiamur et ad capienda altiora perparemur’ (Capella, §6, lines 5–8)42 [For he must begin basic lessons in the study of poetic composition in which we learn from the proposed poetic readings and are prepared to grasp higher subjects]. Similarly focused on 38 VD, v. 811, 826–41, pp. 126i/76, 150c/94 (‘rudes et nyces et desapris’), 422a/318 (‘un po rudettement escript’), 448a/338, v. 5792–3/5865–6, 6002/6075, p. 736a/584. Cf. BalNot 32, v. 5–6: ‘pour ce sont mi chant de rude affaire, / Qu’il sont tuit fait d’un cuer plus noir que meure’ [that’s why my songs are inelegantly composed: they are the product of a heart blacker than mulberry]. 39 Cf. Kraus 2009; Woods 2010, pp. 50–1. 40 Gervase, Ars versificaria, p. 3, line 25; Matthew, Ars versificatoria, Prol 4, §4, line 51; Glosae Plato, §1:61–2. Alberic of Montecassino’s treatise on dictamen was written for provecti (Ward 1995, p. 112). For examples of instruction meant to enhance pupils’ subtlety in reading and writing poetic texts, see Zeeman 2009. 41 On this treatise as an elementary art of poetry and prose, see Kelly 1991, pp. 61–4. 42 Cf. Bernard of Chartres’s analogous program of study as described by John of Salisbury (Metalogicon, §1, line 24).

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early pedagogy, Gervase’s statement that Jean of Hauville’s Architrenius,43 like Alain’s Anticlaudianus and other works, could instruct the ‘rudem … infantiam’ (Ars versificaria, p. 3, lines 20–1) on poetic composition obviously refers not to the puer who is cracking Donatus for the first time, but to a pupil beginning to read these poetic masterpieces. Even on lower levels, excerpted or selected passages from model works might be chosen for study and imitation in apprentice compositions. This would be the case for the rudes Gervase refers to who read and imitate only selected parts of the Architrenius.44 The stages from poesis as beginning in the sense of the Martianus Capella Commentary to the quadrivium suggest progressive levels or grades of verse and prose composition. The assignments to the rudes in primary classes, to minus provecti further along, and, finally, to those in quadrivio promoti span instruction between elementary and more advanced studies in which students are to interpret and imitate canonical models. The commentary on the Timaeus attributed to Bernard of Chartres, for example, was written for those advanced pupils: ‘hoc opus non rudibus, sed in quadruuio promotis elaboratum est’45 (Glosae Plato, 1, lines 61–2) [this work was written not for elementary pupils but for those who have advanced to the quadrivium]. The advanced pupil, no longer a rudis, should be able to treat and improve on rudis materia. In the end, ‘cum rudem materiam historiae aut argumenti aut fabulae aliamue quamlibet suscepissent, eam tanta disciplinarum copia, et tanta compositionis et condimenti gratia excolebant, ut opus consummatum omnium artium quodam modo uideretur imago’ (Metalogicon 1.24, lines 29–33) [when they will have taken up inelegant matter from history, stories, fables or any other source material, they will have adorned it with such compositional finesse and graceful embellishment that the completed work will seem in some way to be an image of all the arts]. This is the distinction between materia remota found in the antecedent work and materia propinqua as the contents of the new work, rewrite and, in some cases, reprise of antecedent matter.46 It is at this stage that aspiring poets might draw material from poetries and canonical models like the Architrenius that they can imitate or emulate by rewriting them. This is also the stage Toute Belle is approaching when she sends her first rondeau to Guillaume. How she might proceed is suggested in the Anticlaudianus. In the excerpt from the prose prologue to his Anticlaudianus quoted in this chapter’s first epigraph, Alain de Lille reviews the progress of those who read Cited in the Echecs moralisés; see p. 770 s.v. Architrenius (for 22r31 read 122r31). Glossing in many manuscripts suggests they were read only near the beginning; see Ward 1995, p. 66; Kelly 1999a, p. 94. For an overview of medieval reading and imitation of Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid on Dido and Aeneas, see Couwenberg 2008. Fournier 2008 suggests how Boethius’s Consolation might have been read in the quadrivium as an illustration of the four mental faculties, the senses, imagination, reason, and intellect; see also Woods 2010, pp. 167–8, 210. 45 See also Glosae Plato, 5, lines 143–7, and pp. 53 and 69; cf. Godman 2000, pp. 163–5, 232–6; Ziolkowski 2009. 46 Kelly 1969, p. 130; Cizek 1994, pp. 36–7 et passim. 43 44

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his poem, setting out levels of learning in a pedagogical context. First, the literal matter will be sweet to the pupil’s ears; the more advanced pupil will fill his mind with the work’s moral lessons; finally, its allegorical subtlety will sharpen the pupil’s wit. The curriculum outlined in this passage is traditional. It is reflected not only in the standard arts of poetry and prose that represent aspects of the curriculum, but also in representative works like the Anticlaudianus itself, works that were recommended for study and imitation by pupils who advance beyond the formal treatises. Following the literal suavitas that the pupil should begin to imitate and appreciate, the ethical and allegorical subtleties serve to sharpen a pupil’s mind and deepen his or her appreciation of the masterpieces and their art.47 The Latin paradigm outlined above is recognizable in the pedagogical program Guillaume describes for Toute Belle. It is discernible in the prosimetric composition48 of the Voir Dit, that offers her examples of writing on the literal, moral, and subtler allegorical levels. Of course, although the dit tells us precious little about Toute Belle’s previous experience and education, she is clearly depicted as a woman who has received an aristocratic upbringing and who, like many fourteenth-century aristocrats, wishes to become a better poet. She has, in other words, much in common with Christine de Pizan and Marie de Clèves, Charles d’Orléans’s last, young wife.49 She reads Latin if Guillaume’s references to Boethius, Fulgentius, Ovid, and other Latin authors are taken into account. As such, Toute Belle is a minus provecta at the time she sends her first rondeau to Guillaume, having already independently acquired some proficiency in Machaut’s art of poetry.50 Guillaume recognizes her progress as soon as he reads her first rondeau. It is ‘si noble chose’ (VD, v. 199) [such a noble piece] because, being neither ‘villaine ne fole’ (VD, v. 217), it n’estoit pas rudes ne let, N’il n’estoit mie contrefais,51 Ainçois estoit si tresbien fais Et en tous cas si bien servoit Que nulz amender n’i savoit.  (VD, v. 184–8)

On this feature of Machaut’s poetics, see Delogu 2012. Like Bernardus Silvetris’s Cosmographia, a model of advanced composition for proficient pupils in the medieval curriculum according to Gervase of Melkley (Kelly 1991, pp. 57–64; cf. Tilliette 2000, pp. 56–7) – but not the only one (Woods 2010, pp. 47–9). 49 See Taylor 2007, chap. three. 50 Like Toute Belle, Jean de Werchin claims to have learned the art of poetry on his own (Barge, v. 3471–4; Willard 1990, pp. 597, 602 n. 14). 51 Here, ‘contrefais’ is the antonym of de sentement. Cf. ‘qui de sentement ne fait, son dit et son chant contrefait’ (VD, p. 170c/110) [whoever does not write with true feeling falsifies his or her words and song]. 47 48

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[was neither uncouth nor ugly, nor was it the least bit counterfeit; rather it was so well fashioned and in every way realized its purpose so well that no one would find anything to improve upon in it.]

Likewise, Toute Belle’s epistolary prose contains nothing ‘qui faice a blamer’ (VD, v. 6277/6350) [blameworthy]. Guillaume’s approval of her poems and prose shows that she has the natural inclination and talent that Machaut depicts in his Prologue as a prerequisite for aspiring poets. The ‘sweetness of the literal sense’ of good writing soothes not only the ears of boys but also of girls. Toute Belle sings and dances; she can read music, as indicated by her request that Guillaume send her poems with musical notation so that she can both sing them and more easily learn them.52 Indeed, Guillaume explains to her the instrumentation he prefers for one poem because of its synaesthetic effect (VD, p. 188c/124),53 a terminology his depiction suggests she understands. Toute Belle is, obviously, a well-educated young woman by the standards of her times. The Voir Dit concludes with subtle poetry, that is, the ‘beles et subtives fictions’ referred to in this chapter’s second epigraph. Such fictions, drawn from poetries and other collections like the Ovide moralisé, are reconfigured for use in a new poem. This would be evident to Toute Belle if she has access to these sources and can make appropriate comparisons. As such, they mark her progress towards the level of an in quadrivio promota. Toute Belle uses common personifications in her first rondeau: ‘quant Juenesce m’en prie, / Amours le vuelt commander, / Je ne m’en doi descorder’ (VD, v. 482–4) [when Youth requests it of me and Love chooses to demand it, I must not fail to go along]. But, with the exception of brief references to Venus, we must wait for her complainte to find her using erudite examples culled from poetries or her own reading of other Latin and French sources. Onques Jason belle Medee, Ne Dido de Cartage Enee,  N’aussi Biblis Cadmus, në Helaine, Paris N’amerent tant, soies ent fis, Com je t’aim.54 (VD, v. 5833–8/5906–11) [You can be quite sure that Medea never loved Jason or Carthaginian Dido Aeneas, Biblis Cadmus or Helen Paris as much as I love you.]

In this passage, Toute Belle emphasizes the intensity of these women’s love 52 Stone 2003, especially pp. 126–9. The pupil beginning the study of grammar also learned the basic elements of music; see Plumley 2003b, pp. 231–5; Leach 2007, pp. 15–16, 103–4. 53 On the synaesthetic effect of Machaut’s poetry, see chap. 7. 54 The tutoiement recalls Esperance’s expression of anger in the Voir Dit, v. 4220–3 (see p. 59). The reader might also note that none of these women loved with Toute Belle’s good love.

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in order to show that her love for Guillaume is even stronger and better. The false male lovers she evokes also create an implicit put-down on Guillaume’s suspicions. Cephalus and Adonis warn him not to ignore his beloved’s advice (VD, v. 5908–39/5981–6012, 5956–71/6029–44).55 Moreover, many of the moralizations in her complainte are not used elsewhere by Guillaume but chosen by Toute Belle herself. In one passage, inspired perhaps by Guillaume’s comparing her to Semiramis (VD, v. 4813–15/4886–8), she adds other examples while inventing her own moralizations for them.56 Reading her complainte, Guillaume realizes that Toute Belle is ready for the ‘sharper subtlety’ of the Voir Dit’s last part. The relationship between Toute Belle and Guillaume in the Voir Dit shows her to be a gifted apprentice poet. Of the stages in the artist’s progress identified above, she has clearly completed the first on her own because she composes poems that meet her master’s approval, has knowledge of Machaut’s alias Guillaume’s poetry, and appreciates its qualities well enough to want to learn more in order to write better. She appears to have read widely. Later, Guillaume shows some of her poems to acquaintances who share his admiration of her sentiments and agree with his evaluation of her artistry (VD, p. 422b/318); their confirmation of Toute Belle’s skill, proficiency, and progress pleases her very much (VD, p. 432b/326).

Imitation and Poetic Competition Toute Belle hopes that, with Guillaume’s assistance, she will more efficiently learn how to improve on the skills she has already acquired on her own (VD, pp. 94e–96f/48). He is quite willing to take on the task because she is already a promising poet, not a rudis (VD, p. 154f/96). He must therefore practice what he preaches, as Legrand advises in the Archiloge Sophie. To do so as master in writing poetry, Guillaume offers Toute Belle his poems as models. Since models can serve as positive or negative examples, her own poems and their models in the book Guillaume writes for Toute Belle serve to differentiate between Machaut’s good and bad love as well as how to depict both kinds of love in verse and prose. Toute Belle eagerly memorizes the lyrics Guillaume sends her, singing them when she has the notation. Thus, in one letter, she states that ‘J’ai veü le rondel

55 She includes fictional examples of perfect love in her Letter 7; they suggest wider reading of French romances in her reference to ‘Artus de Bretaigne et Florence la fille au roy Emenidys, et maint autre dont je sui certaine que vous avez oÿ parler’ (VD, p. 160b/102–4) [Arthur of Brittany and Florence, daughter of king Emenidus, and many others about whom I am sure you have heard tell]. 56 This is analogous to the rewriting of examples in the woman’s response to Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour (Solterer 1995, chaps. three and four).

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que vous m’avés envoié et l’ai apris’ (VD, p. 162d/104) [I have seen the rondeau you sent me and I have learned it]. Elsewhere, she intends to learn both words and music so that she can sing a lay he wrote (VD, p. 408c/308).57 Memory facilitates writing an appropriate response to or variant on Guillaume’s poems, since his poems become models stored in her mind not only for ready recall but also for imitation and, indeed, for emulation as her superior command of love discussed in chapter two finds expression in the lyrics and letters she writes. Memory development was a traditional component of teaching in the medieval poetic traditions informing grammar and rhetoric.58 Thus, John of Salisbury recalls memory exercises and declamation in the pedagogy of Bernard of Chartres (Metalogicon, I.24, lines 59–62 and 89–92); they form part of the Poetria nova’s instruction too (Poetria, v. 1969–2030).59 This included training the memory for oral performance in Latin and the vernaculars, an emphasis carried over into the arts of poetry and prose. Having memorized a given poem by Guillaume, then, Toute Belle can compose a response to it or a variation on it. The Voir Dit illustrates these exchanges. Interestingly, as both Guillaume and Toute Belle compose poems using one another’s poems as models, a sort of poetic competition between them emerges, especially during their turbulent continuatio amoris. Their competition reflects not only traditional pedagogy but also conventional poetic play in the late medieval social environment.60 Poetic rivalry in the Voir Dit between Thomas Paien61 and Guillaume, for example, shows the challenger throwing down the gauntlet which the challenged poet picks up. In this case, Guillaume is convinced that by writing the first ballade Paien gained an advantage because he found the best material for the theme he selected.62 More specifically, Guillaume feels that he did indeed imitate his challenger, but that he could not emulate him. As he puts it in a culinary metaphor, Paien le mieulz et le plus qu’il pot Prist toute la graisse du pot, Si qu’il ot d’assés l’avantage De faire milleur son potage.

57 See as well VD, pp. 94b/46, 96g/48, v. 2370–4, p. 460f/346. Cf. Willaert 1992, pp. 118–19. 58 Lausberg 1973, §§1083–90; Kelly 1991, p. 144. See also Willaert 1992, p. 119; Leach 2007, p. 20. The foundational scholarship on memory is, of course, Yates 1966; see also, among her own numerous studies, Carruthers 1990 and 1998. 59 Kelly 1991, p. 144; James-Raoul 2007, pp. 542–603; Woods 2010, pp. 29, 37. 60 Taylor 2007; see as well Bétemps 2002 on Oton de Grandson’s emulation of Machaut’s Lay de plour. On an analogous social environment for musicians, see Page 1993a, pp. 17–18, 81–4, and 137–9. 61 On this poet see Leach 2009. 62 This did not prevent Froissart and Chaucer from entering the fray at a later time (Sultan 2009, p. 312; Wimsatt 1991b, pp. 181–5). On Machaut’s ‘art de recyclage’ and this exchange, see Plumley 2009, pp. 322–8.

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Et je respondi par tel rime Et par tel mettre comme il rime.  (VD, v. 6407–12/6480–5; cf. p. 572i/440) [took the best and as much as he could of the pot’s grease so that he had a distinct advantage in making a better potage. And I responded using the same rhyme and verse he used.]

Both authors (and Froissart later) also use the same refrain, ‘Je voi assés, puis que je voi ma dame,’ as theme in the three ballades. Moreover, while using the same ballade form that Thomas Paien does, including line length and rhymes in his challenger’s poem, Guillaume accumulates analogous but different examples of sites they don’t need to see because seeing their lady is sufficient (see VD, v. 6421–68/6494–541).63 In the final analysis Guillaume outstrips his challenger by his musical organization of the poems’ subject matter.64 As this episode underscores, imitation and emulation figure prominently in poetic exchanges, including those between master and pupil. Indeed, many poems in the Voir Dit show how one poet responds to the other in rewriting, just as the letters not only communicate messages, but also illustrate the art of letter writing and, more generally, that of prose composition.65 In fact, the poetic exchanges between Guillaume and Toute Belle conform to the Paien–Guillaume exchange model. Thus, the genre and lay-out of the poems are usually the same, while the themes and amplifications imitate the first author’s images or techniques. Of course, the mirror effect may ‘distort’ to achieve originality when the matiere of one poem is rewritten or reconfigured in the response to it. As with the exchange between Thomas Paien and Guillaume, formal features such as rhyme and line length are reproduced as well in the early exchanges between Guillaume and Toute Belle that I discuss in the Introduction. Si n’atendi pas longuement, Ains me respondi proprement De tel metrë et de tel rime Com li rondiaus que j’ai fait rime.  (VD, v. 2897–900/2999–3012) [Nor did I have long to wait; rather she answered using precisely the same verse and rhyme I did in the rondeau I wrote.]

Clearly, these lines show how the social exchange model in lyric poems fits apprenticeship in the Voir Dit. As shown in my Introduction, Guillaume’s critical comments on the imitative technique begin with the rondeau with which Toute Belle introduces herself to him: ‘n’i ot vice ne redite’ (VD, v. 219) [there was no fault or repetition in it]. 63 For a close reading of Machaut’s poem, but without a comparison with Paien’s version or a discussion of its place in the Voir Dit, see Wolfzettel 1983, pp. 514–19. 64 Leach 2010, pp. 571–3. 65 Ruhe 1975, pp. 275–85; Cerquiglini-Toulet 2006, pp. 20–2; Lachet 2006.

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He responds using the same verse and rhymes she does: 8ABB abAB abbABB (VD, v. 203–15 = 374–86). He calls this feature to the reader’s and the potential apprentice’s attention: ‘par tel rime mon rescript / Ferai comme elle m’a escript’ (VD, v. 366–7) [I shall rhyme my response just as she did in her poem]; he again responds to her next rondeau ‘En tel maniere et en tel rime / Com elle en son rondelet rime’ (VD, v. 534–5) [in such style and rhyme as she does in her little rondeau] – that is, 7A′BB a′bA′B a′bbA′BB (VD, v. 475–87 = 536–48). Here the potential pupil’s poems are models for her master’s imitation. Just as the Paien–Guillaume exchange elaborates on the theme expressed in the refrain they share, so too Toute Belle and Guillaume, in their initial exchange, choose as theme love by ouï-dire. In their second exchange she claims that Jeunesse urged her to love and that her choice fell on the best man, Guillaume himself; he responds by reciprocating the praise: ‘Belle, bonne et envoisie, / Plaisant et douce sans per, / Je ne vous puis trop loer’ (VD, v. 536–8) [beautiful, good, and joyous woman, peerlessly pleasing and sweet, I cannot praise you too much]. By and large, after their first exchanges, Guillaume assumes his pedagogical role by becoming the model that Toute Belle imitates or emulates. In this way he sets a standard for his pupil to measure up to in responses that he, as master, evaluates.66 Each of his poems is, so to speak, assigned homework. Their third exchange is with virelais, his expressing anxiety about their forthcoming meeting and hers offering comfort and assurances that all will go well. Each virelai (VD, v. 1015–105/1036–169 = 1241–60/1304–30) contains the same form for refrains and exposition, but different rhymes (7AA4B7B4A7A4B + 7bb4a7bb4a7aa4b7b4a7a4b). Moreover, Toute Belle’s virelai has only one stanza. Whereas he fears losing her love, she is so overwhelmed by his poetic achievement that, as she explains in a letter, she can complete only one stanza with its refrain: ‘les vostres sont si bonnes que elles m’esbahissent toute, si vous pri que vous y veuilliez amender ce qui y sera a amender’ (VD, p. 140e/86) [yours are so good that they totally dumbfound me; I beseech you to amend whatever requires improvement]. In this way, Toute Belle’s performance illustrates the apprentice’s rather than the lover’s anxiety. When, later, Guillaume sends her a ballade, Toute Belle shows that she has progressed: she responds with a complete, three-stanza virelai, albeit with new rhymes (VD, v. 1683–703/1753–73 = 1704–37/1774–819). Both poems treat their eternal love – it is no more likely to end than that the deep sea will go dry. Two sets of formally identical rondeaux follow. But in a subsequent exchange of virelais (VD, v. 1838–75/1920–72 = 1876–91/1973–93), Toute Belle again completes only one stanza, with one rhyme changed; she offers no explanation for its incomplete state.67 Exchanges continue in this way until after the Venus cloud episode.

66 67

Fasseur 2006a. Not all of Christine de Pizan’s virelais contain three stanzas (Schilperoort 1936, p. 11).

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Toute Belle’s last virelai (VD, v. 8488–91/8573–6) is neither a response to a specific poem by Guillaume nor does it elicit one from him. She is now writing independently and he is no longer mentoring. In this final virelai, Toute Belle expresses such profound grief that she can complete only two of the standard three stanzas, perhaps an illustration of the debilitating effect of languor and grief on artistry. Then the poetic exchanges break off68 because of Guillaume’s suspicions, perhaps returning in two widely separated anagram rondeaux (VD, v. 6263–70/6336–43 = 8958–65/9043–50). In them, the formal variations are more subtle: 10A′B a′A′ a′bA′B = 8AB′ aA ab′AB′, as his rhymes [ĩzə-izə]69 and [pris] become [ĩ] and [prizə] in hers. Although their love is troubled, Toute Belle as pupil is indeed writing now on her own initiative and with greater independence and skill. These exchanges also mirror exchanges between a man and a woman in Machaut’s lyric clusters. As we have seen, in the Voir Dit’s pedagogical context clusters are analogous to exercises in Latin schools in which pupils rewrite a passage from a recommended longer work. Since Toute Belle has mastered the basics of the Second Rhetoric treatises and can read and sing using musical notation, her progress depends initially on her imitation of poetic models like those in the Voir Dit’s first part. As with many others in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,70 Machaut is her model as long as she remains his pupil. But by the end of the Voir Dit her verse has become occasional and independent. She no longer needs her master and can choose her own models to emulate. Unlike the still open-ended love described in chapter two, the apprentice plot line has reached its denouement.

Invention and the Poet’s Sens The apprentice cannot write or learn to write beautiful poetry, Deschamps states, ‘se de son propre et naturel mouvement ne se faisoit’ (Art dictier, line 184) [if he or she did not do so using his or her own natural inclination]. This ‘natural movement’ requires what Machaut calls using sens, which is featured as one of Nature’s gifts in the Prologue. There Nature endows him with the ability to write love poetry in praise of ladies, the most common kind of poetry in his time (cf. Art dictier, lines 133–7). It is also the kind of poetry Machaut writes71 and that Toute Belle learns to write as well; she lauds her beloved master, except when his defects impede or block her poetic impulse. Otherwise, like him, she uses 68 The exchange of complaintes after the Venus cloud episode is the only exception; see pp. 111–12, 138–9. 69 There is an (intentional?) vice in Guillaume’s rondeau: his refrain’s ‘quinse’ does not rhyme with ‘prise’. 70 See, for example, Plumley 2003b, pp. 243–8. 71 Machaut describes his collected works in this way in Prologue 2, v. 19–20/45–6; 3, v. 21–4/75–8; 4, v. 11–20/95–104; 5, v. 169–82/280–93.

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her sens together with the acquired arts of rethorique and musique to become a more accomplished poet. Sens is considered natural, whereas Nature’s other gifts, rethorique as the art of versification and musique, are skills the talented poet must acquire by an apprenticeship like Toute Belle’s. Sens facilitates and may even make possible such acquisition when it refers to the specific kind of intelligence that Nature bestowed on Machaut. Love poetry treats Amour’s matiere – ‘bonne Esperance, / Dous Penser et douce Plaisance’ (Prologue 5, v. 5–6/119–20) – to which Machaut, using his sens, assigns the specific range of meanings identified in chapter one. This is invention. Importantly here, sens and penser are complementary terms but Machaut does not always assign the same semantic range to them. Thus, ‘Scens y est qui tout gouverne / En chambre, en salle et en taverne’ (Prologue 5, v. 159–60/270–1) [sens is there to govern everything in chamber, hall, and tavern]. But the Prologue excludes tavernes from dous penser.72 Machaut’s ‘thinker’ in his sense of dous penser   ne riote ne ne tense N’il ne porroit penser a chose Ou villenie fust enclose, Haïne, baras ou mesdis. Je le say trop bien par mes dis.  (Prologue 5, v. 32–6/146–50) [does not brawl or quarrel, nor could he or she conceive anything villainous, hateful, strife-ridden, or slanderous. I know this quite well from what I have written.]

Toute Belle is no more inclined to write such poetry than Machaut claims to be. Although sens has more than one meaning in Middle French, these meanings are complementary and fit well into the common medieval paradigm for invention. When referring to the five senses, sens can also designate the sens commun,73 which brings sense impressions into order, permitting entendement, or understanding, of what they represent. In the poet’s case, ‘Par Scens aras ton engin enfourmé / De tout ce que tu vorras conformer’ (Prologue 1, v. 10–11) [Using sens your faculty of imagination will acquire shape and subject matter for everything that you will want to fashion]. This passage and its translation require some clarification. Engin refers to the faculty called imagination (ingenium in Latin),74 the faculty that provides both the form and the content of sense impressions; it 72 Cerquiglini-Toulet 2002b. Machaut refers to ‘taverne’ in the Prise d’Alexandrie as ‘la chapelle au dyable / … / Car on y aprent à jurer, / A mentir & à parjurer, / Ordure, luxure & usure, / Et toute mauvaise apresure, / De jour, de nuit & à toute heure’ (v. 6138–44/6137– 43/6135–41) [the devil’s chapel … for there one learns to swear, lie, and perjure, as well as about filth, lust, usury, and every evil subject matter, by day and night and at all times]. 73 Moos 2002. 74 Wetherbee 1976; Kelly 1978, pp. 3–4, 34; T. Adams 2007, p. 60.

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gives them a shape – a figure – that the rational faculty understands and validates. The poet uses fictions as resources that he or she reconfigures so as to reveal a truth in or beneath their surface narrative; in this way materia remota becomes materia propinqua. In his complainte, for example, Guillaume refers to Toute Belle as an ‘exemplaire / Des biens qu’on puet dire, penser et faire’ (VD, v. 6119–20/6192–3) [exemplar of the goods one can name, think, and activate]. Those biens refer literally to her virtues. Metaphorically, they constitute her treasure-trove as discussed in chapter two. Not new in medieval French, the term exemplaire75 in Machaut’s lyrics76 becomes an image, an ymaginacion or figure77 that represents love’s biens as well as its maux. Aus amans pour exemplaire Vueil .j. lay retraire  De celle qui traire   Me fait tant contraire.  (Lai 4, v. 1–4) [For lovers I wish to produce as exemplar a lay about her who makes me endure so many difficulties.]

Accordingly, whenever Amour provides the impulse (Prologue 1, v. 3–5), the poet seeks material, whether fictional, historical, biblical, or autobiographical materia remota, that he or she shapes and elucidates coherently and convincingly as the materia propinqua of the new poem. Exemplaire in this context may refer to Erlebnismuster, the commonplace scripts that Marc-René Jung has identified in medieval lyric. In order to ‘telle ouevre edifier’ (Lai 14, v. 9) that is true and sincere (‘de son sentement’, Lai 23, v. 2) and not discordant (cf. ‘descort’, Vir 27, v. 1), the poet gives commonplace words like esperence special meanings and new illustrations. Thus, Amour gives the poet as materia remota love’s commonplace esperence, which, in the Remede and the Voir Dit, Guillaume shapes as materia propinqua in order to invent a figure, Esperance, who personifies good hope; he then, through description, invents her words and actions using his sens and the arts of rethorique and musique. Brunetto Latini’s adaptation of the Poetria nova sets out the process leading from materia remota to materia propinqua in language that elucidates Machaut’s notion of building a poem as ‘telle ouevre edifier’. Il te covient tot avant consirer ta matire et connoistre la nature dou fait et sa maniere. Fai donc a l’essample de celui ki vieut maisoner, car il ne cort pas a l’oevre hastivement, ains le mesure tot avant a la ligne de son cuer, et

See Godefroy, vol. 9, p. 553; TrLF, vol. 8, p. 426. For example, see Lai 3, v. 240; 6, v. 78; 7, v. 148; 14, v. 142; 21, v. 50; BalNot 34, v. 11; Vir 17, v. 17. 77 Ymaginacion: Lai 6, v. 5–6; figure: Lai 9, v. 165–6; 19, v. 103–6. 75 76

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comprent en sa memore78 trestot l’ordre et la figure de la maison. Et tu gardes que ta langue ne soit courans a parler, ne la mains a l’escrire, ne commete79 pas l’un ne l’autre a cours de fortune. Mais ton sens tiegne en sa main l’office de chascune, en tel maniere que la matire soit longuement a la balance de ton cuer.80 Et dedens lui pregne l’ordre de sa voie et de sa fin, car a ce que les besoignes du siecle sont diverses, te covient a parler diversement, et a chacune selonc sa matire. (Tresor, p. 335: III.17, lines 2–3) [It behooves you to begin by considering your subject matter and discovering its nature and kind. Therefore, follow the example of the man who wants to build a house. He does not rush to begin work hastily. Rather he sets out the whole project using the heart’s plumb line, committing to memory the entire order and shape of the house. Let your tongue not rush to speak nor your hand to write; entrust neither to fortune. Let your mind (sens) keep a grip on both tasks so that the subject matter be weighed over time on the scales of your heart. Determine mentally the order you will follow and your goal; for, since the tasks in life are diverse, you must vary what you say, treating each one according to its subject matter.]

This is what Machaut does when he constructs his dous penser–esperence–plaisance paradigm.81 Given that ‘les besoignes du siècle sont diverses’ and that one must ‘parler diversement, et a chacune selonc sa matire’, the ability to diversify subject matter is central to the art of poetry. Indeed, we come upon this model for varying subject matter once again in Deschamps’s Art de dictier. In his description of geometry as an architectural art he uses the same architectural metaphor that Geoffrey applies to poetic composition.82 78 Cf. Tresor, p. 30: I.16, line 11: ‘Memoire est tresoriere de toutes choses et garderesce de tout ce ke l’en trueve novelement par son engien ou k’il aprent des autres; car tout ce que nous savons est par celes .ii. manieres, ou ke nous le trovons de noviel, ou k’eles nous furent enseignies’ [Memory is treasurer of all things and guardian of everything new that one invents using the faculty of imagination or that one learns from others; for all our knowledge comes to us in these two ways, either by invention or by having been taught]. See also Poetria, v. 1969–2030, on the place of reason and knowledge in memorization. 79 I insert the variant reading for ‘commence’ because it corresponds more closely to the Poetria nova: ‘neutram manibus committe regendam / Fortunae’ (Poetria, v. 51–2 [trust neither hand nor tongue to the guidance of fortune (Nims, p. 20)]. The passage in the Tresor describes how to compose prologues, which may explain the change in translation, but its scope is obviously broader in the Poetria nova. As in Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s treatise, the art of invention outlined in this Tresor passage is applicable in all stages of invention, from the overall plan through prologues, parts, amplifications and abbreviations down to ornamentation, vocabulary, and versification (Kelly 1991, pp. 64–8, 170–1). 80 On such porveance, see Tresor, pp. 234: II.60, and 393: III.75.5. It is akin to Machaut’s use of sens (‘tot avant consirer’) while weighing the validity of his work ‘a la balance de ton cuer’. This is rational composition ‘de sentement’. Not to use ‘foresight’ in this way leads to hackneyed use of topoi as mere idées reçues (Moos 1988b, pp. 244–5). 81 The paradigm is paraphrased as well in the Echecs mor, 11r10–31, 14r9–13 with Nature as model. 82 For other examples, see Szkilnik 2011, pp. 170–1.

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Cest art s’applique aux fevres, charpentiers et macons, ausquelz, se ilz sont bons ouvriers de leurs mestiers, il fault comprandre et avoir en ymaginacion de leur pensee toute la fourme et la perfection d’un chastel, d’une maison, d’un grant vaissel et des circonstances, avant que il soit commence, et faire la forme et mesure de chascune pierre, et ainsi des autres. (lines 39–46) [If smiths, carpenters, and masons are good craftsmen, this art is applicable to them because it is necessary that they understand and be able to envision (i.e., ymaginer) the total design and the completed shape of a castle, house, or large vessel and their features before beginning, as well as the form and measurements for each stone and for other parts of the construction (adapted from Sinnreich-Levi, ed., p. 57).]

For Machaut, the variable subject matter is love, especially love that includes the topics – hope, pleasance, and sweet thought – Amour gives him. Each of these topics requires articulation ‘des circonstances’ using reason and imagination. That is the role of the poet’s sens.83 With the acquired arts of rhetoric and music, as Machaut defines them in the Prologue, Toute Belle can become a master poet using her natural talent (sens).84 The subtle significance of subject matter like that which Amour gives to the poet in the Prologue signals the most advanced stage in Machaut’s art of poetry (as suggested by this chapter’s second epigraph on subtlety). Amour provides the matiere that sens ‘governs’; but the noun Amour personifies can refer to diverse kinds of love in Machaut’s poetry. These loves may be found, in various shapes and guises, ‘En chambre, en salle et en taverne’, as Villon knew when writing for his mother, for Robert d’Estouteville, or for Charles d’Orléans, although his preferred milieu (at least in his extant poetry) is the tavern, a milieu inhabited by the likes of Colin de Cayeux and Jehan Cotart as well as the Belle Heaumière, Grosse Margot, and, perhaps, his implied audience.85 Of course, Machaut avoids writing about bar-room loves.86 The special meanings Machaut gives to dous penser, plaisance, and esperence implicitly exclude villainous or lascivious loves and lovemaking. Apprentices might note further that he rejects the delectacion implicit in the Vergier and explicitly opposed by Reason both there and in the Jugement Behaigne. In the Voir Dit, then, Toute Belle’s love is Machaut’s good love. She can, therefore, comprehend, while nonetheless rejecting, Guillaume’s backsliding into the possessive, jealous desires of the erotic love he depicts in the Vergier. Indeed, as we have seen, if Guillaume fails to measure up to Machaut’s ideal, Toute Belle will categorically

Cf. Moos 2002. On the critical passage of these skills from natural talent to an artistry one must learn, see Gallo 1999, pp. 33–9. 85 But see Taylor 1996 on some ethical issues raised by Villon’s parodies. 86 As with all poets, there can be exceptions; see Appendice 1, v. 8–10, 13–15. On these opera dubia assigned to Machaut in Chichmaref’s edition, see Earp 1995, esp. pp. 240–1. 83 84

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reject good love and, anticipating Christine de Pizan, urge all men and women to turn away from it.

Poetic Sens in True and False Dreams How sens works can be observed more specifically in the Voir Dit’s three dreams, a common motif for subtle poetry in Machaut’s time. While dreams comprise a stock motif in late medieval dits87 that poets used to reveal a truth beneath fictions, their subtlety can be tricky or deceptive. Guillaume de Lorris knew that songe rhymes with and can be assimilated to mensonge (Rose, v. 1–2), a word that ranges in meaning from outright lies to unintended error and fiction. Indeed, a commonplace feature of medieval dits is the use made of this very uncertainty.88 We find the same uncertainty in the Voir Dit, which contains both the true and false varieties.89 Thus, Guillaume’s first dream in verse is a false dream (VD, v. 5188–733/5261–806, 5750–1/5823–4), Toute Belle relates her true dream in prose (VD, p. 506c/388), and Guillaume’s second, subtle dream is again in verse (VD, v. 7665–8110/7738–8183). In other words, Machaut has made false, true, and subtle dreams available as models for the apprentice composing literary dreams. As representative of the false variety, Guillaume’s first dream purports to show Toute Belle’s inconstancy by describing a portrait or ymage she sent him as changing its garb from true blue to false green. As a false dream, it is an insomnium in Macrobius’s sense because it shows lovers as happy or unhappy but has no predictive value.90 After Guillaume awakens, he follows the counsel provided by the dream to examine the actual portrait Toute Belle sent him (VD, v. 5537–44/5610–17). When he does so, he discovers that its garments are still true blue (VD, v. 5734–51/5807–24). Reality triumphs over the nightmarish anxiety common in false insomnia. Several features of this dream are noteworthy. Toute Belle’s image changes from blue to green, but without the qualifying azure that elsewhere defines green as good (VD, v. 2016–21/2118–23, 5207/5280),91 suggesting that Guillaume at this point is a hasty reader, since he believes that the color green always connotes inconstancy. Nonetheless, Guillaume still has enough presence Léonard 1996, pp. 113–14, 182–4, 407–10. Cf. Lynch 1988. The uncertainty attributed to dreams goes back to Macrobius’s distinction between true and false dreams (Léonard 1996, pp. 103, 113; Strubel 2002, esp. pp. 207–16). 89 Cf. Hülk 1999, p. 160. 90 On Macrobius’s true and false dreams, see his Somnium, pp. 8–9. The usual translation of insomnium as ‘nightmare’ is incomplete since it may also include the pleasures of sexual climax experienced during the dream. For example, Jean’s Rose concludes as a pleasurable wet dream (Kelly 1995, pp. 90, 126) that is false during the moment it is dreamt, although it accurately predicts Amant’s future life as busybody lover or commere. 91 On the mitigating effects of azure on green in the Voir Dit, see the discussion of color allegory in chap. 4, and Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 3, p. 256. 87 88

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of mind to check the veracity of his dream. In doing so, he is told that there are more important problems abroad than communication with his lady, problems like France’s misfortunes, which, moreover, can actually reveal something about his own difficulties. This occurs during the discussion of his dream with un roi qui ne ment in a digression on the duties of a king (VD, v. 5244–375/5317–448) in times of war and rebellion (VD, v. 5434–85/5507–58). This is a rather abrupt digression in the dit’s subtle montage. Of course, Guillaume is no more interested in governing than Amant in the Rose is in integumenta. France may indeed be suffering awful calamities, Mais toutes ces maleürtés, Ces pestilences, ces durtés Ne font a moi ne froit ne chaut, Car par ma foi il ne m’en chaut, Mais ce me fait pene et anoy Que je ne voi ma dame n’oy.  (VD, v. 5486–91/5559–64) [but all these misfortunes, epidemics, and hard times leave me neither hot nor cold because, in truth, they don’t matter to me. But what pains and depresses me is that I don’t see or hear my lady.]

But, as it turns out, governing the nation France is not without analogy to selfgovernment, an analogy that Guillaume, lacking entendement, fails to perceive.92 That is, like the Rose’s Guillaume – ‘Se je sui fols, c’est mes domages’ (Rose, v. 7177) [if I am a fool, that’s my loss] – his sens simply refuses to listen to reason. Failing to understand issues of greater importance and their significance in his own life, Guillaume shows that an attentive apprentice must heed clues as to how the poet subtly fashions digressions to illuminate a problem the dream evokes but does not resolve rationally. As a Macrobian insomnium, ironically, Guillaume’s dream truthfully exemplifies not a beloved’s infidelity but a lover’s irrational jealousy. The king in the dream claims that Guillaume’s dream may be false and that he should wake up and face reality (VD, v. 5536–47/5609–20), just as kings should do when injustice occurs (VD, v. 5244–5/5317–18, 5268–71/5341–4). This proves to be good advice. That the dream is literally false and, therefore, unjust towards Toute Belle and Guillaume’s image of her and her good love is set against the backdrop of astonishing mutations like those Ovid relates (VD, v. 5551–3/5624–6); Machaut’s contemporaries would have been familiar with the explicit and diverse moral, historical, and scientific truths found in the Ovide moralisé’s allegories (cf. VD, v. 5606–7/5679–80). The dream king suggests that 92 The analogy is not infrequent in late medieval literature (Brown-Grant 2008, pp. 189–93). In the Prison amoureuse Froissart likens Rose’s fate as lover to Wenceslas de Brabant’s real-life imprisonment after losing a battle; on this subtle dream, see Kelly 1978, pp. 160–9.

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Guillaume study such poetries as integuments; their ‘moralités veritables’ (VD, v. 5607/5680) are implicitly instructive for apprentices like Toute Belle when writing their own ‘moralités’ in subtle ‘integumanz aus poetes’ (Rose, v. 7138).93 Thus, both Ovidian and biblical examples reveal more than mere mutations; underscoring uncertainty, a traditional matter in love fables, mutations narrate change for better or for worse, much as human inventions can improve life (VD, v. 5628–701/5701–74) as well as destroy it in wars and rebellions like those ravaging France in Machaut’s time. Returning to waking experience, Guillaume learns that if Toute Belle seems to be mutable, he should give her the opportunity to explain her conduct. In the Navarre, after all, Guillaume demands the same opportunity when Bonneurté accuses him of wronging women. In other words, justice is as essential in good love and debate as in good government. In Machaut’s art of poetry uncertainty serves as a commonplace source of controversial issues and subtle inventions; dreams are a common motif in which poets explore such uncertainty.94 The subject of Toute Belle’s true dream related in Letter 29 depicts a scene that has its counterpart in the two bed scenes. In the dream, Guillaume becomes gravely ill but she heals him with her kisses. Since kissing is an integral and permissible part of the Voir Dit’s gradus amoris, her dream conforms to the Macrobian true visio in which the dreamer sees what will transpire because of what already has taken place.95 In Guillaume’s case, Toute Belle’s dream represents not only his actual state of languor, illustrated as well in his own dream, but also Toute Belle’s constant love and comfort. In modern terms, her dream is a wish-fulfillment dream that conforms to her own conception and practice of good love. By comforting her distraught sexagenarian with kisses, she saves his life, resuscitating him anew as poet and restoring his plaisance as lover. But Toute Belle did not need Macrobius in order to understand this dream.96 She might recall her own actions in ‘resuscitating’ Guillaume, beginning with the first rondeau she sends him. She also has Guillaume himself as a model for depicting dreams in Machaut’s Morpheus (VD, p. 506c/388), or Fontaine amoureuse, which she knows because Guillaume sends her a copy of it (VD, pp. 124–6f/74, 186c/124). Importantly, Toute Belle’s dream corrects the suspicions in Guillaume’s nightmare and anticipates the effect of her letter on her doubting, jealous master. Given that her dream is modeled on her own prior conduct, it becomes a true image of her love heretofore in the narrative because of its rational founda93 The analogy might occur to readers and poets who, like Toute Belle, know the Roman de la rose. 94 Cf. Taylor 1998. 95 Cf. ‘elle avoit esperance / Qu’onques ne fu qu’encor ne soit’ (VD, v. 4746–7/4819–20), discussed in chap. 2, n. 23. 96 Given her knowledge of the Roman de la rose, she might compare an allegedly true dream offered by Guillaume de Lorris’s fiction with the falsity of dreams according to Jean de Meun (cf. Kelly 1995, pp. 93–4, 150–1).

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tion in experience and a credible prediction of the same fidelity and comfort that revealed her love for Guillaume in the past.97 Her love and dream thereby conform to the Erlebnismuster for Machaut’s good love.

Guillaume’s Subtle Dream Guillaume’s second dream, and the third in the Voir Dit’s continuatio amoris, is more complex and subtle than the other two. It occurs after he forecasts greater subtlety in the composition of the dit that corresponds to the final stage in Toute Belle’s apprenticeship: ‘Ores vient le fort,’ Guillaume announces, ‘et les beles et subtives fictions dont je le pense a parfaire, par quoi vous et li autre le voiés volentiers et qu’il en soit bon memoire a tous jours mais’ (VD, p. 566b/436) [now comes the difficult part, including the beautiful and subtle fictions with which I intend to conclude, by which you and the others may willingly see it and remember it98 well forever more]. Among ‘li autre’, we may include readers who, like Christine de Pizan,99 derive pleasure from subtle fictions, and, more specifically, those apprentice poets like Toute Belle who will take the third dream as a model of the poetic subtlety that they must now strive to acquire. Structurally the introduction of ‘subtives fictions’ into the Voir Dit divides the continuatio amoris into two parts. The first part comprises the two dreams just discussed and the second part features the subtle dream. A difficult but pleasurable fiction, the third dream constitutes a somnium in Macrobius’s terminology, a true dream that must be interpreted in order for its truth to be understood and appreciated. With oneiric obscurity and allegorical subtlety,100 the dream once again presents Toute Belle’s portrait coming alive as a virtual personification. Before this third dream, and as a result of aspersions cast on her character, Guillaume removes Toute Belle’s image from above his bed and puts it out of sight inside two coffers, the one inside the other (VD, v. 7568–81/7641–54). He does so because he is convinced that ‘elle ha fait nouvel ami, / Au mains le m’a on raporté’ (VD, v. 7581–2/7654–5) [she has acquired a new love; at least that’s what I’ve been told]. Since heretofore Toute Belle’s image has been an important source of Guillaume’s plaisance, its removal propels him into melancholy, hopeless languor, and, potentially, désamour more wrenching than that of his counterpart in the Alerion. Desire is again vanquishing Hope. In the dream the 97 The motif of remembrance or understanding what one once knew derives ultimately from Boethius and reappears in the Remede (Kelly 1978, pp. 131–5). Philosophy reveals Boethius’s faulty memory in the Consolatio, Book One, just as Esperance does for Guillaume in the Remede. 98 French in the Middle Ages does not sharply distinguish between modern French la mémoire as the mental faculty and le mémoire as written word or memorandum. This permits Machaut’s ‘le memoire’ to connote not only what is recalled mentally but also the written record in the Voir Dit, itself a memorandum. 99 Kelly 2007, pp. 27–30. 100 Cf. Kelly 1984; Ziolkowski 1996.

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portrait laments being put away. She does so using two exemplary fictions, the tales of a crow (corbeau) and a raven (corneille) drawn from the Ovide moralisé.101 The birds lost their masters’ favor – Phebus and Pallas respectively – for telling the truth. Each fable has the same explicit moral: ‘Tous voirs ne sont pas biaus a dire’ (VD, v. 7779/7852) [not all truths deserve to be told] because ‘Souvent meschiét de dire voir’ (VD, v. 7793/7866)102 [one often comes to grief for telling the truth]. Indeed, ce n’est pas necessité Que quanqu’on dit soit verité; N’en ce qu’on dit n’a pas le quart De verité, se Dieus me gart.  (VD, v. 7979–82/8052–5) [it’s not necessary that everything one says be true; nor that even a quarter of what one says be true, so help me God.]

Upon awakening from this dream Guillaume removes Toute Belle’s portrait from his coffers and places it once again in a position of honor above his bed. The dream’s moral – ‘Tous voirs ne sont pas biaus a dire’ – creates a quandary for the apprentice poet, suggesting as it does the role of fiction in truth and mensonge in songe, thereby generating complexities for the apprentice learning to express truths through fiction, especially as silence seems to be acceptable. Machaut’s earlier dits give some clues as to how to proceed. That is, in telling the truth, degrees of specificity, like those discussed above in the Alerion’s distinction between general and special knowledge, play a key role. Toute Belle’s ymage, for example, might generally signify a good love without revealing anything about Toute Belle’s ‘real life’ love; or it may reveal only part of its truth.103 Since doing so may garner unfortunate results, as experienced by Toute Belle’s image, Toute Belle now learns that poets must master the art of telling truth in subtle, yet fictional poetry, and whether to do so completely or in part, or whether to suppress it entirely. Guillaume’s second dream occurs in the section of the Voir Dit that contains both beautiful and subtle fictions; but these fictions are disturbing and potentially very unpleasant, depending on how the reader or the apprentice understands them. The quandaries presented by such dreams bring us to the art of the traitié that Toute Belle must also learn and understand in order to treat truths in De Boer 1913, p. 89, and 1915, pp. 33–4. The danger arises not merely from revealing erotic infidelities. In the Fontaine amoureuse, Guillaume cuts short a digression on the deplorable state of the kingdom and the harm done by the unscrupulous rich: ‘Or vueil laissier ceste matiere / Et retourner a la premiere, / Car aucune fois on empire / De bien et de verité dire’ (v. 1201–4) [Now I want to drop this subject and return to the previous topic, for sometimes one gets in trouble for saying what’s good and true]. Cf. Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 3, p. 257, n. to v. 1161, and the analogous reservations in other writings discussed in chap. 6. 103 Cf. the ambiguity regarding the identity of Jean de Berry’s beloved in the Fontaine amoureuse and the obscurities in the Venus cloud episode, both discussed in chap. 2. 101 102

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her own compositions. As a traitié the Voir Dit teaches Toute Belle how to treat truth in fictional matter.

The Dit as Traitié The Voir Dit’s title identifies the work as a dit. But, like Machaut’s other dits, it is also a traitié:104 ‘Le Voir Dit veuil je qu’on appelle / Ce traitié que je fais pour elle’ (VD, v. 518–19) [I want this treatise that I write for her to be called Voir Dit105]. It behooves us, then, to find out what traitié connotes in Machaut’s dits as well as how apprentice poets like Toute Belle and other readers might have understood the term and what they might learn from the Voir Dit in order to imitate Machaut’s traitié in their own ‘treatises’. I begin with Middle French Dit. Monique Léonard, building on Jacqueline Cerquiglini’s studies of Machaut, has noted the poet’s role in establishing a more nearly generic sense for the word dit.106 Prior to Machaut a dit was what one ‘says about something’, as in dit de.107 These dits evince a wide range of modes, styles, forms, and subject matters. There are even dits within dits, as in Nicole de Margival’s Dit de la panthère d’amour.108 Like Chrétien de Troyes before him who used the word roman to designate not just any work written in French but a particular kind of fictional narrative composition,109 so too Machaut uses dit more precisely in a sense analogous to traitié and its modes. In Machaut traitié refers not only to what is said but also to how it is said, that is, treated. Machaut’s successors adopt this sense of traitié.110 Although traitié in Machaut’s usage does not have a forme fixe, it does have an ordonnance because the poet’s sens orders, shapes, and elucidates poetic material in the passage from the dit’s materia remota to its materia propinqua. However, ordering is to be understood not only in the sense of order common earlier in medieval poetics when referring, for example, to natural and artificial orders based on whether one follows chronological sequence or a different, ‘artificial’ ordering of subject matter.111 A broader, more rhetorical sense of order as the effective arrangement of points in argument or debate, deliberation, or encomium comes closer to what Machaut means by ordonnance in a traitié. This is what Brunetto Latini 104 Machaut refers to some of his other dits as traitiés (Remede, v. 4259–60, Confort, v. 3975–6). On this term, see Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980; Fourrier, ed., Dits et débats, pp. 12–22; Cerquiglini-Toulet 1988; Léonard 1996, pp. 213, 299–306; Kelly 2011, pp. 413–26. 105 Both the Imbs and Leech-Wilkinson editions italicize only in the translation. 106 Léonard 1996, pp. 20, 55–9; for French dit in relation to analogous terms in Latin and other Romance languages, see Gómez-Bravo 1999. 107 Léonard 1996, pp. 48–9. 108 Kelly 2002, p. 130. 109 Kelly 1992, pp. 318–20. 110 Fourrier, ed., Dits et débats, pp. 12–22; Kelly 2007, p. 155 et passim; Kelly 2011, pp. 413–26. 111 Kelly 1991, pp. 68–71.

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means by ordre: ‘théorie de l’arrangement le plus efficace des assertions et des arguments, disposition’.112 This sense allows for a wide range of applications of ordering in Middle French, including rituals and Erlebnismuster that reveal the significance of a given situation, activity, or production as well as commonplace or customary scripts like gradus amoris or the ages of life script.113 Zeroing in on Machaut’s use of the term, Cerquiglini identifies ordonnance as ‘le montage de formes diverses’, analogous to what Christine de Pizan calls a ‘soubtive ordonnance’ of the heavens, including their ‘muances’ and influences on what transpires on earth (Chemin, v. 2204–6).114 And, Cerquiglini adds, ‘la subtilité est d’abord art de la forme chez Guillaume de Machaut’.115 This ‘forme’ is the form the author chooses in order to treat his or her subject matter. The resulting ordonnance determines how, literally, a given poem, from rondeau to dit, is com-posed – put together, treated, and articulated. Ordonnance is the defining feature of the traitié and, consequently, of Machaut’s Voir Dit, ‘ce traitié que je fais pour’ Toute Belle. She, as apprentice poet, will need to know what art Machaut intends by this generic term. In the scholastic tradition, traitié includes two ‘forms’, the forma tractatus and the forma tractandi. These modes are species of the formal cause. Of the four Aristotelian causes – the efficient, formal, material, and final causes – the traitié’s two modes or formae belong to the formal cause.116 They are a traitié’s duplex causa formalis.117 They are found in French vernacular writing from the thirteenth century on – for example, in the Roman de la rose and Christine de Pizan.118 The Echecs moralisés (pp. 209–15) uses them too in order to explain the composition of the Echecs amoureux, much as Dante is said to gloss his Divine Comedy in the Epistula Can Grande. Basic to the composition of traitiés like those by Machaut, these two varieties of the formal cause are the subject of the rest of Part II.

Forma Tractatus The forma tractatus refers to the formal division of a work into its parts,119 whereby the author sets out the parts, including subordinate parts, in virtual

Messelaar 1963, p. 110. Picoche 1976, pp. 28–9, 96. 114 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, p. 9. 115 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, p. 21. 116 Allen 1982; Minnis 2010; cf. Picoche 1976, pp. 26 and 96. On the efficient, formal, material, and final causes in the Voir Dit, see Imbs 1991, pp. 61–2; however, he treats the Voir Dit as a roman, not as a traité. Cf. Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, pp. 158–68. 117 Minnis 2010, p. 29. 118 For the Rose’s use of the formal cause, see Kelly 1995; for Christine’s use, see Kelly 2007, p. 46 n. 19. 119 Allen 1982, p. 118; Lusignan 1986, p. 52. 112 113

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outline form.120 This sense of ordonnance is also evident in larger frameworks. BNF fr. 1584 states that the ordonnance of Machaut’s complete works in this manuscript corresponds to the disposition the poet himself desired.121 Surely, Machaut would have agreed that the evolution of his thought on good love and the variety of exemplary Erlebnismuster he treats are best seen through his complete works. But an apprentice like Toute Belle would also note how her master arrays the different kinds of love scripts discussed in Part I. The approximate chronological sequence of his dits determines their ordonnance in his manuscript anthologies because it corresponds grosso modo to the evolution of Machaut’s thought on good love.122 A forma tractatus is also evident in each of Machaut’s dits. As mentioned earlier, the commonplace principle is the beginning–middle–end arrangement, whereby the middle section that includes the traitié’s mathematical midpoint can be crucial.123 The middle in this sense is not so much a single line or sentence – a ‘mid-point’ that mathematically divides the work at a halfway mark124 – any more than the beginning and end are identified by the first and last lines. Moreover, in a traitié like the Voir Dit, identifying a precise mathematical midpoint would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, given the prose letters and manuscript diversity. However, Guillaume’s reference to ruling in the Voir Dit’s Letter 45 makes it possible to identify if not a midpoint stricto sensu, at least a middle and therefore central episode.125 It is, therefore, more practical and, for interpretation, more helpful to regard beginning, middle, and end as key segments in a dit’s ordonnance. Like the beginning and end, a middle segment may include a mathematical midpoint, but its significance lies in its content and form as well as its relation to other parts of the entire dit’s forma tractatus. For example, in the Remede the apprentice might note that we learn in its middle segment the name of Esperance, the authority who diagnoses and evaluates Guillaume’s love (Remede, v. 2283–6).126 Naming her clarifies the principle of good hope that is fundamental to Machaut’s conception of good love. The naming is preceded by a description of the still anonymous personification (Remede, v. 2148–92) as well as a light metaphor that shows how she illuminates Minnis 2010, p. 146. Earp 1995, p. 199. 122 Cf. Minnis 2010, p. 158; Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, p. 16; Leach 2011, pp. 86–7. 123 See Brownlee 1984, pp. 123–8. On the effects of symmetry and specularity the midpoint may create, see Drobinsky 2003a.The medieval poetic tradition supports the importance authors accorded to the three-part disposition, as does the notion of natural and artificial order. 124 As in the eleventh-century Saint Alexis (Hatcher 1952), mathematical precision is possible if the manuscript uses ruling. Of course, manuscript mouvance may make it difficult to identify or confirm such a precise point, as would prose composition. On the other hand, the anonymous author of the Tresor amoureux sets out a complex mathematical disposition of the dit that I examine in some detail in chap. 6; there we also perceive how easily manuscript transmission can obscure or destroy the treatment if lacunae occur. 125 See Leech-Wilkinson, ed., VD, p. 750 n. 9. 126 See the outline of the Remede in Leach 2011, p. 140. 120 121

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all (Remede, v. 2195–282) and is followed by Guillaume’s recognition of Esperance and the comfort and hope that he gains from her (Remede, v. 2287–347).127 When she names herself, that is, everything falls into place because obscurity is illuminated (Remede, v. 2195–346).128 The name topos (nomen) reveals in this instance something significant about the person named. That is, Esperance’s foregoing lesson on good love while anonymous becomes coherent once we know who is speaking. Having shed light on the lover’s malady and offered herself as cure for his languor, Esperance’s dialogue with the poet continues on a firmer foundation and in an obvious context that enlightens him on good love and hope’s meaning and function in that love. Similarly, in the Voir Dit Esperance’s appearance in the middle segment (v. 4196–307/4316–427) marks the completion of Guillaume’s gradus amoris, begun in the first part of the dit, and the beginning of his continuatio amoris in its second half.129 Esperance obliges Guillaume to correct his evaluation of her alleged weakness by writing a positive Lai d’Esperance (VD, v. 4294/4414).130 He does so, but, as with his counterpart when composing the Remede’s lay, Guillaume fails to comprehend fully his own words, precipitating the turbulence that characterizes the Voir Dit’s continuatio amoris, again as in the Remede where Esperance must return more than once to comfort him and strengthen his resolve.131 In this manner, the Voir Dit’s forma tractatus is defined by the segments into which its narrative content is divided and arranged. The apprentice studying the dit will see in this arrangement an example of the forma tractatus and be able to compare it to analogous segmentation in Machaut’s other traitiés. But he or she must also understand that the traditional beginning–middle–end sequence does not exhaust the possibilities of the forma tractatus because it does not account for subordination within each part nor for the parts of the work that fall between beginning and middle as well as between middle and end. In the Voir Dit, for example, the gradus amoris after the dit’s beginning charts the stages in their innamoramento, while the continuatio amoris after the Venus cloud episode deploys the dreams and Ovidian examples that counterpoint Guillaume’s disarray during his ongoing carte de Tendre. Concomitantly, the first part is segmented by alternate meetings and separations, whereas the second part relates diverse moments of doubt and suspicion during a lengthy separation. Similar divisions are evident in the Alerion’s array of loves represented by the dit’s raptors as well as in the three topics of sin, love, and honor in the Confort 127 The discovery of a personification’s name can have positive results, as here in the Remede, or negative results for him, as when Guillaume learns Bonneurté’s name in the Navarre. 128 A Boethian metaphor (Kelly 1978, p. 132). 129 See the outline of the Voir Dit in Leach 2011, p. 183. Given her centrality, Esperance is a more significant figure for the Voir Dit’s sens than is Venus, who, by her cloud, hides not intimate eroticism, but the honorable love of two unlikely lovers. 130 See also v. 4342–597/4462–717 and, on the lay’s title, p. 404b/306. 131 Brownlee 1984, pp. 54–5.

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d’ami. We find it again in the disposition of criteria for debate and judgment in the judgment dits that I discuss in chapter five.

Forma Tractandi Montage, ‘comme l’indique Machaut, consiste précisément à faire tenir ensemble, selon une technique de l’étagement, des choses qui existent ou qui peuvent exister par ailleurs, séparément’.132 The technique is evident in the Roman de la rose,133 a ‘roman’ that is more accurately a traitié in Machaut’s sense of the word than a roman as Chrétien de Troyes uses the word.134 In medieval terms, forma tractandi, the second of a work’s duplex causa formalis, refers to the diverse modes deployed in the dit. The technique describes, as Jean de Meun puts it, how poets customarily shape their materia remota – in his words, ‘si con font antr’eus li poete, / quant chascuns la matire trete / don il li plest a antremetre’ (Rose, v. 15207–9) [as poets are wont to do when each treats the matter that it pleases him to write about]. The forma tractandi, then, is the ‘process of generation … from potentiality to act’135 that schematizes different modes the poets use to develop and amplify their matiere. As Judson Allen puts it, the forma tractandi is ‘the form of a text, it is true, but in terms of modes of thought, reference, and effects which implicate the text in a great deal that would now be thought external to it’,136 such as ‘consciousness of ideal structures, normative wholes and their normative parts’.137 For the apprentice, Erlebnismuster represent such structures, wholes, and parts. If, then, the forma tractatus is the disposition or structure of the work’s formal parts, the forma tractandi is a coherent assemblage or montage of the modes that color those parts, illuminating poetic composition in ways that make the work meaningful. Since these modes have been competently explained in a number of studies written over the last thirty-some years,138 I shall be brief here except in the next two chapters that take up, respectively, exemplification and debate. These two modes of the forma tractandi are especially prominent and, indeed, crucial in Machaut’s dits, where they mark his distinctive poetic signature139 as well as the Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, p. 159. Kelly 1995. 134 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, pp. 163–4. 135 Minnis 2010, p. 118. 136 Allen 1982, p. 88. 137 Allen 1982, p. 89. 138 Allen 1982; Minnis 2010; Cerquiglini-Toulet 1988; Copeland 2006, pp. 259–64; Kelly 2011, pp. 413–26. For their place in the Latin tradition in the later Middle Ages, see Dahan 1980. 139 On the author’s distinctive style as his or her ‘signature’ or (in French) ‘griffe’, see James-Raoul 2007. James-Raoul defines signature as that which ‘caractérise une manière d’écrire faisant sens, particulière, c’est-à-dire reconnaissable en soi ou par comparaison et s’observant dans un ensemble d’œuvres assez nettement pour identifier un auteur’ (p. 11). On 132 133

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way issues are treated in his dits. An apprentice eager to practice Machaut’s art would give these topics special attention. But first we shall look briefly at the other modes that appear in his poems. The Epistula Can Grande attributed to Dante depicts forma tractandi as a set of conventional ways to treat the dit’s subject matter.140 ‘Forma sive modus tractandi est poeticus, fictivus, descriptivus, digressivus, transumptivus, et cum hoc diffinitivus, divisivus, probativus, improbativus, et exemplorum positivus’ (Can Grande, pp. 612–14) [The form or mode of treatment is poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, metaphorical, and also defining, classificatory, affirming, denying, and exemplary]. The first five modes provide the treatise’s subtlety; they are the poetic and rhetorical modes.141 The other five modes clarify the poet’s language; they are the philosophical and scientific modes. Although Machaut almost certainly did not know the Epistula Can Grande, the foregoing quote from it will immediately suggest to Machaut scholars modes that the fourteenth-century French poet uses. The pertinent questions here are how he uses them and whether there are other modes that he favors that should be considered as well. In answer to the first question, we can say that he fashions them using his sens, as Judson Allen puts it in the passage quoted above, ‘in terms of modes of thought, reference, and effects’. Comprising the mental faculty active in invention, these sens-generated modes provide a means by which the poet gives shape to and articulates his or her thought – providing special meanings, for example, to Amour’s three gifts in the Prologue. Thus, in elucidating the meaning of dous penser, esperence, and plaisance using the forma tractandi, the poet amplifies, articulates, and interprets matiere, turning materia remota into materia propinqua. Some examples of Machaut’s use of these modes follow. I begin with the more literal scientific and philosophical modes. For Machaut, the defining mode (modus diffinitivus) is evident when he defines love in the Jugement Behaigne by paraphrasing Andreas Capellanus’s definition (see chapter one). More importantly, he redefines or, more accurately, specializes his sense of good love by the distinction he makes in the Remede between good love based on good hope and abstinence or sublimation and bad love arising from desire and desire’s goal, delectacion. Finally, the defining mode appears in the special meanings Machaut gives to dous penser, plaisance, and esperence. Correlating good love with Boethius’s conception of virtue also allows Machaut to link good hope as depicted in the Confort d’ami to the theological virtue the same principle in Machaut’s music, see Kügle 2003. Signature is, therefore, analogous to grid-editing used in preparing critical editions (Foulet 1987; Busby 2002, pp. 99–100). 140 Cf. Allen 1982, pp. 71–4; Minnis 2010, pp. 144–5. It is still uncertain whether Dante actually wrote the Epistula Can Grande or all parts of the document; see recently Baránski 2005. Here I use his name as a convenient reference to the Epistula. 141 For the translation and the two categories of modes it illustrates – respectively, the poetic and rhetorical modes and the philosophical and scientific modes – see Kelly 1995, pp. 54–6; cf. also Minnis 2010, p. 119.

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as well as to faith and charity, while rejecting the uncertain hope for delectacion commonplace in medieval love poetry and which Boethius classes among the false goods subject to Fortune’s whims. As argued above, delectacion in this sense is not synonymous with the Prologue’s plaisance, a plaisance that is sublimated and therefore pure because chaste. These diverse definitions and distinctions correspond to the classifying mode or modus divisivus because they distinguish among different kinds of love and lovers as, for example, Machaut does in the Lyon and the Alerion. Definition and classification are, therefore, modes that reveal what Judson Allen calls the ‘consciousness of ideal structures, normative wholes and their narrative parts’. The distinction between what is general and special in medieval poetics is important in definition and classification.142 The terminological distinction is apparent, for example, in the Alerion when Guillaume frequents other lovers, ‘Nompas pour savoir leurs secrez / Selonc especialité’, but ‘en la generalité / De ce qu’on porroit bonnement / Dire a tous bons generalment’ (Alerion, v. 222–6)143 [not to learn their secrets specifically, but in general what one might properly say to all good people generally]. Especialité in this sense refers to the different kinds of love the dit’s raptors exemplify. In the same mode, the alerion is honored for qualities that are typical of all good women whatever their specific good features may be (Alerion, v. 799–800), much as, in praising Toute Belle, Machaut generally lauds toute belle. This principle forms an important distinction for Machaut: ‘Je parle tout en general / Sans rien dire d’especial’ (Fontaine, v. 181–2) [I speak in general terms without expressing anything in special terms]. Machaut’s distinction between general and special has connotations no longer common in modern usage where ‘special’ usually connotes not the species in a genus, but the distinct, unique, or even bizarre individual. Species in its medieval sense represents the normative. It proves to be important in debates when defining and classifying the type an individual belongs to along with the moral or social criteria applicable to his or her type. Thus, such an individual or particulier becomes a member of a larger group whose genus is ‘lover’, which in Machaut may refer to an array of lovers, including chaste, faithful, voluptuous, and ignoble lovers as well as tavern and peasant lovers, to mention a few that are specifically identified in his dits.144 Thus, this quasi-biological model of the modus divisivus identifies individuals as members of a species that is itself part of a genus. When medieval authors like Machaut refer to especialité, we should focus on the word’s relation to the species, not to something so special as to be unique or individual.145 On what follows, cf. Kelly 1983, esp. pp. 111–13. Cf. Godefroy, vol. 9, p. 539: especial = ‘particulier à une espèce, par opposition à général’; and DLMF, s.v. especial, p. 308. 144 These instances recall Andreas Capellanus’s analogous distinctions among amor purus, amor sapiens, amor simplex, and amor voluptuosus (Monson 2005b, pp. 70–2). 145 That Nature fashioned Machaut ‘apart’ does not individualize him so much as it makes him an example of the rather small group of love poets; within that group he can, 142 143

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In this manner, I read Guillaume’s statement in the Alerion – ‘Je parle tout en general / Sans rien dire d’especial’ – to refer to love in its generality as all the raptors he loves, not to kinds of love that are ‘special’ like the gyrfalcon, sparrow hawk, and alerion. That is, the different birds of prey Guillaume cultivates in the Alerion illustrate kinds of female lovers and, by extension and mutatis mutandis, male lovers like those we find in the Dit dou lyon. Readers of Machaut’s anthology manuscripts, and especially apprentices, would recognize the diverse species of love he depicts in his different dits and lyrics, distinctions that are further refined in the Voir Dit in Guillaume’s imagining of various Toute Belles that her detractors and defenders depict vis-à-vis his idealized image of her. As we have seen, Toute Belle’s image asserts that even if Toute Belle herself is the fickle woman the detractors claim she is, her actions do not invalidate the ideal her image represents; her image merely redefines her provisionally as another species of lover.146 By contrast, if Guillaume fails Toute Belle by not conforming to her ideal image of him, she will (as shown at the end of chapter two) abandon and even oppose the very ideal he fails to incarnate. The ideal, having become impossible of realization for her, would be excluded from her classification: Toute Belle would address it only for vituperation. The two remaining scientific and philosophical modes, exemplification (modus exemplorum positivus) and debate (modus probativus et improbativus), require extensive treatment because of their importance in all Machaut’s poems and, a fortiori, in his art of poetry. As noted above, I set them aside for treatment in the next two chapters in order to turn here to the poetical and rhetorical modes, which, according to the Epistula Can Grande, comprise the poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, and metaphorical ways of fashioning material. The modus poeticus has four senses in medieval poetics.147 First and perhaps most obviously the modus poeticus refers to what the Prologue means by rethorique, or writing verse that conforms to the contemporary art of poetry. I discuss this sense above on the use of formes fixes in poems in the exchanges between Guillaume and Toute Belle. Second, the poetic mode refers to the commonplace intention to please and instruct, a maxim that the Middle Ages inherited from Horace. Machaut’s positive, optimistic conception of good love permits him to promote this goal; so does his inclusion of music that can make even sad matiere pleasing (Prologue 5, v. 85–94/198–206). But, as Deschamps notes in the Art de dictier, musique naturele is poetry when not sung; if not read silently, its art is declamation. Toute Belle both sings and speaks the poems Guillaume sends to her. Accordingly, the poetic style itself can effect what musique artificiele does in Machaut’s writings: ‘Et s’on fait de triste matiere, / Si est joieuse la of course, achieve unique excellence, but in doing so he becomes the consummate poet and thus stands ‘apart’ not only from other people but also from other artists and poets. The same applies to toute belle; of course, a ‘special’ kind of beauty may distinguish one belle or beau from another depending on whether she or he is located in chambre, salle, or taverne. 146 Kelly 1983, pp. 107–13. 147 Kelly 1995, pp. 94–7.

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maniere / Dou fait’ (Prologue 5, v. 43–5/157–9)148 [and if one writes using sad material, the mode of the poem is joyous]. A third kind of poetic mode is the use of authoritative matiere culled from ancient as well as antecedent medieval writing by making materia remota into materia propinqua – a new version. In Machaut’s dits, Boethius’s Consolation serves as one such authority. Other works he mentions are by Ovid as the Middle Ages often read him in diverse moralizations, especially in the Ovide moralisé in Machaut’s time; Fulgentius, perhaps in the Fulgentius metaforalis of John Ridewell or the related Ymagines Fulgencii;149 the Bible; and poetries like those in Legrand’s Archiloge Sophie, some arts of the Second Rhetoric, and elsewhere. Finally, the poetic mode includes allegory. I take up allegory below under the modus transumptivus. The descriptive mode (modus descriptivus) includes the common places of topical invention used for amplification and abbreviation in medieval rhetoric and poetics. I make an important distinction between the two senses of commonplace and common place (as they are variously spelled) in use today. In what follows, commonplace ‘will refer to a conventional image, thought, or action an author repeats or paraphrases in a new work’, whereas common place will ‘identify places in a person, thing, or action common to all persons, things, or actions of the same kind’150 that are then ‘specialized’ in the sense discussed above that distinguishes among types – for Machaut, among different species of lovers. The common places remain standard from Antiquity into the Middle Ages.151 Brunetto Latini provides a vernacular version that I quote here as illustration.152 He first sets out two traditional groups of places, those for persons and those for actions. Common places for persons are name; nature, including sexual gender, country of origin, city of origin,153 lineage, age, physical health and disposition – ‘en some toutes choses ke l’en a par nature el cors et el corage’ (Tresor, p. 361: III.52, line 5) [in short, all that one naturally possesses in body and mind] – followed by upbringing and education; fortune; habitus, or constant features of body and mind;154 emotions; study or object of study because of one’s station in life; thought in deciding and counsel as a decision taken after consideration; customary activities; manner of speech; and luck, whether good Wimsatt 1991b; Taylor 2008, pp. 153–5; Leach 2010. On these works, see Allen 1979; Minnis 2010, p. 142. 150 On these definitions, see Kelly 2011 (quotes from pp. 6–7); for examples of their use by Christine de Pizan, see Kelly 2007, esp. pp. 51–64, and passim. 151 Murphy 1974 passim; Kelly 1991, pp. 71–8; HWR, vol. 9, esp. cols. 635–61. A good medieval overview is found in Abelard’s treatise on rhetoric (Mews 2003). 152 Jacques Legrand too offers extensive vernacular explanation and illustration of common places (Archiloge, pp. 85–133). In description, these places identify norms the description may either praise or blame. 153 Latini replaces the usual ‘native language’ as a species of the nature topos with city of birth – perhaps a common place more suitable for an Italian audience (cf. Miller 2010, p. 96). Dante’s Florentine origin is obviously a significant aspect of his character. 154 On habitus’s relation to ritual, see T. Adams 2007, pp. 64–5, based in part on Crane 2002. 148 149

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or bad. For actions Brunetto Latini lists: summary of an action in order to reveal its primary significance; its cause; what occurred before, during, and/or after the action; place; time, including seasons; manner; and ability to act or not to act. Latini adds a third group that includes what can be assimilated to the persons and actions, such as greater or lesser, similar, contrary, general, special, and end result. A final group includes related factors, such as the name given to the act by those who carry it out or incite it; what law, custom, or judgment applies to it; frequency of occurrence; and the action’s features, results, and value or worth. Writers choose from among these descriptive common places those they deem suitable for ‘specializing descriptions’ that elucidate the content of the work they write, including persons, actions, and emotions. The age and gender common places are obviously prominent in the Voir Dit descriptions. Thus, the union in the Voir Dit of master-lover and apprenticelover, given the age difference, hardly mirrors Abelard and Heloise; rather it opens the narrative to commonplace opinions about January–May lovers, beauty and the beast, philogyny and misogyny, and good and bad love as Machaut defines them, all of which pose moral, social, and pedagogical problems in their world for Machaut’s reader and pupil. We have noted some of those problems in chapter two; problems that arise in Machaut’s treatment of the likening of Guillaume and Polypheme as well as in the perception of the woman each loves are examples that I discuss in chapter four. In addition to the poetic and descriptive modes, the Voir Dit’s complex and sometimes perplexing montage also includes digressions. The digressive mode, or modus digressivus, departs from the primary matter to treat a different subject. There are several kinds of digression in medieval poetics.155 One is description itself. Two other kinds refer to digressions that depart from the subject matter in order to treat a different subject, but one that provides a new perspective on or new insight into the first subject (digressio utilis); the other kind of digression offers a kind of intermède (digressio inutilis), refreshing the audience so that it can return to the primary matter with an open, relaxed mind.156 Diverse digressions on weather, war, and epidemics in many of Machaut’s dits as well as those on the duties of kings in the Confort d’ami and Voir Dit illustrate both kinds of digression and may also create interpretive problems. For example, is the exordium on the plague in the Navarre utilis or inutilis? The same question may be asked of Polypheme’s love song in the Voir Dit, which may be read as a farcical interlude because of the giant’s ugliness, boorishness, and violence, or as a contorted image of Guillaume himself and his desire for Toute Belle. It is analogous as well to the ravaging marauders, or ‘Compagnes’, in the Hundred Years War (VD, v. 6734–44/6807–17; cf. v. 5448–53/5521–6), discussed above, that does not interest Guillaume and thus appears inutilis to him in his desirebesotted state. Of course, multiple explanations are possible in a traitié because

155 156

Kelly 1995, pp. 122–3. Woods 1986; cf. Cerquiglini-Toulet 1995a, esp. pp. 38–42, and 2005.

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allegory may discover more than one meaning for a literal matiere, even (as we have seen) readings the author may not have intended and, consequently, that may provoke controversy among readers and within diverse audiences. Using the modes of the forma tractandi requires subtlety in thought and expression, but it must avoid obscurity.157 For such subtlety, Machaut relies on the modus transumptivus. The species of this term – metaphor, comparison, and allegory – are present in the Voir Dit. Like Machaut’s other dits, the Voir Dit is a mixed allegory. It has literal stretches that slip partially or wholly into metonymy by using personification, as well as into metaphor and, if extended, into allegory. For example, while returning from visiting Toute Belle, Guillaume fears meeting marauders who were active in the region during the Hundred Years War – terrorists in modern parlance. Instead, he meets and is temporarily held prisoner by a personification, Esperance, comprising a rewriting of his earlier encounter with the personification in the Remede and with Bonneurté in the Navarre. I return to this mode in chapter four. There are other modes Machaut uses that are not mentioned in the Can Grande epistula. Thus, the Voir Dit’s pedagogical setting depicting Toute Belle’s apprenticeship introduces the preceptive mode (modus praeceptivus or docendi),158 a mode that subsumes all the different modes in the Voir Dit’s forma tractandi as an art of poetry. Likewise, in the Remede de Fortune on good love, the modus praeceptivus corresponds to Esperance’s expository or preceptive intent there. In the Voir Dit, Guillaume offers Toute Belle contrasting examples of this mode, including diverse descriptions and digressions, much as Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Matthew of Vendôme, and the arts of Second Rhetoric do when they treat descriptions and digressions and as the Remede does with its diverse formes fixes. Like Geoffrey, Machaut speaks in the Voir Dit as teacher (de arte) and by example (ex arte).159 Using it as a model for the art of poetry, an advanced apprentice like Toute Belle can study its forms and modes, ultimately imitating them much as we have seen her do in imitation of Guillaume’s lyrics. To be sure, Guillaume remarks at one point that if he could talk to Toute Belle, he would teach her what he has never explained to anyone before (VD, p. 154f/96); one can well imagine that he may have taken up such technical issues in the incidental letters that Guillaume declines to include in the Voir Dit (VD, v. 1812–18/1894–900). Yet, as a traitié, the Voir Dit offers a coherent montage of its diverse modes and matieres.160 If Toute Belle or any apprentice is to learn how to write a dit, its montage must make sense to a person on the level of artistry she has achieved. Only then can the diverse modes of its forma tractandi contribute to and shape the apprentice’s understanding and art. A striking feature of Machaut’s dits is their tendency to pose problems that patrons and audiences must resolve on their own. These issues provoke 157 158 159 160

Ziolkowski 1996, pp. 136, 164 n. 103. Minnis 2010, pp. 124, 156. On these pedagogical methods in the Poetria nova, see Woods 2010, p. 23. Cf. Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, p. 159, and 1985, p. 24.

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readers, eliciting reflection on the moral and social norms, or Erlebnismuster, that Machaut’s works describe. In some cases, such issues, although refracted through the prism of love poetry, raise questions about real lives, especially when that poetry becomes deeply involved with larger philosophical, moral, and social issues like those raised in the Confort d’ami or like the digressions in the Voir Dit on France’s tribulations. These ‘digressive’ contexts were indeed developed by later poets (see Part III). With respect to Part II’s remaining chapters, exemplification and debate are the poetic modes that bring such issues to the fore in Machaut’s dits. Of course, more than one mode is often operative in a given passage. In the next chapter, we see that exemplification, or the modus exemplorum positivus, includes a modus narrationis as well as the modus descriptivus and the modus transumptivus or allegoricus. The last chapter of Part II focuses on debate; it deploys most prominently the modus collectivus, or argument for and against a view that leads to or implies judgment, and the modus divisivus, by which a subject is arrayed and laid out formally for consideration, evaluation, and judgment whenever different or opposing opinions clash.

4

Examples and Their Reconfiguration Quia auctoritas cereum habet nasum, id est in diversum potest flecti sensum, rationibus roborandum est.1 (Contra Hæreticos, col. 333) Ovides le dit en ses fables En moralités veritables. Se telz mutations vëoies, Certes moult t’en mervilleroies.2 (VD, v. 5606–9/5679–82)

Two lengthy complaintes in the Voir Dit, the one written by Toute Belle (v. 5812–6003/5885–6076) and the other Guillaume’s response (v. 6043–174/6116– 247), bring us directly back to Toute Belle’s apprenticeship. The complaintes are an important exception to the infrequency of their poetic exchanges (but not of letters) after the dit’s midpoint. Toute Belle learns that Guillaume has questioned her love and, distressed, wonders why. Picking up on Guillaume’s earlier comparison of her to Semiramis (v. 4814–15/4887–8, 5838–9/5911– 12), she catalogues women who proved their loyalty to unfaithful men (VD, v. 5833–8/5906–11). Toute Belle has begun to draw on the resources available in poetries and elsewhere. The fables that she chooses to exemplify her love are straightforward comparisons of diverse exemplary loves to her own love for Guillaume: Jason and Medea, Dido and Eneas, Biblis and Cadmus, Helen and Paris. She moves on to cast natural phenomena as adynata, that is, as unnatural and therefore marvelous occurrences. Should she prove inconstant, it would be as unnatural as any other unnatural occurrence: neither sun nor moon will shine again and, as a result, no trees will produce leaves, rivers will return to their sources, the constellations of the Zodiac will wage war on one another, chaos will reign universally as the world’s ordonnance unravels (VD, v. 5844–59/5917–32). Other well-known figures appear to buttress her argument: Ulysses, Venus, Cephalus, Pygmalion, Adonis. Toute Belle’s use of the exemplary mode is as obvious as it is skillful by fourteenth-century standards. 1 ‘Because authority has a wax nose, which is to say that it can be bent in different directions, it must be supported by rational means.’ 2 ‘Ovid says so in his fables in true moralizations. If you saw such mutations you would certainly marvel at them.’

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Guillaume’s response is submissive. Her love would indeed inspire the best of men, including Tristan, Paris, and Lancelot. So outstanding is she as an ‘exemplaire / Des biens qu’on puet dire, penser et faire’ (VD, v. 6119– 20/6192–3) [exemplar of the good qualities that one can name, think, and put into action] that the judgment of Paris would implicitly go to her while Venus, Pallas, and Juno would, without protest or envy, become her maidservants (v. 6136–42/6209–15). Guillaume goes still further. Obliquely anticipating the allegorical gender metamorphosis realized by Christine de Pizan, he asserts that Toute Belle can even be likened to men whom the gods deified, a surenchère that lifts her to the heights of Julius Caesar and Hercules, together with whom she will surely find a place among the stars. With this litany of examples, Guillaume again imitates his apprentice by using the same modus exemplorum positivus that she has already mastered. Has Toute Belle, like Thomas Paien, taken the ‘graisse du pot’ by using examples first? In any case, Toute Belle’s poetry has improved so much that Guillaume admires her independent use of examples in a long poem and even imitates them. Having loved badly, he is reduced once again to imitating his pupil. In love, at least, Toute Belle has indeed taken the ‘graisse du pot’, and for good reason: her love is more stable than Guillaume’s. The modus exemplorum positivus of the forma tractandi has a certain distinction because, as Judson Allen notes, the other modes – definition, description, division, and so forth – often depend on it.3 It is therefore not surprising that exemplification is a prominent mode in Machaut’s dits. When Guillaume announces ‘les beles et subtives fictions’ with which he intends to complete the Voir Dit, he implicitly acknowledges his pupil’s knowledge of late medieval poetries, knowledge that she demonstrates in her complainte. The exemplary mode, then, is the crowning jewel of rhetoric and poetics because, as Jacques Legrand puts it, by using examples ‘tout langage se demonstre meilleur, plus souverain et plus auctentique’ (Archiloge, p. 156, lines 3–4) [all that one expresses becomes better, more authoritative, and more credible]. The exemplary mode conjoins and blends truth and fiction, becoming not only more subtle but also more pliant. By drawing examples from poetries as well as from representative works like the Ovide moralisé, Toute Belle, by implication, can compare what she finds there with the subtle examples Guillaume introduces towards the end of the Voir Dit. In the second epigraph to this chapter, Machaut vouches for the ‘moralités veritables’ in the Ovidian examples he rewrites (VD, v. 5607/5680; see also v. 5548–53/5621–6).4 Guillaume’s use of the exemplary mode can teach her how to write poetry even more subtle than that in her complainte. Within the narrative itself, Guillaume recommends Allen 1982, p. 95. Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 3, p. 256 n. to v. 905; Fasseur 2006a, p. 192 n. 58; cf. van Uytven 1984; Victorin 2001; Basso 2005, pp. 25–6. On the Ovide moralisé’s influence on Machaut, see Thomas 1912; De Boer 1913 and 1915; Earp 1995, p. 6; Trachsler 1998, esp. pp. 189–90 nn. 4–5, and 194–5 n. 12; Jung 2009, p. 116. For additional references see Earp 1995, p. 658, s.v. Ovide moralisé. 3 4

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the Fontaine amoureuse for its examples, especially the Morpheus image, and invites his apprentice to give such examples careful consideration (VD, v. 8125–8/8198–201; cf. pp. 506c/388, 518–20d/398). Because of his ability to change his appearance in dreams, Morpheus offers a fitting subject matter for the different ways in which fables may be reconfigured so as to support a rational argument.5

Consideration If Toute Belle follows Guillaume’s advice, she will, in Jacques Legrand’s words, ‘considerer le propos du quel tu parles, et selon le propos tu regarderas les branches des figures qui s’ensuivent et prenras les hystoires appartenantes a ton propos, des quelles pareras ton langage’ (Archiloge, p. 156, lines 12–14; my emphasis)6 [consider the subject about which you are speaking and, in conformity with that subject matter, you will examine the branches of the following figures and select the tales that fit your subject and adorn your speech with them]. Consideration is the mental process ‘by which particulars become significant’.7 The ‘branches’ Legrand refers to in the Archiloge Sophie are rubrics that designate virtues and vices, emotions, and actions like dissimulation, cruelty, and combat, to name a few. The ‘figures’ or examples named under each branch illustrate the designated human trait. For example, Legrand classifies Hero and Leander (also a Voir Dit example) under ‘amour’ (Archiloge, p. 167); likewise, in the Voir Dit, Machaut treats Polypheme’s love for Galatea, a love that Legrand places under the rubric ‘sote amour’ (Archiloge, p. 204) [foolish love]. As ‘sote amour’, the poet must consider how he or she understands both ‘sote’ and ‘amour’ – a species and its genus – in order to make the example an apposite illustration of that meaning. That is, he or she must consider rationally what love in general is, and then what kinds of love there may be – from Machaut’s good love to Polypheme’s sote amour – that color the description of each kind of love. In other words, consideration allows for Alain’s ‘in diversum potest flecti sensum’ when supported by reason. In terms of the inserted narratives, Legrand’s ‘branches’ are possibilities, not absolutes. Generalizing and specializing features of definition and description are evident in diverse examples from dit to dit. In the Voir Dit, for example, Machaut uses the Hero and Leander fable to exemplify love as desire for delectacion. Thus, impelled by immoderate desire when he decides to swim to his beloved during a violent storm (cf. VD, v. 6289–302/6362–75), Leander loses 5 Froissart is the most innovative late medieval poet in inventing shape-shifting examples; see Kelly 1978, chap. seven, and 1981, 1998, 2009, and Pomel 2003. 6 Brunetto Latini uses consirer in an analogous passage; see pp. 118–19. 7 Allen 1982, p. 30 (see esp. pp. 29–30, 296–8); see also Goyet 2012. On consideration in Evrart de Conty’s Echecs moralisés, see Ducos 2006b, p. 220; in Christine de Pizan’s thought, see Kelly 2007, pp. 21–4.

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his life, as does Hero when she discovers his body washed ashore (VD, v. 6329– 34/6402–7, p. 594e/456). Inserted when Guillaume considers traveling to see Toute Belle despite violent storms and war,8 the example is apposite; that is, Guillaume may suffer Leander’s fate. The skilled apprentice like Toute Belle will recognize Machaut’s intention after considering how examples are made significant in the Voir Dit as well as in other works, notably those in the Ovide moralisé that Guillaume recommends to her (VD, v. 5551–3/5624–6, 5606– 7/5679–80). She might also consider other works that she herself names – in Toute Belle’s case, these include the Roman de la rose and the Prose Lancelot that she mentions in Letter 7 as well as the Fontaine amoureuse that Guillaume sends her. Considering the similarities and differences in the ways examples and, indeed, the same example may be depicted, she will come to understand how the modus exemplorum positivus allows for subtle reconfiguration of positive and negative examples in diverse contexts. The Voir Dit’s fictional examples not only inspire Toute Belle in the narrative itself, they also encourage both readers and apprentices to consider more carefully how the examples are shaped. Indeed, Didier Lechat has underlined the impact in the last part of the dit of the multiple potential plots that each example suggests and the importance of recognizing who is using each example:9 ‘Les fonctions qu’elles [les fictions] occupent donnent une image kaléidoscopique du je, sujet et objet de l’œuvre.’10 But in the Voir Dit, je is plural – it refers to both Guillaume and Toute Belle. The juxtaposition of exemplary, albeit fictional plots, often as contraires choses, illuminates opposing views in the altercations that punctuate the relation between Toute Belle and her poet. But, as we have seen in chapter two, ‘truth is no longer what resides in the text but what is taken from the text. That is, truth is in the delivery and interpretation of the work, not in the material evidence inserted into the dit.’11 These words reflect the passage from materia remota to materia propinqua, illustrate the juxtaposition of opposing examples in Machaut’s dit, and imply divergent reader responses to them. But they still require careful consideration of the poem’s examples before response to them. Like his readers, Guillaume could claim that ‘es exemples me miroie’ (VD, v. 6392/6465) [I viewed myself in the examples], posing himself in this way for consideration of which example, or which version of the example, best describes him. Toute Belle does the same. Importantly, she does not recognize herself in Guillaume’s examples in the second half of the Voir Dit. Rather, as with the Roman de la rose, reader or audience interpretations may reveal by

8 In the Fontaine amoureuse, Ceyx too dies in a storm. However, the happy ending when Alcyon rejoins him is not without analogy to the ongoing good love that Toute Belle and Guillaume believe they will know in Heaven. 9 Lechat 2005, pp. 205–52. 10 Lechat 2005, p. 57. 11 McGrady 2006a, p. 62.

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contrast the reader’s own moral or social self.12 The evaluation is not unlike that which the reader makes while considering the diverse settings and potential plots illustrated in the lyrics of the Louange des dames. Here too, the reader can consider and evaluate exemplary material with respect to him- or herself. Once again, the Meliador maiden’s rejection of a poem proves paradigmatic: she rejects a well-written poem because she does not love in the same way as the poem’s narrator. Toute Belle does the same when she considers Guillaume’s depiction of her alleged inconstancy. In similar manner, Guillaume finds himself to be an unworthy lover in Toute Belle’s complainte. Her defense in the complainte, buttressed by the examples she cites, is effective. Guillaume has to admit that ‘les exemples que vous y mettés en vos douces, courtoises et amiables lettres13 me font certain que ce que vous me mandés et escrivés est pure verités’ (VD, p. 766b/610) [the examples that you include in your sweet, courteous, and endearing letter convince me that what you report and write is pure truth]. That is, Guillaume not only renews his trust in her, he affirms the truth of the allegations she makes in her complainte while admitting and correcting his own misprision. The love Toute Belle exemplifies conforms to ideal norms; her letters are as sincere as her first rondeau, itself written de sentement. In the context of Machaut’s art of poetry, moreover, Guillaume’s considered approval of Toute Belle’s examples suggests the magister’s approval of her progress as apprentice poet. She has learned how to use credible, convincing examples. Examples are powerful evidence to medieval literati, and Machaut’s examples have received extensive treatment in previous studies.14 Here, I propose to investigate how they function vis-à-vis counter-examples; that is, when they are reconfigured by opponents in debates so as to express different, even opposing, truths. Important in this discussion will be the art of forging credible examples and, especially, how an alleged truth is expressed in these fictions so effectively as to appear ‘auctentique’, that is, unimpeachable. We are considering not only the formal montage of these figures, but also, like the Meliador maiden, their subject matter. I begin with Fortune, a commonplace example that Machaut uses in the Voir Dit with subtlety and originality by examining his more nearly conventional use of the commonplace in the Remede de Fortune in order to show more clearly his original reconfiguration of the commonplace image in the Voir Dit.

12 Cf. Kelly 1995, p. 51, on this potential reflection of oneself among readers of the Roman de la rose. 13 Her complainte is enclosed in Letter 32 (VD, v. 6004–9/6077–82). 14 Picherit 1982; Ehrhart 1992; Huot 2002, pp. 181–5, and 2003, esp. pp. 145–53, 172–3; Lechat 2005, chap. two.

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Descriptions of Fortune in the Remede de Fortune15 Fortune is an omnipresent force in Machaut’s poetry.16 Moreover, his conception of the topos proves to be crucial in defining good love as the only kind of human love that is not subject to Fortune’s domination. As a common place or topos (fortuna, casus17), fortune serves to situate a person and his or her life, experiences, and/or emotions in moral and social contexts. Not surprisingly, then, Fortune figures prominently as a personification in the Remede de Fortune and the Voir Dit; description of the personification exemplifies how Fortune affects the individual and his or her actions for better or worse. Se tu veulx donques aucune chose descripre, tu dois proceder en ton cuer18 atout le moins par la dicte figure et pourpenser les denominacions appartenantes, par telle maniere que se tu veulz louer tu dois prenre les denominacions de louenge, et se tu veulz vituperer tu dois prenre les denominacions de vitupere. (Archiloge, p. 87, lines 21–5) [Therefore, if you want to describe something, you must at the very least consider the given figure and identify its appropriate attributes in such a way that if you would praise you must choose praiseworthy attributes, and if you wish to blame you must select blameworthy attributes.]

In other words, the attributes chosen will inform the common places that fit the figure’s person or personification, as well as his or her thoughts, words, experiences, and deeds. Since Fortune, whether as fortuna or as casus, is a common place and, in Machaut’s case, a fundamental consideration in evaluating good love, the personification Fortune will emphasize a figure using suitable human attributes. In the Remede, the attributes are vituperative. No doubt the most commonplace image of Fortune in medieval literature is the blindfolded Fortune whose Wheel raises, then lowers, individuals in a constant cycle of good and bad fortune. The image

For a complementary approach to descriptions of Fortune, see Leach 2011, pp. 220–41. Wolfzettel 1996, pp. 202–3. Indeed, it is a widespread preoccupation in his troubled, unstable times (Attwood 2007; Leach 2011, pp. 219–20). 17 The topos fortuna refers to its place in a person’s life over a longer period of time; casus is closer in meaning to aventure during which fortune briefly affects one’s life. Brunetto Latini’s Tresor refers to the two topoi as, respectively, fortune (p. 361: III.52, line 7) and cheoite (p. 362: III.52, line 14); Legrand names only fortune for both varieties basing his list of topoi on Cicero (Archiloge, pp. 84–7, 129). On the distinction in medieval poetics, see Kelly 2011, pp. 8–9. Thus, fortune functions both as a common place of the human person and, as example, as the commonplace image of a blind personification ever turning her wheel (fortuna/fortune) or that of the half bald figure that suddenly appears, only to pass on in great haste (casus/cheoite). Contingency is a feature of the latter topos; cf. Heller-Roazen 2003; Armstrong and Kay 2011. 18 Note the paraphrase of Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s first step in invention (see p. 102). 15 16

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appears both visually and verbally in Remede manuscripts.19 But Fortune’s ways follow not only regular cycles; they can also be erratic or haphazard (casus). Since the Remede is the foundational dit for Machaut’s views on good and bad fortune, it includes both kinds of fortune. The commonplace description of the Wheel in the Remede’s complainte shows blind20 Fortune constantly turning her wheel.   Quant elle tourne, Qui n’atent mie qu’il ajourne Pour tourner; qu’elle ne sejourne, Ains tourne, retourne, et bestourne,  Tant qu’au desseure Met celui qui gist mas en l’ourne; Le seurmonté au bas retorne, Et le plus joieus mat et morne   Fait en po d’eure.  (Remede, v. 912–20) [When she turns, she doesn’t wait for daybreak before turning; she never rests, but rather turns, rotates, and casts down until she raises again one lying low in the mud; she brings back down the person on top and quickly makes the happiest man downcast and forlorn.]

Following this description in the Remede complainte, a fireworks display of Fortune’s commonplace oscillations includes images, descriptions, examples, maxims, antitheses, and contraires choses: ‘charitable’ vs. ‘avere’ (v. 923–4), ‘amiable’ vs. ‘amere’ (v. 927–8), honey’s sweetness vs. the viper’s sting (v. 930–3), the waxing and waning moon (v. 957–60), the head with hairy forehead that is bald behind (v. 1161), one eye tearful and the other dry (v. 1162), and so forth. Oxymorons abound: ‘amour haïneuse’ (v. 1129), ‘Bonneürté maleüreuse’ (v. 1130), ‘perilleuse seürté’ (v. 1139), ‘souffisance couvoiteuse’ (v. 1146), to list a few. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream contains a statue made of different materials resting on a foot of dirt that portends his impending fall (v. 1001–32). These commonplaces, commonplace images, examples, and other conventional devices round off the first part of the complainte’s description of Fortune in the Remede. Machaut then turns to love as desire, where amorous twists and turns make an apt context in which to display Fortune’s activities. They become in fact two faces of the same phenomenon, with the more general aspect being Fortune, and the more special, Amour. Machaut specializes this material further by locating Fortune in Amour’s Desire: ‘la Desirs veille, / Qui trop me point’ (Remede, v. 1383–4) [there Desire stands watch, he who prods

19 Illustrations from BNF fr. 1584 are found in Leech-Wilkinson, ed., Voir Dit, pp. 564, 596, and Leach 2011, pp. 222, 233, 238. Six Machaut manuscripts contain images of the Wheel (Earp 1995, pp. 181–3); they may now be examined in Resources. 20 In the illustration in BNF fr. 1586 she is blindfolded (Wimsatt and Kibler, ed., Remede, miniature 5).

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me overmuch]. In this way, Machaut depicts love as a realm in which Fortune reigns when love is desire.21

Descriptions of Fortune in the Voir Dit Consideration of the commonplace description of Fortune and her wheel in the Remede further reveals, by comparison, the originality and subtlety of the two Voir Dit descriptions and reconfigurations of the Wheel. In the first description, the single commonplace Wheel becomes an elaborate system of five intertwining circles. Inscribed in each circle is an aphoristic warning about Fortune’s mutability, mendacity, and menace, especially when she draws her victims away from God. These admonitions describe Toute Belle’s fortune as seen through Guillaume’s eyes. His love for Toute Belle, that is, has become an error because she is necessarily as mutable as are commonplace fortune, love, and women – all nouns linked by their feminine grammatical gender. As suggested by the counsel of the largest, all-embracing wheel in Guillaume’s first depiction of Fortune’s ways: ‘Pense et regarde qui je sui; / Quant tu le saras, hé me et fui’ (VD, v. 8237–8/8310–11) [consider and see who I am; when you will know that, hate me and flee]. For Guillaume, all three – Amour, Toute Belle, and Fortune – are mutable and their female gender links them under the common epithet or ‘branche’ of fortune in Legrand’s sense of the term. Indeed, the advice to flee fortune, love, and Toute Belle rehearses counsel going back to Ovid’s Remedia amoris; Machaut’s own Alerion exemplifies it when Guillaume summarily stops loving inconstant raptors. But in the Voir Dit, he pauses, perplexed, to consider the evidence. First, he glosses this lesson by likening Toute Belle to Fortune. She is attractive and forthcoming at the beginning, but later distances herself from him (first circle). Her love is dead (second circle), while he continues to love her so intensely that he has forgotten God (third circle). Her sweet song – as in the first rondeau that Guillaume found faultless and sincere – is a siren song that deceives and threatens him if he continues to submit to her fatal attraction (fourth circle). Now that he has discovered Toute Belle’s true nature or maniere, he should flee her as swiftly as a cat does rain (fifth circle). Hence, the grand admonition of the largest circle: flee Fortune and, along with her, Toute Belle and Amour. All three are mutable by their very nature and, as common places or topoi, they fuse grammatical with sexual gender. 21 Leach 2011, pp. 220–31, notes how tedious the complainte would become if it were sung by repeating the same music from stanza to stanza. Might a performer not dramatically and eloquently recite or read the poem, occasionally enhancing the performance at chosen moments by bursting into song for a stanza or two? This would follow the model dit performance that alternates spoken couplets and sung lyrics. See Roy 1999b, pp. 22–4, on ‘cantillation’, or the style for producing prose passages that may apply as well to the Remede’s complainte.

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Glossing imbedded in the text should not be ignored, especially here, where three features of Guillaume’s glossing that assimilates Toute Belle to the first description of Fortune are striking. One is Guillaume’s own instability, expressed by the virtual refrain to each of the five glosses: ‘S’il est voirs ce qu’on m’en a dit, / Autrement ne di je en mon dit’22 [if what I’ve been told is true; I don’t say anything different in my dit]. These words reveal his deep insecurity and rational instability. He will accept the gloss if what people tell him about Toute Belle is true; otherwise, he retracts his claim. The second feature is the defect in the gender allegory. Neither literal sexual gender nor moral conduct can be assimilated to grammatical gender unless there is some rational or evidentiary basis for the assimilation apart from gender – only if, for example, conduct actually conforms to the assimilation (see below on gender in allegory). The third factor, Guillaume’s wavering, reveals his lack of virtue, the moral stamina that, according to Boethius, humans are born with. By languishing in emotional distress, Guillaume exhibits mollesse, a ‘softness’ that marks virtue’s decline. Indeed, mollesse in love refers to the debilitating, ‘unmanning’ effects of desire and sexual intercourse.23 These faults are countered when Toute Belle’s confessor reconfigures the Wheel of Fortune, its allegory, and its glosses. In this description, the confessor keeps the circularity of the commonplace wheel and its rotation by linking metamorphoses on the literal level to five round fountains beside which five virgins attempt to assuage Fortune’s fury by appealing to her to mitigate harm. Each virgin has a ‘sign’ that, by describing each fountain’s flow, indicates what Fortune can do. These glosses are analogous to those for the five inscribed circles in the first Fortune description, but they lead to different conclusions. Each virgin believes that her fountain’s flow will reveal Fortune’s response to her appeal. However, the response is not a prediction so much as the statement of a commonplace feature of Fortune’s erratic mutability or casus: Fortune can approve the request (first fountain), promise to answer the appeal (second fountain), or be pacified (third fountain); these responses offer hope. But Fortune can just as well ignore the entreaty or not keep a promise (fourth fountain) and also change, allowing the abundant fountain to run dry (fifth fountain). All that remains stable is Fortune’s instability and uncertainty. The Wheel image ultimately sums up Fortune’s response to human appeals in the fifth description. Just as the Wheel constantly turns (VD, v. 8612–17/8697– 702), so the fountains ever ebb and flow. However, they do so as erratically as the weather: ‘Je afflue et me depart sans bonne’ (VD, v. 8213/8286) [I flow and ebb ceaselessly]. Indeed, the very fountain that ‘afflue et habunde’ (VD, v. 8669/8754) [flows abundantly] on one occasion ‘s’evanuit’ (VD, v. 8684/8769) [vanishes] like the fifth fountain on another; this is because what occurs in one fountain can just as easily occur in the four others. Each fountain is the same, 22 VD, v. 8269–70/8342–3, 8285–6/8358–9, 8301–2/8374–5, 8317–18/8390–1, 8335– 6/8408–9. 23 See Kelly 1995, pp. 115–22.

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because Fortune’s changeability is as constant as it is erratic. Fortune’s game in this second description is her constantly irregular and unpredictable inconstancy. The confessor goes on to depict Fortune as an image not of Toute Belle’s mutability, but of Guillaume’s own erratic instability, as encoded in the refrain ‘s’il est voirs ce qu’on m’en a dit’ in the first description of Fortune. Both descriptions depict a mutable Fortune in order to characterize allegorically a mutable Toute Belle in the first instance and a mutable Guillaume in the second. Although each description is configured to fit the person whose conduct it is supposed to explain, there is more. Each description of Fortune introduces the donna mobile as the gender common place (sexus). The most original innovation in the second description is a ploy by which the confessor assimilates Guillaume to the commonplace woman of misogyny such that, by his own mutability, he conforms, allegorically, to that woman: ‘Vous avés maniere de fame’ (VD, v. 8697/8782). The confessor makes this assimilation, moreover, while describing Toute Belle as a virtual virago in Christine de Pizan’s positive sense of the word.24 She is stable in thought and in love. The reader who considers the Voir Dit’s examples of Fortune will readily understand that the confessor, not Guillaume, has got it right; it is Guillaume’s likening Toute Belle to Fortune that is twisted. Although both Voir Dit descriptions focus alternately on general and special features of Fortune and Love like those developed in the Remede complainte, there are important differences. Guillaume’s complainte in the Remede condemns both Fortune and Amour by assimilating the two: love is a species of fortune. In the Voir Dit, however, the descriptions are adapted to the circumstances informing Guillaume’s and Toute Belle’s doubts and anxieties. Although the Fortune descriptions condemn, first, Toute Belle and, second, Guillaume, the alleged fault is the same: a mutable, changeable love like that described in the Remede complainte. In other words, Guillaume first heeds accusations that Toute Belle’s alleged instability derives from her commonplace womanhood, thereby contradicting his own earlier descriptions of Toute Belle as stable and worthy of a fixed place among the stars. His unstable judgment becomes the matiere that Toute Belle’s confessor reconfigures in order to assimilate Guillaume to the donna mobile norm and, as corollary, to commonplace Fortune and thereby prove that his love is not a good love. In this way, the confessor rewrites misogyny as an allegory, much as Christine de Pizan does in the Mutacion de Fortune, but in the opposite direction: as Christine becomes an admirable man, so Guillaume becomes an unworthy woman. In the modus transumptivus, Guillaume exemplifies the commonplace woman. This is possible, as for Christine de Pizan, when a literal, but fictitious Ovidian gender metamorphosis becomes part of a true allegory. In reconfiguring the misogynist’s commonplace woman, the confessor makes

24

Kelly 2007, pp. 85, 102–4.

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each description applicable to both men and women.25 Toute Belle, he asserts, is not among those who act like Fortune; Guillaume, he avers, is. The confessor’s refrain – Guillaume errs ‘par legierement croire’26 [by his gullibility] – counterpoints the uncertainty of Guillaume’s refrain – ‘s’il est voirs ce qu’on m’en a dit’ – in the first fountain description. Toute Belle’s stable love belies the donna mobile commonplace; by showing good love, her conduct and love lift her above Fortune’s dangier. That is, her love remains the good love Machaut promotes in the Remede. Thus, the donna mobile commonplace does not disappear; instead, it is reconfigured. Guillaume resembles the goddess Fortune because he twists and turns erratically like a lark in flight and a weathervane in the wind ‘Car riens n’i ha d’estableté’ (VD, v. 8704/8789) [for there is nothing stable about it]. Guillaume is also Janus-faced because of his ‘double visage’ (VD, v. 8708/8793), the one ever laughing and the other ever weeping, just like Fortune’s eyes. Like the Remede’s Fortune, he too is ‘borgne’ and gullible. The fault becomes a refrain when the confessor allegorically depicts the five fountains so as to show how instability comes about ‘par legierement croire’. The topical attributes distinguish Guillaume’s instability clearly and rationally from Toute Belle’s stability throughout the Voir Dit. The apprentice poet and the reader considering these exemplary descriptions of Fortune must evaluate rationally the assimilation of the description, or vehicle, to its object, or tenor. The fictional narrative provides the key to assessing their credibility by using an allegory that removes any favorable reading of either circles or fountains when applied to human instability. The apprentice will perceive that the two descriptions are compatible, but not universally applicable. Thus, Guillaume, deceived by Toute Belle’s detractors, forgets how stable Toute Belle has been; that is, by forgetting or ignoring what actually has transpired in the dit’s narrative, including his own experience as lover and poet,27 he succumbs to melancholy and languor rather than critically examining the claims of the detractors who badmouth Toute Belle. He begins to mistrust her. The result is not the loss of Toute Belle’s honor, but of Guillaume’s honor. As the confessor points out, ‘Ainsi perdés d’Amours la gloire’ (VD, v. 8776/8861) [thus do you lose Love’s renown] and thereby the very quality that inspired Toute Belle’s amour sur estime in their carte de Tendre script. The confessor concludes with a recommendation that Guillaume return to good love and ignore the five virgins by the five fountains whose desires metamorphose their words into a siren song offering ‘repos’ that actually ‘est paine, / Boneür qui est maleurté / Et richesse en mendicité’ (VD, v. 8791–3/8876–8) [is pain, felicity that is unhappiness and wealth in mendacity]. The restoration of good 25 As Machaut does with the ‘sœurs aisiées’ in the Lyon who act like the Alerion’s gyrfalcon and sparrow hawk, but also like their corresponding frères aisiés. 26 VD, v. 8737/8822, 8747/8832, 8757/8842, 8767/8852, 8777/8862. 27 Perhaps a memory lapse like that in Book One of Boethius’s Consolation and in the Remede complainte against Fortune that shows him forgetting how well Fortune has actually treated him.

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love eliminates fortune and assures felicity. Guillaume reconfirms and restores his love; he declares Toute Belle’s constancy. The Wheel of Fortune ceases to turn for him, Toute Belle, and their love. In trying to determine whether examples are rationally credible, Judson Allen offers some interesting observations on how they convince. In a credible example, ‘all structures integrate’.28 This means that the normal method of proving that an interpretation was true was not a defense of the relationship between text and interpretation – of, as it were, the fit, as one might claim to have reassembled the clock correctly because there were no parts left over and the thing was running. Rather, one proved an interpretation was true by proving, usually by some confirming prooftext, that the interpretation itself made a true statement – as one might claim to have assembled the clock correctly because, at a certain instant, one could say on the basis of independent evidence that it was set at the right time.29

The ‘prooftext’ is ‘independent evidence’ that the clock is set at the right time. Toute Belle’s stability throughout the Voir Dit and the relation of that stability to her good love are coupled with, by contrast, Guillaume’s ongoing instability as he oscillates between good hope and possessive, suspicious desire. This is the Voir Dit’s prooftext. The narrative is coherent; the examples fit and integrate in the fictional, but also exemplary conduct of the two lovers. They show that Toute Belle fits the norm for good love as Machaut defines it in both the Remede and the Voir Dit. The fictional clock is not only running, it is telling the correct time. Or, as Froissart puts it in his Orloge amoureus, ‘Ensi appert que je fai mon devoir / Tout ensi com l’orloge fait le sien’ (Orloge, v. 1164–5) [thus it is apparent that I do my duty just as the clock does its own duty]. Both, orlogiers or clockmen and lovers, are there to make sure that this happens (Orloge, v. 927–96; cf. v. 9–11, 610–14, 659–84).30 They include Froissart’s readers. Both Guillaume and Toute Belle fit the confessor’s description by the end of the exemplary Voir Dit. Before that Guillaume alone, not Toute Belle, fits both Voir Dit descriptions of Fortune and its representation of bad love and the donna mobile. The reader will, like the Meliador maiden or readers of the Venus cloud episode discussed in chapter two, decide, independently or together with others, if this is a credible example in the Voir Dit’s total narrative context. Wax Noses and Assimilation Wax was a commonplace metaphor for invention in the Middle Ages.31 Thus, the problem in using ‘waxen’ examples is aptly illustrated by Alain de Lille’s 28 29 30 31

Allen 1982, p. 201. Allen 1982, p. 212. Cf. Dembowski 1978, pp. 24–5; Schwarze 2003, pp. 72–5. Constable 2007, pp. 8–9.

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observation that authoritative subject matter can, like a wax nose, be twisted to signify whatever one wishes.32 ‘Auctoritates [in this sense] were texts rather than persons. They are sententiae or ideas excerpted from their immediate context in a work and divorced from the wider context of the writings of an auctor.’33 An author can reconfigure or otherwise manipulate such ‘authorities’, much as Machaut does with the Wheel of Fortune in the Voir Dit. Importantly, Alain de Lille notes with his wax nose metaphor that authority must be supported by rational argument: ‘rationibus roborandum est’. Thus, like Judson Allen’s clock that, on the basis of independent evidence, accurately tells the right time, so the exemplary wax nose is credibly shaped when reason authorizes it. Guillaume’s interpretation of the first image of Fortune in the Voir Dit shows how interpretation can also disfigure: Toute Belle is victim of such disfigurement by her detractors. In other words, the assimilation of her to Fortune is skewed; it does not fit because she does not exemplify the donna mobile, whereas Guillaume’s conduct does fit the donna mobile image, as made clear with the confessor’s example of Fortune and Guillaume’s own thought and conduct. In the Poetria nova, Geoffrey of Vinsauf uses wax in an analogous, but broader metaphor to describe amplification and abbreviation, of which description is one species (Poetria, v. 213–17).34 Brunetto Latini translates Geoffrey’s comparison as follows: ‘Car matire est samblable a la cire, ki se laisse mener et apeticier et croistre a la volenté du mestre’ (Tresor, p. 330: III.12, line 2) [for matter is like wax that can be manipulated, abbreviated, and amplified as the artist wishes]. The task is difficult and the original matiere, or materia remota, ‘inerte’.35 Submitted to consideration in Allen’s sense – ‘Si sedula cura / Igniat ingenium’ (Poetria, v. 214–15) [if intense concentration enkindle native ability (Nims p. 25)] – wax can be molded any way the poet wishes: ‘Ductilis ad quidquid’ (v. 217) [malleable to any form (Nims p. 25)]. With these descriptions, Geoffrey refers to that stage in invention in which materia remota becomes materia propinqua. This is what Machaut accomplishes in his amplifications of the fortune commonplaces in the Remede and the Voir Dit. That is, he amplifies commonplace examples in the context of each dit – as Tilliette paraphrases Geoffrey’s instruction, ‘sous le jour le plus propre à parler à l’intelligence et au cœur de l’auditeur’.36 Thus, such manipulation, like ‘nose twisting’, must yield a credible example acceptable to reason if it is to be persuasive, as the contrasting assimilations of Toute Belle to Fortune and of Guillaume to changeable women 32 Moos 1988a; Zeeman 2002, pp. 50–8. Ziolkowski 1985, p. 106, notes that control of such twisting begins with good grammar. 33 Parkes 1976, p. 116 n. 1 He translates the word as ‘inherited material’ (p. 116); cf. Lusignan 1986, pp. 130–3, 162, 165; Moos 1988a, p. 64, and 1988b, pp. 159–60; Polo de Beaulieu 2001, p. 179; Friis-Jensen 2004. The word auctoritas is related as well to the use of citation in both literature and music (Günther 1972; Butterfield 2002, pp. 129–30 et passim; Plumley 2003a and b). 34 Tilliette 2000, pp. 89–90. 35 Tilliette 2000, p. 89. 36 Tilliette 2000, p. 90.

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show.37 By the same token, examples can be twisted or reconfigured so as to support errors or falsehoods when reason does not support the description, as illustrated by Guillaume’s assimilation of Fortune to Toute Belle; the donna mobile examples are set wrong when applied to Toute Belle, but right when applied to Guillaume. Turning to the Navarre, we discover various thought processes that aid the litigants in considering and configuring examples.38 Guillaume relies on Avis and Raison to argue his case (JN, v. 1343–56), as does the judge in evaluating the debate (JN, v. 1564–602). On the plaintiff’s side, twelve personifications support Bonneurté, clarifying the idea she personifies by their interventions (JN, v. 1305–28; cf. v. 4060–170). That is, the litigants configure or reconfigure exemplary material in conformity with the competency each personifies; Guillaume does the same. As we saw in chapter one, the judge decides which side gives a more credible picture of the person or event exemplified in each speaker’s argument. For example, Attemprance, or Temperance, sees to it that the examples are valid by identifying a mean between excess and defect – that is, between excessive abbreviation and immoderate amplification, the twin dangers of what Brunetto Latini’s Tresor refers to in the passage quoted above as ‘apeticier et croistre a la volenté du mestre’. Se trop y a, j’en puis oster. (Or vueilliez bien ce point noter!) Et se po y a, j’y puis mettre, Quant je m’en vueil bien entremettre. Et se la chose est en bon point, Je la puis garder en ce point.39 (JN, v. 1799–804) [If there is excess I can eliminate it (now please pay attention to this point!) and if there is something missing I can add to it when I decide to intervene. And if the matter is set right I can keep it in place.]

Attemprance sets the clock, as it were, to the right time. These lines also reflect the manipulation of wax that Alain de Lille and Geoffrey of Vinsauf liken to amplification and abbreviation in topical invention. They rely not on the twisting of evidence, but rather on the degree of probability in the examples as they are molded – that is, how well the examples assimilate to the person or action they are meant to illustrate, or how, by twisting, they offer distorted or twisted

37 One is reminded of Pascal’s comment on Cleopatra’s nose: ‘Le nez de Cléopâtre, s’il eût été plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait changé’ (Pensées, vol. 2, p. 675). It might be said that Guillaume made Toute Belle’s nose too short, leaving out the virtues that raised her above the donna mobile as a beautiful virago like Christine de Pizan. 38 Cf. Ehrhart 1979; Kay 2007, chap. four. 39 Cf. Attwood 1998, p. 49. Attemprance’s counsel refers to reconfiguration of subject matter. Alain Chartier’s Esperance illustrates this feature of topical invention by contrasting pagan and Christian interpretations of Vergil’s Aeneid (Kelly 2008, pp. 17–18).

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evidence. Attemprance is in tune with Reason when she approves reconfiguration of exemplary material. In the Voir Dit both Guillaume and Toute Belle assume this critical function. He is an authority for the art of poetry, and Toute Belle acknowledges that authority. However, Toute Belle is responsible for the dit’s contents, including implicitly the conception of love it promotes: ‘s’il y ha aucunes choses a corrigier’ in his Voir Dit, Guillaume tells her, ‘que vous y faites ensengnes, car il vous a pleu que je y mette tout nostre fait, si ne say se y met ou trop ou po’ (VD, p. 558e/430) [and if there are any corrections needed, do make them, for you wanted me to include all we did, and I don’t know whether I included too much or too little]. The reference alludes to the extremes of amplification and abbreviation – ‘ou trop ou po’. That is, Toute Belle’s role in the composition of the Voir Dit corresponds to that of Attemprance in the art of poetry and, concomitantly, the art of love. The object is to get the example right, not just put it together. The play of attack and defense in the Jugement Navarre discussed in chapter one further illustrates the standard Attemprance refers to. In particular, each party in the debate makes distinctions that correct the opponent’s examples, either by retelling them with additions or deletions, or by introducing counterexamples that shed new light on the issues raised. Foy does so, for example, by using the modus divisivus in order to faire departie, C’est assavoir, devision Par voie de distinction Des choses qui ne font a croire Et d’aucunes qui la victoire Puelent avoir d’estre creües Ou pour possibles soustenues.  (JN, v. 2322–8) [make a partition, by which I mean a division that distinguishes between those points that are not credible and those that can prevail by being deemed credible or possible.]

Consideration here appears as avis that prepares for deviser as description.40 In this kind of logic, verisimilitude is more important than simple data. A particular argument becomes more or less credible by apposite amplification or abbreviation, the procedures that depict examples in a way favorable to the case the speaker is making against an opponent. As Machaut puts it in the Prologue, the poet uses his sens in this way to explain Amour’s dous penser, esperence, and plaisance. The Remede de Fortune provides another wax metaphor, comparing the mind to wax because it ‘sueffre dedens li escrire, / Ou … retient forme ou emprainte, / Si com on l’a en li emprainte’ (Remede, v. 32–4) [allows being inscribed in 40

On these terms, see Kelly 1972.

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itself or retains the form or impression just as it was impressed into it]. As with the faculty imagination evoked in the Poetria nova’s allusion to ingenium as wax, the mind is impressed in this sense according to the Remede, just as that mind in turn impresses its content in literary examples that are fashioned, formed, and reconfigured, or twisted, to fit the author’s thought and intentions. In other words, the literal fiction is reconfigured to fit the author’s intended meaning. Reason should then determine whether the image conveys a true or false semblance. The evaluation of such proof is in harmony with Deschamps’s conception of logic in poetry discussed in chapter three: ‘une science d’arguer choses faintes et subtiles, coulourees de faulx argumens, pour discerner et mieulx congnoistre la verite des choses entre le faulx et le voir’. ‘Faulx argumens’, then, are fictions that allow one rationally to ‘discerner et mieulx congnoistre la verite’ they exemplify – ‘verite’ here as Attemprance’s ‘point’ midway between ‘trop’ and ‘po’. Assimilation is the technique by which examples become evidence. It presumes apposite and convincing molding of exemplary material in support of an argument. Metaphor in particular ‘réalise une assimilation. Elle oublie les différences entre les deux termes, pour s’en tenir aux affinités communes’.41 Such ‘likening’ includes description, as achieved by the imaginative faculty (imaginatio), using comparisons, allegory, and the expression of the universal. ‘Assimilatio is a complex structure, which assumes identity or at least coherence among various entities we are now disposed to know as different, or incoherent’42 – for example, Machaut as a woman and Christine de Pizan as a man, not because of their sexual gender but because of how rationally they act. The difference between fact and fiction, or true and false, diminishes as a larger structure of coherence and meaning emerges through the reconfiguration of an example – as Philippe Ménard puts it, ‘elle oublie les differences’ in order to reveal a credible samblant. The resulting montage conforms to medieval faculty psychology. Imagination, relying on reason, turns objects of sense, whether actual or fictional, ‘into the discrete objects of thought to which descriptions can be assimilated’.43 This is a kind of manipulation. Reason is, therefore, essential, lest the imagination fall into the trap of twisting noses into counterfeit truths. By assimilation, authors look for examples that are identical with, comparable to, or contrary to the truth the author alleges. This is especially important in debate, as we shall see in the next chapter. But first, we must examine more closely the configuration and reconfiguration of examples in Machaut’s dits. The examples in the Jugement Navarre illustrate the sifting and winnowing by which Machaut configures different versions of an example, each one casting a different light on the issues the litigants raise and seek to resolve. 41 Ménard 2007, p. 9. See Allen 1982, chap. four, upon which my general observations here are based. 42 Allen 1982, p. 181. 43 Allen 1982, p. 191.

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The Navarre Examples: Criteria and Reconsideration The apprentice poet can profit by considering Machaut’s use of the modus exemplorum positivus in his two judgment dits. The Behaigne relies principally on the lady and nobleman as examples that speak for themselves. These litigants survive as referents in the Navarre, in which numerous examples culled from poetries and other sources depict suffering due to loss and the opinions they are fashioned to exemplify. Thus, the apprentice can appreciate in these dits how examples function as evidence, both in mock legal deliberations and as poetic inventions, and then compare them to the Voir Dit examples of Guillaume and Toute Belle vis-à-vis the Behaigne’s nobleman and lady. Machaut’s treatment of fictional examples shows criteria that, by consideration of their configuration and reconfiguration, Reason and other agents can evaluate the examples so as to detect and then avoid erroneous twisting of the exemplary wax. Given the prominence of the exemplary mode in late medieval poetry, apprentice poets would do well to study these examples carefully.44 The first prominent instance displaying criteria for exemplification in the Navarre debate is Bonneurté’s use of figure in her comparison of the turtledove whose mate has died and the stork whose mate has been unfaithful, a reconfiguration of the Behaigne issue and litigants using bestiary images. As Bonneurté puts it, ‘Mon fait moustreray par figure’45 (JN, v. 1631) [I’ll make my case using a figure]. In terms of the Archiloge Sophie, the ‘figure … considere la phisonomie, la face et la façon de l’omme’ (p. 86) [figure considers the physiognomy, the features, and the shape of the man], determining which of these and similar common places46 are suitable attributes for descriptive amplification in the example. That is to say, ‘Pour ceste figure entendre tu dois savoir que se tu veulx aucune ame descripre tu dois considerer les parties de la dicte figure et prenre les moz et denominacions appartenantes a la chose de la quelle tu parles’47 (Archiloge, p. 86) [in order to understand that figure (i.e., example) you must know that if you want to describe someone you must consider the parts of the aforementioned figure and choose language and attributes that belong to that about which you are speaking]. Machaut illustrates this procedure for consideration and invention when Guillaume congratulates Bonneurté for her skillful fashioning of the example of the turtledove and stork.

44 In some footnotes below, I reference Lausberg 1973 to certify that Machaut’s criteria conform to traditional rhetorical instruction on the use of examples in debate. 45 Lausberg 1973, §829, on fictio personae. 46 Legrand names thirty common places that correspond roughly to those Brunetto Latini lists in the Tresor (pp. 134–5): nature and its sub-topics age, sex, country of origin as well as new ones like amitié, qualité, quantité, renom, etc. (Archiloge, p. 86). 47 Cf. Lausberg 1973, §§812, 816.

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Ma dame a bien, comment qu’il aille, Son fait moustré, et sagement, Et de soutil entendement Bien baillié par vives raisons, Pour fourmer ses comparisons Bien faites et bien devisées Et si justement exposées, Que qui amender y vorroit, Je croy moult bien qu’on ne porroit.  (JN, v. 1708–16) [My lady has (however matters turn out) made her case well and wisely, and set out her reasons with subtle understanding, in order to form comparisons so well fashioned and described and so precisely set out that I believe firmly that no one who wanted to improve on them could succeed in doing so.]

Since Guillaume admits that Bonneurté fashions her examples with understanding and reason, the apprentice can study it as a work of art – Bonneurté’s skill, her artistry in drawing an exemplary figure, is unimpeachable. But Guillaume (again like the Meliador maiden) remains unconvinced because ‘j’ay une autre oppinion / Qu’elle n’a’ (JN, v. 1728–9) [my opinion is different from hers], for ‘on puet bien sa cause prisier, / Sans autrui fait apetisier’ (v. 1733–4) [one can esteem one’s case without belittling another’s case]. Of course, some rhetorical ‘belittling’ is admissible and, indeed, necessary if one wants to refute an opponent and convince a judge. But one should go about it courteously and rationally. Guillaume’s words commending his opponent illustrate such courtesy. Whether he does so rationally is another matter. Arguing that the stork’s violence comes from his intense love, Guillaume claims that its mate’s infidelity drives the stork mad and, therefore, he becomes violent. In effect, Guillaume is arguing along somewhat the same lines as the Rose’s Jealous Husband – it’s her fault – hardly a subtle rejoinder in belittling violence as a crime of passion.48 As Ami notes in the Rose,   bone amour n’i peut durer, tant s’entrefont maus andurer, quant cil veut la matrise avoir du cors sa fame et de l’avoir.  (Rose, 8433–6) [good love cannot survive there where they do one another so much harm, when he wants to be master over his wife’s body and possessions.]

Of course, as Ami points out, under these constraints, the wife too may become 48 Madness or imbalance characterizes many of Guillaume’s examples: the Orléans cleric, the stork, Hero, the lover who cuts off his finger. His examples do not, therefore, illustrate reasonable conduct but irrational extravagance.

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violent (Rose, v. 9391–462). However, there is no sisterhood to assist her in the case of the Navarre’s turtledove.49 As for the stork, his defense is the irration­ ality or ‘bestiality’ of the crime of passion. If the perpetrator’s madness relieves him of responsibility for his action, he is, therefore, not guilty. Rather the cause of his passion is the guilty party: she has been unfaithful. Needless to say, the overlordship illustrated by the stork and the Rose’s Jealous Husband undermines the unité as humilité characteristic of good love in the Voir Dit (see pp. 88–91). As Guillaume notes, the exemplary figure must be fashioned using subtle understanding (‘de soutil entendement’) and founded on rational arguments (‘par vives raisons’); the comparison is to be formed, presented, and set out so well that, ideally, no one can improve on it by addition or subtraction.50 If of a different opinion, the opponent must counter the argument using the same subtle, rational understanding to fashion examples that effectively weaken his or her opponent’s case or countermand it. In this way the Navarre Guillaume attempts to defend the stork’s violence as a crime of passion. In another passage, Guillaume courteously commends Charité’s subtlety: she has ‘par soutille voie / Pluseurs propos par biaus mos dis’ (JN, v. 2534–5) [by following a subtle path advanced beautifully several propositions]. By implication, subtle understanding leads to subtly fashioned and authoritative matter in the exemplary mode. But consummate artistry does not necessarily impugn an opponent’s contrary opinion,51 as Guillaume reminds Charité after she defends anew the wife in Provence whose clerical lover goes mad in Orléans: ‘Je ne voy pas en vos dis,’ he claims, ‘Que vous m’aiez de riens puni’ (JN, v. 2536–7) [I find nothing in what you have said to correct me]. The validity of the contrary view depends, to be sure, on sincere conviction that one is right in spite of an opponent’s pointed examples. But that makes no difference if the opponent just as firmly believes the opposite. Thus, Charité claims that her proof is expressed ‘par figure / Que Bonne Amour en moy figure’ (JN, v. 2431–2) [by an exemplary figure that Good Love configures in me]. Good love, that is, vouches for the sincerity of the opinion she holds. As Guillaume tells the judge regarding Bonneurté’s interpretation of her turtledove and stork examples, ‘c’est de droit vray sentement / Ce qu’elle en a yci compté’ (JN, v. 1724–5) [it is her absolutely true feeling that she has related here]. But ‘de droit vray sentement’ he can have a different opinion. Additional criteria are set out by Attemprance. She defines a well-formed figure as one that avoids faults that an opponent might identify and attack. We see this in the rebuttal of Guillaume’s crime of passion argument. If the example has been disfigured, with Attemprance’s help it ‘puet sa fourme recouvrer’ (JN, In the Rose neighbors intervene to halt the husband’s abuse (v. 9349–52). Lausberg 1973, §§366–409. 51 I recall again the Meliador maiden’s admiration of a poem’s artistry but rejection of its example of love. Guillaume is doing the same in his polite rebuttal of both Bonneurté and Charité. 49 50

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v. 1798) [can recover its proper form]. The personification does so, as shown above, by pruning excess or completing what is incomplete in order to arrive at a satisfactory mean. Apt amplification and abbreviation will betray no excess or defect. In another exchange, Pais uses Attemprance’s criteria against Guillaume by claiming that his example of the maiden whose lover died in a tournament is incomplete: ‘vous l’avez trop court taillié / Pour avoir droit pour vous si tost’ (JN, v. 2082–3) [you have cut your argument too short to be right so quickly]. By Attemprance’s criteria, each example must achieve a mean within the subject and context chosen; in this instance, Guillaume’s abbreviation is faulty. Further on in the debate, Attemprance’s mean emerges as central again when Franchise cites Jason’s betrayal of Medea along with Theseus’s infidelity to Ariadne in order to prove women’s greater love (v. 2826–9). Guillaume counters with the fidelity of Lancelot and Tristan (v. 2915–24). The example of Hero and Leander is another example of what a litigant can turn against an adversary. Souffisance stresses Hero’s suffering and death after her beloved dies trying to swim to her during a storm as proof that women suffer more than men do. Guillaume retorts: ‘Mais j’ay le cuer moult esjoÿ / De ce que j’ay de vous oÿ; / Car c’est tout pour moy, vraiement’ (JN, v. 3319–21) [But I am overjoyed by what I have heard you say, for it’s all in my favor, truly], for the cause has greater force in an example than its effect. Car cils qui fait premierement Honneur, on dit communement Qu’il a la grace dou bien fait, Non pas cils a qui on le fait; Et plus va a amour tirant Cils qui preste que cils qui rant.  (JN, v. 3337–42) [For the one who first acts honorably is commonly said to possess the virtue of the good deed, not the one for whom it was done, and that he is showing more love who lends than he who pays back.]

Leander died first, so his suffering is more commendable. Not so, Bonneurté claims. Women in love de sentement suffer more than men. By the standards of the Behaigne, because both Hero and Leander die for love, both suffer equal sorrow. In other words, the example has been reconfigured from that found in the Behaigne – who suffers more, or more intensely, the bereaved or the betrayed person – to who suffers more for the same misfortune, the death of the beloved, the man or the woman. But Attemprance insists on sticking to the issue being debated: ‘trop esloingnons la matiere / Qui meüe a esté premiere’ (JN, v. 3017–18) [we are moving too far from the issue that was raised at the outset]. This moderating, ostensibly middle position that conforms to the Behaigne’s judgment based on suffering rather than on gender (JN, v. 2915–24) might have restored the earlier dit’s emphasis on the common human fault of inconstancy rather than on the defects imputable to one gender or the other. However, this does not happen. On the contrary, the Navarre examples go to extremes on

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both sides that radically alter the Behaigne issue on suffering and intensify the disagreement on gender. When the Navarre turns the Behaigne debate into a new debate about the merits and faults generally attributed to men and women, reconsideration and reconfiguration of the earlier dit’s judgment become necessary. This is prepared for in Bonneurté’s first example that contrasts the constancy of the bereaved, but solitary turtledove and the group violence illustrated by the betrayed stork. Whereas the turtledove is likened to the woman who leads a solitary, isolated life of sorrow after losing her mate, the male stork signifies the man who violently avenges his mate’s infidelity, aided and abetted by his feathered brothers. By contrasting the commonplace roles of turtledove as woman and stork as man (JN, v. 1631–700), Bonneurté shifts the debate in the Behaigne into a new context in which men enjoy greater social authority and power. This is the source of Bonneurté’s claim that Machaut/Guillaume wronged women in the Behaigne by passing judgment in favor of the nobleman. Her essentialism is, of course, commonplace (but not universal) in medieval literature: women are weak, passive, and alone in their distress, whereas men are strong and violent, and their violence against women is supported by other men. The distinction is appositely illustrated by two of Jacques Legrand’s examples of the sexual gender topos: ‘Homme est hardi et de soy oultrageux. Homme puet en moult de cas servir’ whereas ‘Femme est fraisle et de legier deceue. On doit de femme tousjours avoir pitié’ (Archiloge, p. 124, lines 1–4) [Man is courageous and naturally immoderate. A man can be useful in many situations – Woman is weak and easily deccived. One must always feel pity for a woman]. Accordingly, whatever the loss, women, being weak, suffer more than men who suffer the same loss. In the Navarre, however, Machaut reconfigures the issue so that, whatever the love and loss, men, being outrageux, seek consolation through collective violence; women can expect only pity, unless, perhaps, the male perpetrator is a social inferior. However, readers of the Behaigne might note that its bereaved lady is not alone and that the nobleman is not a violent stork. Likening a bereaved woman to a turtledove, it should be added, was certainly commonplace, but not necessarily hackneyed. Christine de Pizan uses the comparison to describe her own grief and devotion to her deceased husband, testimony to the power of what might today seem an overused image.52 Hers is depicted as the sincere grief of resignation to lifelong loss and solitary suffering as well as an implicit counter-example avant la lettre to La Fontaine’s jeune veuve (Christine was twenty-five when her husband suddenly died). Equally powerful in spite of the commonplace association of males with violence, Bonneurté’s assimilation of the stork to men’s response to infidelity 52 On Christine’s ability to breathe life into commonplaces, see Hicks 1995; Taylor 2000. Machaut does so too in his descriptions of Fortune and her Wheel. In the context of Bourgain’s reservations, quoted in my Introduction, both Christine and Machaut illustrate the pleasure medieval audiences might find in recurrent commonplaces while appreciating their adaptation to diverse situations and new contexts.

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underscores the social nature of male violence. Thus, having discovered his mate’s infidelity, the stork assuages his anger by gathering other storks, all male, to condemn his unfaithful mate. After she is found guilty, he punishes her by devouring her as a lion would. The vengeance assuages his grief and, as a result, the stork suffers less than the turtledove. Guillaume is astonished that Bonneurté would suggest that the betrayed lover is a cannibal who would literally kill and then devour his unfaithful lady. This is another instance in which a litigant takes an example too literally. Accordingly, Attemprance faults Guillaume’s literalmindedness. Bonneurté meant no real cannibalism. The moral is not literally to eat the unfaithful woman; the ‘devoured’ mate, she points out, is an allegory of male violence that contrasts with the woman’s passive, solitary sorrow after losing a loved one, whether by death or infidelity. Implicitly, then, Bonneurté supports the Alerion’s position that, if a beloved proves unfaithful, he or she no longer deserves love and should be abandoned, not violently abused by a jealous mate. This essentialism sets up a pairing of extremes – misogyny vis-à-vis misandry – rather than seeking Attemprance’s mean in order to focus on a human norm. Mais on dit – et c’est veritez – Qu’adès les deus extermitez,53 C’est trop et po. Einsi l’enten ge: Ne doivent recevoir loange. Mais qui en l’amoureus loien Est loiez, s’il tient le moien, Il ouevre bien et sagement.  (JN, v. 2915–21) [It is said – and it’s true – that the two extremes are always too much and too little. That’s how I understand it: neither deserves praise. But if he who is linked by the bond of love holds to the mean, he does so well and wisely.]

Attemprance generalizes from that context: ‘li sages dist qui ne ment / Qu’adès li bonneüreus tiennent / Le moien partout ou il viennent’ (JN, v. 2922–4) [the wise man who never utters a falsehood says that the felicitous always hold to the mean wherever they go]. She is on Bonneurté’s side, not because the personification is a woman, but because the idea that Attemprance represents corresponds to the mean between the two extremes of misogyny and misandry that Bonneurté should lead to. Importantly, the betrayed nobleman does not turn to violence in the Behaigne. As we have seen, he accepts his lady’s betrayal despite his suffering because her new love is sincere. In the Behaigne debate context, but not in the Navarre’s, the question arises whether the turtledove can represent a man or the stork a woman. The failure to raise this question leads, in the Navarre, to the extremes of misogyny and misandry that redefine the debate on the literal level, thereby 53

Lausberg 1973, §8.

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calling for reconsideration and a retrial. The question now becomes: which, men or women, are more constant in love, whatever loss they may suffer, including death and infidelity? The Navarre’s array of opposing examples and interpretations contrasts not two kinds of suffering, but two commonplace kinds of human beings: men and women and the relative intensity of their suffering as well as the relative strength of their natural virtue. This reconfiguration of the debate would justify Guillaume’s objection noted above about the debate having strayed too far from the Behaigne judgment (JN, v. 3017–70). But Guillaume immediately undermines this consideration with another excess: a misogynist harangue that women are changeable whereas men are stable. Being changeable, he asserts, women do not suffer so much as men because they ‘naturally’ recover from loss more easily. In other words, Guillaume has returned to the misogynist commonplaces that inform La Fontaine’s ‘Jeune Veuve’. His essentialist argument is an obvious twist that contains the same excess that Bonneurté does when she pits men against women rather than opposing one cause of suffering to another. Given the commonplace of feminine mutability, Guillaume is so firmly convinced that the bereaved woman’s suffering will be short-lived that he categorically refuses to change his mind no matter what his opponents say (JN, v. 3019–70), illustrating the very stubborn perseverance that Mesure condemns: ‘Se tu ne mès Mesure en toy, / Elle s’y mettra maugré tien’ (JN, v. 3561–2) [if you do not include Measure she will impose herself in spite of you]. Misogyny has become Guillaume’s secular article of faith. It provokes angry responses from Bonneurté’s defenders who promote misandry. We observe this when Guillaume tells of the lover who vows never to remove his lady’s ring from his finger. The vow underscores his promise of constancy and might even serve as a counter-example to the faithful turtledove: when his lady needs the ring to convince her husband of her fidelity, her beloved cuts off his finger rather than break his vow never to remove the ring unless his lady removes it in person (JN, v. 2856–7),54 sending both still conjoined to her. This is surely a striking example of constancy. After all, does Guillaume expect the lady to revere her lover’s finger as Boccaccio’s Lisabetta preserves Lorenzo’s head, hidden in a pot of basil, in the Decameron, or Mathilde de la Mole cherishes Julien Sorel’s head in Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le noir? However, Prudence (JN, v. 2925), alias Franchise (JN, v. 3009), retorts that the lover’s gesture is irrational: she thinks that the lady would prefer being found guilty rather than have her lover mutilate himself (JN, v. 2996–3008). Not discussed, however, is the adultery the lady wants to hide, thereby exemplifying the stork’s unfaithful mate, but also suggesting what she may have to fear if caught. Is her husband as prone to violence as his counterpart in the Roman de la rose? In any case, this

54 The litigants do not note a subtlety implicit in this proviso. By asking that the ring be returned, does the lady not in effect remove the ring by releasing her lover from his vow?

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lover’s masochistic violence is folly as much as is the stork’s sadistic violence. The adultery itself remains a non-issue. Is this an excessive abbreviation? The absence of Mesure in reconsideration is therefore evident in both examples and counter-examples on both sides of the Navarre debate. In Guillaume’s version of the affair between a cleric and a young woman in Provence, the cleric goes mad after learning that his beloved has married and is already pregnant; he spends the rest of his days on a dung heap.55 Except for the dung heap and madness, the example implicitly reconfigures the betrayed lover in the Behaigne who accepts his lady’s change of heart because of the sincerity of her new love. But Foy too discovers defects in Guillaume’s example and reconfigures it to fit her interpretation. If the cleric truly goes mad, she argues, he no longer suffers; he is quite happy on his dung heap because his insanity abates his suffering much as the stork’s violence assuages his anger: both men go mad. Moreover, by marrying, Foy avers, his beloved does the right thing, marriage being morally acceptable whereas an extramarital affair like that of the lover who cuts off his finger is not.56 To make this example cogent, it must imply that the Behaigne nobleman was left because his lady married. Charité frames the proposal in a sense anticipating Machaut’s bonne amour.57 According to this personification, if the beloved marries, her lover should be pleased. S’elle le fait, ce n’est pas fais Dont cils doie enchargier tel fais Comme de lui desesperer; Eins doit penser et esperer Qu’elle y a profit et honneur, Quant en la grace d’un signeur Seroit de droit nommée dame. Ceste raison bon cuer enflame D’amer mieus assez que devant.  (JN, v. 2517–25) [If she does this, the deed is not so grievous a burden that he should despair. Rather he ought to think and hope that she gains profit and honor when she would be called a lady/wife thanks to her lord/ husband. This line of thought incites a good heart to love much better than before.]

See Huot 2003, pp. 146–8. Kelly 2011, p. 440. The Alerion, v. 4155–84, expresses a similar view, not because of marriage, as in the Navarre, but, as in the Behaigne, because the lady falls sincerely in love with another man. Hoepffner suggests that Machaut may have had Guillaume suppress part of the letter the Orléans cleric received (Œuvres, vol. 1, p. lxxiii), a suggestion made by Foy too (Huot 2003, p. 146). This leaves the issue open to audience speculation and, implicitly, to poetic rewriting. It also leaves open the purpose of faulty examples in Machaut’s art of poetry. 57 Imbs 1991, p. 153. 55 56

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In another place, Mesure argues that Guillaume failed to prove that the cleric’s loss actually caused his madness (v. 3672–8). She contributes implicitly to Foy’s effort to distinguish among credible Erlebnismuster that might explain the cleric’s madness or justify his former beloved’s inconstancy and/or marriage. As Charité opines regarding the new wife in Provence, Guillaume cut his example too short (cf. v. 2525–30) by failing to consider the new bride’s feelings about her cleric lover, the marriage, or the pregnancy. However, readers might also wonder whether she did love her new husband or if she was victim of a forced marriage. We know only that her ‘infidelity’ realizes one of the primary goals of medieval marriage: procreation. The apprentice might perceive in this array of possible Erlebnismuster additional common places needed to fill out the exemplary narrative in a new poem, written, perhaps, in a social exchange like those Jane Taylor reports. Rather than seeing these lacunae as faults, they might well look upon them as topoi open to discussion, debate, and rewriting. This kind of topical reconsideration occurs at another moment in the Navarre debate. There, Guillaume introduces the example of Dido’s suicide. Dido is pregnant, thus adding infanticide to the usual Vergilian suicide.58 She therefore kills not only herself, but also the unborn child in her womb, an example that Paix turns against Guillaume in order to blame Aeneas’s inconstancy, cogent evidence, she notes, that Guillaume leaves out (JN, v. 2082–3). Dido’s suicide– infanticide example conforms to Prudence’s correction (JN, v. 2925–56) of Guillaume’s version of the Châtelaine de Vergi example: she committed suicide too, but it was because her lover, like Aeneas, broke a vow, in the case of the Châtelaine’s lover, not to reveal their clandestine affair. Prudence assimilates this example to Theseus’s betrayal and abandonment of Ariadne in order to marry her sister Phedre. The diverse examples of male inconstancy rely primarily on extenuating, yet possible circumstances not anticipated in a first version but readily available in sources, poetries, or the author’s own imaginative faculty in shaping an image that is convincing, rational, and cogent. The Navarre examples are mostly poetic examples; that is, they are fictional. In the case of Dido and Aeneas,59 neither litigant mirrors the Aeneid, insofar as neither mentions the will of the gods to explain his departure or the absence of her pregnancy in Vergil’s epic. The art reflects Legrand’s emphasis on the careful choice of attributes that conform to the intended interpretation of a specific example. The technique fits the role of the author’s sens with which Machaut interprets Amour’s gifts of dous penser, plaisance, and esperence in his Prologue. He does the same when reconfiguring examples.

58 On the source of this addition to the Vergilian depiction of Dido, see Leube 1969, pp. 48–54; Barbieri 2005, pp. 349–50. 59 Paix believes that her case is true because Dido’s fate is found in ‘histoire’ (JN, v. 2131–2). She seems to mean that it really happened. I return to this issue below in discussing autobiographical material in Machaut’s dits. On historic vis-à-vis poetic examples, see Lausberg 1972, §§411–14.

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For the examples that apply to what passed as ‘certain knowledge’, the Confort d’ami offers biblical matiere in which the theological virtues faith and hope triumph over the sins of lust, anger, envy, pride, and idolatry.60 Biblical examples are not subject to modification, being analogous to Paix’s trust in the Dido example as ‘historical’. However, even biblical examples may be variously applied, as in sermons.61 Thus, Susanne, the object of two old men’s lust (Confort, v. 91), is saved by divine intervention after the old men ironically and falsely accuse her of lust after she spurns their advances. Likewise, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, victims of the king’s anger (Confort, v. 565) because they reject idolatry, survive in the fiery furnace; Daniel survives in the lion’s den into which Darius’s envious courtiers thrust him (Confort, v. 978, 1078, 1224). On the other hand, Belshazzar’s pride (Confort, v. 908) causes his downfall when, as Daniel predicts after reading the handwriting on the wall, the Medes and Persians invade his realm, whereas Manassah, whose idolatry God also punished (Confort, v. 1388), is released from prison after he repents.62 These examples of good and bad hope have biblical, not rhetorical or poetic, authority. They therefore form a source of certain hope for the imprisoned Charles of Navarre, in large part because the evidence provided is deemed to be literally true as well as exemplary – God, the ultimate judge, metes out justice for a specific vice or sin, and malefactors are saved only through faith, hope, and charity by divine intervention. A repentant wrongdoer like Charles de Navarre being led to the gallows may entertain some hope for pardon or, as a saint, faith in salvation after death. Examples based on biblical sources, then, are considered certain provided the interpreter correctly sets out the biblical evidence and applies it properly. Indeed, both Christine de Pizan and Alain Chartier insist on the authority of biblical examples when properly understood and applied.63 Likewise, Machaut’s good love in the Confort d’ami fits into the same moral context that he finds in its biblical examples. Thus, by rewriting the fables of Orpheus and Eurydice, Helen and Paris, and Hercules and Deianira, he shows good love relying on faith, hope, and charity when it rejects villenie and outrage in favor of chastity and honor. As in the Voir Dit, good love is an innocent, morally acceptable love that the Confort’s examples support on the basis of the lessons Machaut sets out in the Remede de Fortune. Other Navarre examples show both male and female exemplars suffering the same misfortune. Pyrame and Tisbé, Hero and Leander, Jason and Medea,

60 Among the personifications that support Bonneurté in the Navarre are Foy and Charité, but not Esperance. The only hope they discuss is the contingent, wish-fulfillment hope of the man condemned to the gallows who hopes that he won’t be hanged. This hope comforts him, but only until the moment the noose is slipped around his neck (JN, v. 2151–60). 61 Zink 1976, pp. 206–10, notes that examples are not common in surviving vernacular sermons, which he explains by their role as models of form rather than of content. 62 Based on Chronicles 33:11–20 (Lechat 2005, p. 108). Machaut may also have used the ‘Prayer of Manasseh’ (Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, vol. 3, pp. ii, iv n. 1). 63 Kelly 2007, pp. 98–9; Kelly 2008.

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and a damsel whose beloved knight dies in a tournament64 experience loss and death; some die themselves. Eneas’s inconstancy causes Dido’s death, just as the betrayal by the Châtelaine de Vergi’s lover causes his beloved’s death. Madness and stupidity are hardly less harmful when inconstancy or infidelity is at issue, as with the Orléans cleric or the lover who cuts off his finger in order not to break a vow. Likewise, violent conjugal infidelities committed by women offset their suffering while their loved ones confront danger in the wider world, as Guenevere and Iseut show in their affairs with Lancelot and Tristan. As we have seen, these variants on the Behaigne litigants reconfigure them as a contrast between the degree of suffering in men as contrasted with that in women, regardless of the cause of suffering. Love itself, even when inconstant, is not always at issue. Whatever the cause, Bonneurté argues, women always suffer more. In the Navarre, then, Machaut’s virtual article of faith prevails: one must never speak ill of a woman, even if she is only the personification of a feminine noun for a virtue. These debates may well seem frivolous. Indeed, in love debates at the god of love’s court in Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant (which I discuss in chapter six), the author notes the frivolity of most debates and, implicitly, the examples the courtiers use in support of their opinions. There are more important issues to be dealt with than love’s maladies and women’s hearts. The Voir Dit makes the point when Guillaume expresses his complete indifference to France’s woes because he cannot see Toute Belle. Whether Machaut thought the debates in his judgment dits were frivolous is one of those mysteries that always arise when we equate or distinguish author and narrator. The underlying principle in the Navarre debate is misogyny versus misandry, an issue that will lead the modern reader, like the Meliador maiden, to judge the significance and cogency of the dit’s examples by bringing his or her own aesthetic, moral, and social opinions to consideration of Machaut’s examples and their interpretation. But before moving on to the debate mode, we must return to the apprentice to see what she might learn from Machaut’s examples. For one thing, she might see how one exemplifies frivolity if the context calls for it.

Machaut’s Examples and the Apprentice Poet In discussing the Navarre examples, I have hazarded some critical observations regarding the cogency of Machaut’s exemplary wax in order to situate the examples in the debate context in which they appear as evidence. We can, of course, in no way extrapolate from my personal observations that of potential medieval audiences, given the variety of possible opinions and our uncertainty regarding their knowledge of Machaut’s arts of rethorique and musique. If I 64 She would rather see her lover alive even if he were to love another woman than see him dead (JN, v. 1965–84), a view analogous to the Behaigne nobleman’s acceptance of his beloved’s new, but also sincere love.

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may generalize Leach’s observation, ‘in sequence [Machaut’s] texts lay out a problem, the preferred solution, and then the contrary solution, resembling in form the juxtaposition of contradictory authoritative statements found in medieval quaestiones. The solution and refutation of the objections must be supplied by the audience through the joint study of reading and listening.’65 As she notes, Machaut’s narrative and lyric poems treat their examples in utramque partem. They give access to understanding medieval readers’ reception of his poems when, for example, the apprentice Toute Belle or the poet Guillaume rewrites by imitation or emulation, or when meeting challenges like that by Thomas Paien. Through such instances, the apprentice can observe how such rewriting reconfigures a given antecedent. Given that the lyric exchanges in the Voir Dit illustrate Toute Belle’s proficiency and progress in rewriting, we can assume she would have considered the Navarre examples as assiduously and thoughtfully as she does Guillaume’s poems and letters in the Voir Dit. In doing so, she would have discovered his criteria for the invention of examples in debates. If apprentices like Toute Belle read Machaut in an anthology manuscript, they would discover that the poet’s conception of good love was evolving at the time he was writing the Behaigne and the Navarre. They might note that the juxtaposition of the two dits in manuscript had more serious implications for the poet than the usual jeu-parti format entails. For example, Charité’s notion of chaste love shows that Machaut was already thinking of the good love that he would soon promote in the Remede de Fortune. In the Rose debate Christine de Pizan lauds chaste love, but later determines it to be – for social, moral, and psychological reasons – impossible. Importantly here, changing her mind required correction of earlier writings and even the exclusion of some works from her anthology manuscripts.66 By contrast, Machaut chose not to remove his earlier poems from his anthology manuscripts. As he notes in the Navarre, J’ay bien de besoingnes escriptes Devers moy, de pluseurs manieres, De moult de diverses matieres, Dont l’une l’autre ne ressamble. (JN, v. 884–7) [I have written many things using various styles on many diverse subject matters67 that are not alike.]

In this format, Machaut permits readers and apprentices to consider the juxtaposition of contrary views by casting his earlier dits in the new light shed by the Remede and Confort. The result in anthology manuscripts is a grand confrontation of exemplary matieres that make them eminently instructive on how to invent and deploy examples in a variety of love contexts. Leach 2010, p. 583. On this issue in Christine’s anthology manuscripts, see Kelly 2007, pp. 108–11, 124–7. For an instance of Christine rewriting a Machaut ballade in a rondeau, see Leach 2010, pp. 587–8. 67 Here I take matiere to refer to both materia remota and materia propinqua. 65 66

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Machaut’s examples show how his art of poetry foregrounds the malleability of poetic expression. Topical invention accounts for amplification and abbreviation in order, most importantly, to set examples right, like Allen’s time-telling clock. Thus, the Navarre litigants shape examples so as to highlight features that support a chosen line of argument. This no doubt explains late medieval poets’ tendency to recycle the same examples, using different contexts and configurations in order to create new perspectives on commonplace narrative material. If well-known examples are recycled in succeeding poems, audiences could more easily identify their diverse ways of navigating between Mesure’s trop and po.68 An observation by Navarre’s Reason proves useful here. Noting that ­Bonneurté’s powers are universal, she continues: Et de ses puissances descendent Circonstances trop mervilleuses, Et sont a dire perilleuses, Qui s’apruevent par leur contraire.69 (JN, v. 3844–7) [and from her powers descend extraordinary effects that are dangerous to tell but that are proven by their opposite.]

Each example, then, glosses its contrary. The judge must find a middle ground where truth may lie.70 In rewriting, the apprentice will practice the same kind of glossing in order to invent a new version of antecedent exemplary matter. In Guillaume’s case, opposing opinions that are extreme lead to resolution of debate because, as noted above, ‘li sages dist qui ne ment / Qu’adès li bonneüreus tiennent / Le moien partout ou il viennent’ (JN, v. 2922–4), a point Mesure makes in support of Bonneurté.71 If, as Guillaume asserts at one point, the examples sometimes move too far from the matter and issue at hand, the excesses shed light, by contrast, on the original issues in the Behaigne. Thus, the Orléans cleric suffers because he feels he has been betrayed, but in Foy’s version of the example, his lady in Provence who marries and is with child, becomes an argument not for her infidelity but in her favor and, by implication, in favor of the woman who betrayed the man in the Behaigne. That is, Foy adds marriage, or the station-in-life topos, to the example that replaces the age topos

See Goyet 2012. Cf. Regalado 1981; Brown 1998; Kay 2001; Bolduc 2006. 70 Cf. Ehrhart 1992, pp. 10–11. 71 The lines following the preceding quote indicate the limits of human inquiry into bonneürté, a universal concept that may impose certain limits on description: ‘Pour ces raisons s’en couvient taire / Pour les entendemens divers / Qui sont aucune fois pervers’ (JN, v. 3848–50) [for these reasons it behooves us to be silent on account of the diverse understandings that can be perverse]. Machaut does not want controversy to go too far for medieval vernacular audiences. This deference to established authorities is a critical issue in vernacular literature that I explore in chap. 6. 68 69

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that is emphasized in the case of the Behaigne’s fourteen-year-old beloved.72 In effect, speaking for Bonneurté, she proposes a more conventional, middle-ofthe-road morality than the Behaigne does of the Orléans cleric. Such solutions, as argued above, do not settle the matter, since other narratives could emerge by reconfiguring the same constellation (cf. pp. 161–2).73 Indeed, Foy’s version of the example is an argument that Guillaume, as an educated cleric, should have foreseen. For example, readers might note that the wronged man in the Behaigne is neither a cleric nor lying on a dung heap; he debates compos mentis and hears judgment at Durbuy, the King of Bohemia’s splendid castle where the nobleman, the bereaved lady, and Guillaume himself are well received, and where the lady is, finally, consoled by generous hospitality and genuine sympathy for her sorrow. Hers is not the fate of Bonneurté’s turtledove in the Navarre. She is not alone; those around her show pity, support, and comfort. Would an apprentice reading the Orléans cleric example stray too far from the subject by writing a poem in which the bereaved lady and the nobleman make a good match? This would surely meet Attemprance’s quest for a middle ground and Reason’s efforts to efface wrongdoing.

Subtle Reconsideration of Commonplace Norms Machaut’s commonplace images evince subtlety like that in the Voir Dit’s two images of Fortune and their interpretation. As argued above, the assimilation of the two images to, respectively, Toute Belle and Guillaume leaves readers with the quandary at the heart of the Voir Dit’s continuatio amoris: which gender, man or woman, has more in common with Fortune? Virtus derives from vir in medieval etymology (Isidore, Etymologiae, x, line 274); by representing Toute Belle as virtuous, Machaut casts her as exemplifying the commonplace man. It follows as a corollary that Guillaume’s instability marks him as the commonplace woman of misogyny. As Machaut applies each example, literal gender is not at issue, but rather a misogynist norm that assimilates a person’s character and conduct to the norm, whatever the sexual gender may be. At issue is the quandary we discover in any truth claim based on examples that confront the reader with a problem. How much of the truth should a writer reveal in his or her examples? The question arises in the Voir Dit’s Ovidian parallel examples of two birds, a corbeau and a corneille. The former, a white crow, is ‘blackened’ (v. 8040/8111) for telling the truth. In both fables, a bird reveals an infidelity to the injured party, much as Guillaume’s friend tells him a false tale by casting Toute Belle as a donna mobile. In the case of the crow, Apollo’s beloved, Coronis, has an affair with a young man. In the raven’s case, Vulcan tries to rape Pallas, but she takes flight. In passionate pursuit, Vulcan 72 One might also see the Provençal lady’s marriage and pregnancy, in the light of the contraires choses principle, as the opposite of the unmarried, pregnant Dido’s suicide. 73 See Blumenfeld-Kosinski 1997, pp. 139–48; Kelly 2007, pp. 51–64.

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ejaculates; the sperm falling to earth produces a monster, Eurithouron. The beast is hidden in a coffer but one of its guardians discovers the truth and the raven reveals it to Pallas. The reaction of both god and goddess is as violent as the stork’s in the Navarre example. Apollo kills Coronis and makes the white crow black before banishing it; Pallas displaces the raven from her favor, installing the ugly, incestuous owl as her emblem. The dangers of telling the truth are underscored by additional interpretive ambiguities in the crow and raven fables, thereby highlighting the ambiguous fusion of truth and falsehood in the Voir Dit’s account of Toute Belle’s infidelity and Guillaume’s instability.74 That is, although Guillaume accepts the confessor’s version of Fortune and his case for Toute Belle’s innocence, not all those in the dit’s narrative see her in the same light; but Toute Belle’s confessor ‘blackens’ the detractors like the crow in Machaut’s narrative. Both her defenders and her detractors do agree that Guillaume’s love for her is foolish, but their explanations of the cause for his foolishness diverge. Since some of Toute Belle’s detractors are Machaut’s friends, the medieval reader may hesitate in evaluating the import of the Voir Dit’s contrasting examples and its author’s intentions in configuring them as he does. Has Machaut been too subtle?75 Or too truthful? Both the writing and the appreciation of examples require the subtlety that the apprentice strives for in the advanced stage of composition. The poet perceives and gives expression to poetic subtlety through the credible assimilation of literal narratives on hidden or allegorical levels. Thus, Christine de Pizan learned to write subtle poetry in order to express her own ‘soubtille couvertures et belles matieres mucees soubz fictions delictables et morales’ in the ‘bel stille de leurs76 mettres et proses deduites par belle et polie rethorique aournee de soubtil langage et proverbes estranges’ (Advision, p. 110: III.x, lines 27–9)77 [subtle integumenta and beautiful subject matter hidden beneath pleasing moral fictions … fine verse and prose composed using their beautiful, polished rhetoric and embellished with subtle language and striking proverbs]. These words describe Machaut’s art too, according to which authors may rewrite and reconfigure examples in order to inform their subject matter with new meaning in debate.

The Polypheme Example: A Voir Dit Reprise The crow fable’s love triangle is the starting point of the Polypheme example, since it too begins with a love triangle like that of Phebus and Coronis. Here, the giant composes a love song to Galatea, the contents of which she divulges

74 75 76 77

Swift 2004. Cf. Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, pp. 163–8. Reference is to authors like Machaut whose subtle writing she admires and imitates. Kelly 2007, pp. 27–30.

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(VD, v. 6914–15/6987–8) and Guillaume records in the Voir Dit.78 The song tells of Polypheme’s desire (VD, v. 6948/7021) to possess and marry Galatea (VD, v. 7098/7171); he puts all his abundant, albeit ignoble, possessions, a sort of dowry, at her disposal if she will marry him. In evoking these promised rewards Machaut sets up an implicit contrast between Toute Belle’s nobility and Galatea’s infidelity, but also between Guillaume’s poetry and that of the foul, filthy giant whose violent world becomes identified with him (cf. VD, v. 6760–87/6833–60).79 Toute Belle, like Galatea, writes about her love. Likewise, Guillaume becomes gradually more farcical in his continuatio amoris, just as Polypheme does as the contrast between his words and his appearance becomes sharper. In ‘la complainte, la riote, / Que li maufés toudis riote’ (v. 7046–7/7269–70) [the complainte, the ruckus of the demon’s constant ranting and raving], Polypheme claims that his zoomorphic features should delight Galatea (VD, v. 7061–96/7134–69) – hardly likely in his love as desire. ‘Ne tenés pas que ce soit fable, / Ains est la chanson au dÿable’80 (VD, v. 7148– 9/7221–2) [Don’t consider this a fable; it’s the devil’s song]. Moreover, since Galatea is the alleged authority for these words, Toute Belle has an example of how a woman poet might describe a particularly unappealing, villainous suitor. Indeed, Galatea’s unworthy poetry colors Toute Belle’s relationship with the poet, since, her detractors claim, she mocks Guillaume in his absence, much as his friends and others mock his January love for his allegedly inconstant May. Further encouraging an apposite ‘fit’, Machaut’s Guillaume has, like the giant, only one eye (Guillaume refers to himself in Letter 13 as Toute Belle’s ‘borgne vallet’, VD, p. 282b/206). As we assimilate Polypheme to Guillaume, then, subtle nuances come to light. On the one hand, there are enough literal resemblances to permit the assimilation. Patterson bluntly describes Toute Belle’s Guillaume as an ‘aged, famous, semi-Platonic, but not unsensual, oneeyed, gouty, and most undignified lover’;81 except for ‘gouty’, the description recalls Polypheme as well. Physically, both are downright ugly and, by implication, repulsive carnal lovers. But, whether Guillaume surrenders, despite his unliklynesse, to desire as Polypheme does is an open question, dependent upon the quality of the love he feels for Toute Belle. He is unstable. In any case, by doubting her, his love becomes possessive, not a good love founded on good hope and souffisance. Polypheme is, therefore, an ambiguous example. But in spite of the cyclop’s overt violence, the depiction of his love proves to be subtle. This ugly, violent, 78 Here, of course, Machaut is inserting a reprise from his ‘Galatea’ the Ovide moralisé. The exemplary copying of the complainte by Galatea is analogous to Guillaume’s allegedly copying in verse his patron’s lament in the Fontaine amoureuse. 79 Cf. Cerquiglini-Toulet 1995b and 2001b, esp. pp. 402–4; Blumenfeld-Kosinski 1997. 80 As noted in chap. 3, n. 72, the devil lures into Hell with a song fit for the taverne, the ‘chapelle au dyable’ according to the Prise d’Alexandrie. He also sent the ‘Compagnes’ to ravage France (VD, v. 7163–5/7236–8). Metaphorically, he also sent Polypheme into Guillaume’s carte de Tendre. 81 Patterson 1935, vol. 1, p. 78.

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one-eyed giant loves the beautiful Galatea. He is a violent lover like Apollo, Vulcan, and the stork in the Navarre. When he learns that his beloved loves another, Polypheme kills the young man in jealous anger. The violent stork in the Navarre devours its mate to punish her infidelity; Polypheme too devours those he kills (VD, v. 6748–59/6821–32), although the Voir Dit does not state that this was the fate of Galatea’s lover. Moreover, the assimilation ominously links Polypheme to the ‘Compagnes’ (VD, v. 6738/6811), the marauding hoards in the Hundred Years War that terrorized the French countryside and its peasant inhabitants, echoing Polypheme’s treatment of captured seafarers. Consequently, the assimilation evokes the secretary’s attempt to keep Guillaume from traveling to visit Toute Belle, lest he suffer the same fate at the hands of the marauders. Together with the winter storms, the secretary’s case might also remind readers of the Navarre’s plague that kept Guillaume from venturing out into an insecure world full of calamities and death. But like Leander now, Guillaume wants to travel in order to meet his beloved despite the threat of violent storms and contemporary Polyphemes among the Compagnons. Not only can Guillaume be subtly linked to Polypheme, but Galatea might also seem to be an apposite ‘fit’ for Toute Belle. Both women are poets and each writes about the man who loves her. But contrasts are critical. Galatea’s infidelity likens her to Coronis and to the Toute Belle that her detractors depict, not to the stable, chaste young woman representative of Machaut’s good love in most of the Voir Dit. This distinction has the effect of moving the entire Polypheme episode into the violent context of possessive love and Fortune’s role in love as desire. Thus, Machaut’s good love and Polypheme’s possessive desire exemplify an instance of contraires choses – they do so, that is, unless Guillaume comes to believe Toute Belle’s alleged infidelity. Given the fictionality of examples, the reader and apprentice can consider both scripts. The noble friend who intervenes in the debate between Guillaume and his secretary shifts the discussion from travel in inclement weather to love for an inconstant woman. To do so, he describes an image of Amour, a youth who, in the first interpretation, exemplifies male friendship in general and the nobleman’s friendship for Guillaume in particular.82 The friend advises Guillaume 82 The attribution of the description to Livy in a book Machaut entitles ‘Fulgentius’ (VD, v. 8184–8/8257–61) seems to be false. Or could Machaut be referring to a manuscript illustration that has been lost or not yet identified? He might also have had in mind John de Ridewell’s (or Ridevall’s) Fulgentius metaforalis or the Ymagines Fulgencii, works that circulated widely on the Continent in well-illustrated manuscripts. Machaut’s description of Amour (VD, v. 7232–65/7305–38), especially his heart visible through an open side, occurs before the Voir Dit in Ridewell’s work and in Robert Holcot’s Moralitates (Allen 1982, pp. 245–6 n. 73; see also Allen 1979, p. 30). The personification is Amicicia; the description (Allen 1982, p. 43 n. 27) conforms to that by Toute Belle’s detractor who warns Guillaume about her out of friendship. The only edition to date of Ridewell (Liebeschütz 1926), based on one incomplete manuscript, is unreliable (Allen 1979, pp. 25–7). By acting out of friendship, the nobleman and secretary conform to a commonplace dating back to Cicero but still visible, and manipulated, in the Roman de la rose: one should do whatever friends request unless

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to break with Toute Belle because she is not serious about their relationship, revealing it to everyone and even bandying about his letters, much as Galatea does Polypheme’s words in her complainte; she may also be inconstant.83 If one considers this reconfiguration of context from traveling or not traveling in inclement weather to loving or not loving when threatened by violent desire, then the Polypheme episode becomes the figurative image of Guillaume’s love as desire, a subtle assimilation that the secretary admits he also had in mind but failed initially to state for fear of displeasing Guillaume (VD, v. 7496–509/7569– 82): ‘Tous voirs ne sont pas biaus a dire.’ Toute Belle, if she were unfaithful like Galatea, makes Guillaume’s ongoing love villainous like Polypheme’s, rather than reasonable like the love of his counterpart in the Alerion. The nobleman’s disapproval of Guillaume’s love, moreover, is generalized as a rejection of any love between men and women. Based on the donna mobile commonplace, it harkens back implicitly to Reason’s opinion in the Behaigne and, even earlier, in the Roman de la rose. As a result, the friend explains, ‘jamais ne quier vouer / A fame ne moi obligier, / Car on les pert trop de ligier’ (VD, v. 7507–9/7580–2) [I never seek to devote or commit myself to a woman for one loses them too easily]. The nobleman’s friendship would replace an amie by an Ami, although not the Rose’s Ovidian counselor on seduction. Guillaume’s noble Ami wants him to replace an allegedly uncertain, unstable love for a young woman by solid friendship for a mature gentleman. This is not, however, the remedy or the norm Machaut’s Esperance promotes in the Remede de Fortune. In the Voir Dit, Guillaume is the ultimate judge; relying on good hope, he finally decides to trust Toute Belle. Unlike Polypheme, his physical appearance now covers a good, sincere heart and a love without desire. I return to the issue of Guillaume’s love in the next chapter on debate. To conclude this chapter, I focus on the function of Machaut’s use of color, autobiographical material, and gender in examples, elements that also give rise to multiple meanings and contribute to the poetic subtlety of examples. Being common features of Machaut’s art of poetry, how he deploys them will be of interest to apprentices.

Color and Color Combinations in Allegory Like other features in exemplary descriptions, the allegorical meanings ascribed to colors can be multiple despite some recurrent interpretations that are com‘l’en assaut leur renomee’ (Rose, v. 4727) [their good reputation is attacked] (cf. Mews 2007). This is precisely the case here: the detractors want to preserve Guillaume’s reputation (on fame and authority in some medieval works, see Gertz 2010). 83 Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 36–7, note that letters, unlike lyrics, are not usually intended for general dissemination. This is not the case in the Voir Dit. Toute Belle’s public display of their love fails and her desire to have it recounted together with the epistres in the Voir Dit raises implicitly the issue of how much of a truth one should reveal.

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monplace or even hackneyed. As treated briefly earlier, the color blue (and in Machaut, azure) usually signifies constancy, while green evokes inconstancy. In the Louange des dames, for example, a woman’s voice announces that ‘la droite signefiance’ of ‘fin asur’ is fidelity (Loange 272/176, v. 1–8); like the color, she will remain loyal to her beloved, for ‘Riens ne vaut chose, où il n’a verité’ (v. 14) [nothing is of value if it is not true]. Likewise, in Amour’s coat-of-arms ‘le pers senefie / Loyauté qui het tricherie’ (Remede, v. 1903–4) [Persian blue signifies fidelity that hates deceit]. In contrast, ‘vert’ is ‘nouvelleté’ (v. 1909) [green is novelty] – which one Louange lady also notes, ‘vert est nouvelleté’ (272/176, v. 6) – the color thereby connoting the mutability of the donna mobile. But Toute Belle rejects Guillaume’s ballade that asserts that she, like her ‘image’, has changed from true blue to false green (ballade refrain in VD, v. 7590–610/7663–83): the ballade, she claims, has no truth value if it refers to her (VD, p. 740g/586, v. 8577–89/8662–74). She accepts the commonplace link between green and inconstancy, but she rejects its application to her, her conduct, or her love. While these examples conform to traditional readings, allegories can also subtly yield contrasting, even contradictory readings.84 In heraldry, for example, Pastoureau remarks that ‘le cas du vert est subtile. C’est la couleur ambivalent type.’85 This is evident in the Voir Dit as well, where green may be corrected by azure. In addition to the example (see p. 121), Toute Belle’s hood of fine azure is adorned with green parrots; each parrot has an azure scarf wrapped about its neck (VD, v. 2016–21/2118–23), an addition that makes its green positive (VD, v. 5206–7/5279–80).86 The parrots’ stance, we learn, each looking to the right or the left, signifies that the lady should be ever watchful in order to preserve her honor, advice that Toute Belle follows (cf. VD, pp. 576d/442, 676d/526). Green parrots, made more subtle by their azure scarves, guard her honor, something attentive audiences and apprentices alert to color allegory would have had little difficulty interpreting correctly and appositely, since throughout the Voir Dit negative green is always corrected when accompanied by positive azure. Indeed, in an explicit address to his readers, Machaut states regarding the parrots that, Tu qui scés jugier des coulours Et des amoureuses dolours, Dois savoir la signifiance Et de son habit l’ordenance: Plus n’en dirai a ceste fie, Que bien scez que ce signifie.  (VD, v. 2044–9/2146–51)

Cf. Allen 1982, pp. 102–4. Pastoureau 1986, 23–49, 198–200 (quote on p. 30). See also Pastoureau 1989, p. 16; Pastoureau 2007. Cf. as well Boucicaut’s ‘devise l’escu vert a la dame blanche’ (Fais, p. 164: xxxix, 11–12; cf. Mühlethaler 2010, 52–3) for his order in defense of the rights of all noble women. 86 Victorin 2001; Martineau 2011, pp. 353–4. 84 85

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[you who know how to evaluate colors and the pains of love must comprehend the meaning and arrangement of her dress. I won’t say any more about that for now, since you know well enough what this means.]

More subtly, nouvelleté and vert can acquire other, positive connotations even in the absence of azure. For example, Amours porte la baniere, Qu’avoir ne doit en amour pure Ne faintise ne couverture. La cote de vert qu’elle porte Moustre qu’amour n’est onques morte Ne seche, ains est tousdis nouvelle Et verde.  (VD, v. 7307–13/7380–6) [Love bears the banner, for in pure love there should be neither pretense nor concealment. The tunic of green she wears shows that love is never dead or withered but always fresh and green.]

‘Nouvelle’ here does not mean ‘ever changeable’ but ‘ever fresh and young’;87 it is, therefore, ‘enduring’. Similarly, in Machaut’s Dit de la fleur de lis, the plant has four colors: ‘Vert, blanc, vermeil et jaune’ (v. 206) [green, white, red, and yellow], but green predominates. L’estoc est plus vert que verdure,88 Qui nouvelleté nous figure, Et quant une fleur est nouvelle, Elle est communement plus belle Qu’elle n’est quant elle est marcie Et de sa couleur amenrie.  (FLis, v. 207–12) [The stem is greener than any green; it signifies that which is new. And when a flower is new it commonly is more beautiful than when it has faded and its color diminished.]

‘Nouvelleté’ here signifies a freshly blooming and consequently beautiful flower; the explanation is not moral.89 Neither does the foregoing Voir Dit passage on Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, pp. 168–9. Cf. RobertH, p. 2239: ‘A côté de ces emplois, qui concernent les végétaux, verdure se dit (XIIIe s.) de la couleur verte, en général. ♦ Le mot s’est utilisé au sens de «vigueur (d’une personne)» (fin XIVe s.).’ 89 Machaut goes on to develop the significance of the other colors: white signifies joy, red shame and fear, and yellow her treasure (FLis, v. 213–42); by contrast yellow in the Remede is ‘fausseté’ (v. 1910). The anonymous Songe vert implies a positive sense of the color green when the queen of love changes a lover’s black garb because of his lady’s untimely death to green (v. 945–7), implying, but not explicitly stating, that he falls in love with a new woman. As in the Voir Dit, the new green is corrected by azure (v. 977, 1003). 87 88

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‘green love’ correct or modify Guillaume’s reading of the dream in which Toute Belle’s robe changes from true blue to false green, but it does suggest other, divergent allegories for the color and the possibility of adapting literal attributes to diverse positive and negative meanings. Machaut’s subtle assimilation of green’s positive meaning, then, fits in context. On the other hand, Guillaume’s likening of Toute Belle’s comings and goings from blue to green clearly contradicts his frequent description of her as ‘pure’ or ‘pure et monde’90 (VD, v. 6196/6269) [pure and undefiled] while showing that colors must be interpreted in terms of context. Here, as it were, the wax figure is misshapen because Guillaume’s suspicion no longer fits in context. Toute Belle’s green is virginal because the context depicts her love as good and ever new; she harbors no vice and, more specifically, the vices ‘faintise’ and ‘couverture’ that might link her to Faux Semblant or Abstinence contrainte – that is, to the duplicity her detractors accuse her of. As seen above, it is Guillaume’s suspicions that are inconsistent and changeable. Indeed, Guillaume himself is guilty of ‘faintise’ and ‘couverture’ when he hides his suspicions from his beloved (as in VD, v. 8427–34/8500–7). The deception suggests a Guillaume implicitly turning green in the negative sense; in context, he has become unstable and inconstant – the point made by Toute Belle’s confessor when likening him to a changeable woman. He, not she, has betrayed the beloved. I return to this issue under gender allegory at the end of this chapter.

Autography, Autobiography, and Biography As we have seen, an important obligation in Machaut’s art of poetry is to write de sentement, an expression of sincerity and guarantor of truth. To do otherwise is to prove false, and the resulting poem will be contrefait, a duplicitous faux semblant. Sincerity in medieval love poetry necessarily creates a confrontation between autobiographical and fictional matter. Ultimately the reader must decide whether the poet is writing reliably de sentement or providing us with twisted wax noses; the apprentice in particular will want to know how to compose credible poetry de sentement. For her part, Toute Belle believes she has nothing to hide; indeed, she wants everyone to know about her love for Guillaume because their love is good. Yet the detractors do not think so. Thus, examples may appear either de sentement or contrefait in the reader’s eye. The claim that ‘Tous voirs ne sont pas biaus a dire’ sets the context for the debate on the validity and character of Toute Belle’s love. The problem the reader must consider is whether Guillaume’s experience actually relates to Machaut’s own life and loves. Put another way, the issue is whether the singular experience of an individual like Guillaume or Toute Belle is or can be seen as exemplary. It is, as Sarah Kay 90 Cf. VD, v. 620, 1588/1658 (referring to her portrait), 1701/1771, 4979/5052, 6222/6295, 6272/6345, 6456/6529.

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aptly phrases the issue, ‘about the value of singularity’, a value that ‘is not about condemning personal vagaries’.91 Therefore, singularities do not exemplify larger moral or social truths. Guillaume’s vagaries alongside Toute Belle’s opinion that she should make their love known certainly seem to be singular in the context of late medieval poetry and its commonplaces. More than any other of Machaut’s dits, the Voir Dit records identifiable autobiographical information drawn from the author’s life in its description of his person and activities. Such autobiographical material in the Voir Dit has recently reentered critical discussion.92 Leech-Wilkinson has adduced evidence that the Voir Dit ‘does emerge looking more like [an autobiographical] voir dit than previous studies have suggested’, since it ‘is more fully and accurately sited in historical time and place’.93 Such considerations inevitably lead to the attempt to hypostatize the narrative’s characters as historical reality, for example, by identifying who or what lies behind the dit’s narrative. Thus, the question of whether Toute Belle is Peronne or of the veracity of Pierre de Lusignan’s career depicted in the Prise d’Alexandrie become markers for determining truth not only in fiction but also in autobiography and biography.94 In medieval writing, autobiography in particular must be understood as medieval literati construed it.95 For them, as we shall see, singular human experience becomes wax for the author’s shaping hand. Especially useful here in understanding the relation between singularity and exemplarity in Machaut’s poetry is the modern critical notion of autography. In an article on Margery Kempe, A. C. Spearing defines autography in its medieval context as ‘the transfer to the first person of self-revelatory devices … for characterizing fictional figures in the first person’.96 There is, importantly for Machaut, ‘a tendency … for late medieval “autography” to be provoked by a sense of being different from others and being seen by others as different’,97 Kay 2008, p. 36. Leech-Wilkinson 1993a, p. 64, and 1993b, and VD, ed. Leech-Wilkinson, pp. xi– xviii, 752–3. See also Imbs 1991, passim; Earp, 1995, chap. one, especially pp. 44–6, 228; Cerquiglini-Toulet, in Voir Dit, ed. Imbs, pp. 11–16; Hülk 1999, pp. 151–2; Plouzeau 2003, pp. 182–6; Robertson 2002; Palmer 2007; Findlay 2010. 93 Leech-Wilkinson 1993b, p. 106; cf. Palmer 2012. 94 As noted in n. 59 above, Pais believes that a historical Dido gives credence to her example, a view reinforced in the Confort d’ami by the Bible as source of historical examples. 95 Zumthor 1975, chap. three; Vitz 1989, chaps. one, two, and three; De Looze 1997. 96 Spearing 2002, p. 626. Professor Spearing used this term in a paper entitled ‘English Autobiography’ that he read May 10, 2008, at the 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. Professor Spearing kindly provided me with additional bibliography on the term. See also his recent book, Spearing 2012. 97 Spearing 2002, p. 628. Mystics may well have seen themselves in the same way because of the kind of experience they strive to communicate. For example, the Flemish mystic Hadewijch was seen as ‘apart’, ‘unique’, and ‘alone’ by her contemporaries (Driel 2012, pp. 111–14): ‘Al in de middeleeuwen zelf werd Hedewijchs oeuvre beschouwd als uitzonderlijk’ and as ‘een tamelijk uniek verschijnsel in de literatuur van voor 1350’ (p. 111); therefore ‘Eenzaam is de positie van de mystica’ (p. 114). 91 92

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even singular. These features – self-revealing devices in the first person and being marked as singular – certainly apply to Guillaume and Toute Belle in the Voir Dit. As rehearsed earlier: a physically unattractive male specimen, Guillaume nonetheless falls in love with and is loved in return by a bright, beautiful, chaste, and much younger damsel. Like A. C. Spearing, it seems to me that we can view this description of Guillaume and his love as autography. Spearing notes that Margery Kempe suffered rejection, but also earned esteem and respect – Middle English worship – to describe what sets her apart.98 While neither Guillaume nor Toute Belle is a mystic, Toute Belle’s esteem and good love for Guillaume can be seen to illustrate Middle English worship as much as does the novel Clélie’s tendre sur estime. Indeed, emphasizing his honorable singularity, Machaut/Guillaume declares in the Prologue that Nature formed him ‘a part’99 so that he could write ‘Nouviaus dis amoureus plaisans’. As Margery Kempe’s apartness fits her to the type worship, so Machaut’s own distinguishing function as love poet was all the more singular because of the new kind of love he promoted beginning with the Remede. Both these authors are marked by their having sought what they considered unique and ideal excellence.100 In the moral context, the singularity becomes exemplary even when unique. Documentation, when inserted into Machaut’s dits, makes quotidian details part of the dits’ montage. But they too become exemplary if they are seen to conform to a ritual. ‘Une opposition structurante se dessine alors dans le temps de la journée elle-même entre un temps ritualisé, fait d’obligations, et des moments libres; mais la vie individuelle demeure en arrière-plan des actions collectives et se dévoile par quelques vers suggestifs.’101 Such essentially ritualistic features integrate what we might understand today as singular historical, biographical, and/or autobiographical documentation into idealized or formalized Erlebnismuster that conform to what Corinna Dörrich calls the poetics of ritual.102 Ritual integrates two features: more obviously, ritual and its modus operandi and, less obviously, a specific textual significance developed so as to structure and explain the narrative as it unfolds or to integrate its plot into stepby-step, ritual-conforming procedures.103 As such, rituals are Erlebnismuster that conform individual life to a norm. 98 Spearing 2002, pp. 630–2. The OED defines ‘worship’ as ‘the condition (in a person) of deserving, or being held in, esteem or repute … (Common down to 16th c.).’ 99 Cf. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, Poétiques, pp. 91–4. 100 On unique excellence in late medieval French poetry, see Kelly 1978, pp. 184–5. 101 Tabard 2008, p. 61. 102 Dörrich 2002, pp. 7–8. On the interplay between ritual and emotion, see T. Adams 2007. 103 ‘Die erzählerische Inszenierung reflektiert und diskutiert ein Ritual und seine Funktionsweisen einerseits, entfaltet andererseits aber auch narrativ eine spezifische Signifikanz für den Text, kann seinen Verlauf strukturieren und deuten oder die Handlungslogik der erzählten Welt mit einer punktuell greifenden rituellen Handlungslogik konfrontieren’ (Dörrich 2002, p. 8).

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The poetics of ritual is evident in both the commonplaces and anomalies of Guillaume’s and Toute Belle’s complicated and complex relationship; by bringing identifiable autobiographical, biographical, and historical material together with the commonplaces of medieval love poetry and diverse fictional narrative, the conjointure is made to exemplify different species of love: good love, love as desire, unstable love, and related lovemaking like that described in the Lyon and the Alerion. Since, like Margery Kempe, both Guillaume and Toute Belle are ‘different from others’ and are indeed ‘seen by others as different’, the differences stand out in descriptions, in various modes of an ideal such as good love, and in a narrative that includes real-life experiences like those discerned by Leech-Wilkinson that conform to ritualized conduct. Here autobiographical truth and the authority of ritual conjoin with the narrative logic of fiction to produce the quandary discussed in chapter two. In other words, autographic singularity becomes exemplary by its relation to identical, comparable, and/or contrastive104 examples of a preconceived good love and a good secular life. Such ritualized experience, the ‘sondry usages’ of yore, seems to have been more significant and interesting to medieval readers than, as Pascale Bourgain suggests, the individual vagaries that arouse our curiosity today. Once again we confront quandary as a defining feature of Machaut’s art of poetry. Examples, including even autobiographical snippets, illustrate attempts to shape and resolve quandaries. Together with fiction and ritual, they constitute Machaut’s autography in the Voir Dit; they are, in Spearing’s words, ‘selfrevelatory devices … for characterizing fictional figures in the first person’. Guillaume is just such a fictional, first-person character, who illustrates features of Machaut’s own person, life, and thought in the modus exemplorum positivus. In this context, it is worth noting that the Voir Dit is Machaut’s only dit containing an elaborate narrative.105 The closest alternate example of extended narrative in a dit about love, the Jugement Navarre, similarly conjoins autobiographical material with fictional elements. After the account of the poet’s life during the plague and contemporary reactions to it, Guillaume goes hunting. There he encounters the personification Bonneurté. She accuses him of having wronged women in the Jugement Behaigne. Then he confronts the personifications that support Bonneurté at Charles of Navarre’s court. The examples used in that debate show that fictional and documentary material – Machaut himself, the Durbuy court in the Behaigne, Bonneurté in the Navarre – are manipulated in order to conform the episodic narrative to ritual patterns or procedural norms as Erlebnismuster. The singular event – the plague – and the vagaries of human experience – Guillaume’s reaction to the plague, the coney hunt, and the debate – are events like the Hundred Years War and inclement weather for Guillaume 104 These are the three topoi – idemptitas, similitudo, and contrarietas – that Gervase of Melkley uses to order his Ars versificaria. 105 The Prise d’Alexandrie is, of course, another exception, albeit in a different register. Machaut does call it a dit; it also relies on ritualized treatment of biographical documentation. It is a biographical variety of autography.

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and Toute Belle in the Voir Dit. Both dits conjoin and blend fictional and autobiographical material in autography. Machaut’s Guillaume in the Navarre thus anticipates La Fontaine’s ass in ‘Les Animaux malades de la peste’ – ‘Les jugements de cour vous rendront blanc ou noir’ – and, also, his ‘Le Paysan du Danube’ in the Confort d’ami – ‘Il ne faut point juger des gens sur l’apparence’ – in which Guillaume offers wise counsel to Charles of Navarre, his judge in the Navarre, but now the real-life prisoner of King Jean II. He is, then, not only an autobiographical author, he is also a malleable example reshaped like wax to fit new authorized norms. Autographically, Guillaume can need council and correction in one dit, but offer council and direction in another; the description of his persona changes to fit the norm appropriate to his role in each different context. Autography is thus a feature of Machaut’s art of poetry. His dits show advanced apprentices like Toute Belle how to conjoin autobiographical and fictional material using examples that are synonymous with, similar to, or opposite to good love. Their validity is, however, not their conformity to real life, but to morally or socially interpreted ritual as Erlebnismuster. Since Machaut’s good love has a moral foundation, we can treat Guillaume’s and Toute Belle’s subjectivity as ‘le point de vue d’une conscience’106 defined by an ethical norm that they strive to realize in their relationship and ritualize by their conduct. Conflict produces quandaries by scripting diverse or opposing norms. Thus, individualizing aberrations mark ways by which Toute Belle and Guillaume diverge from commonplace norms in the eyes of others and even in their own eyes, as we have seen in the diverse ways love is depicted and the donna mobile commonplace is deployed in the Voir Dit. This is especially striking in Toute Belle’s desire to make their love widely known, a blatant, even provocative insurrection in its fourteenth-century context with the commonplace injunction that a woman defend her honor by silence. Toute Belle exposes her honor to ridicule and blame. But she justifies the anomaly by her and Guillaume’s chastity. This marks them, like Margery Kempe, as different because Toute Belle rejects love as a desire that must be kept secret when it is not chaste. In the final analysis, Machaut seems less interested in revealing his own or Toute Belle’s psychological uniqueness than he is in juxtaposing conformity to new norms alongside commonplace aberrations. Thus, the autobiographical matter in the Voir Dit, when recycled as autography, becomes ‘fiction’ that does have a ‘factual’ component. In other words, the truth of such documentation in the Voir Dit is less important than how it can contribute to the meaningful image or expression of Machaut’s good love. Despite its real-life snippets, it is an example, not a factual memoire. While real life becomes a source for examples, the allegorical mode further contributes subtly to autography. Thus, while traveling on a route Machaut actu-

106

Zink 1985, p. 8. Cf. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, Poétiques, pp. 416–23.

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ally took, Guillaume encounters personifications like Esperance and ambiguous figures like Toute Belle. Elsewhere he also communicates with identifiable contemporaries like Thomas Paien and the Duke of Normandy, the future King Charles V. If the dit is marked by the central role of a je in whose writings literary historians discover autobiographical material, we must remember that he is a ‘je aux traits individués, certes, mais qui ne sont pas des traits individuels’; he is, rather, a ‘je marqué, typé’.107 Descriptive marking by topical description, then, identifies exemplary significance in common places – age, sexual gender, fate and fortune, habitus, and so on – in order to fashion ritualized descriptions that, as Erlebnismuster, exemplify ideal and less than ideal emotions and conduct. Documentary or autobiographical matter in the Voir Dit and Machaut’s other poems plausibly illustrates his truths by promoting ritual consistency. Thus, as in a recognizable ritual, Toute Belle lives and expounds Machaut’s good love while Guillaume fluctuates because of the adverse impact of resurgent desire. The issues the dit raises on love and poetry are articulated in conflicting kinds of love, inciting and contributing to these issues that its debates adjudicate. This is what apprentices will study and strive to imitate and, as we see in Toute Belle’s case, to emulate when they begin to map out their own cartes de Tendre. The reader, like the Meliador maiden, will decide how persuasive they are. But before discussing debate strategies in Machaut’s dits and lyrics, we must complete this survey of subtle exemplification by returning to the gender issues raised by his examples.

Gender in Allegory Gender, or the sexus topos, was, obviously, important in medieval allegory. We must, therefore, attempt to appreciate how gender as topos was understood and used in the medieval dit. Importantly, Paule Demats notes a passage on gender in a commentary on Plato’s Timaeus written by Guillaume de Conches.108 Building on Boethius’s discussion of the metamorphosis of Ulysses’s men into swine, Guillaume de Conches distinguishes between literal, albeit fictional, metamorphosis and moral metamorphosis that is treated allegorically. Deprived of reason, Ulysses’s companions became bestial, not beasts. This same kind of distinction obtains in gender allegory. As Paule Demats summarizes the gloss, ‘il faut interpréter cette métamorphose [of Ulysses’s men] selon la conduite morale (secundum mores hec mutatio est credenda). Lorsque l’âme se comporte

107

132–3.

Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, p. 165; cf. Léonard 1996, pp. 127, 158–88; Lechat 2002, pp.

108 Demats 1973, pp. 146–8; the gloss appears even earlier in the Glosae Plato (p. 199) attributed to Bernard of Chartres. Bernard’s pedagogy makes his (and Guillaume de Conches’s) observation representative in the medieval art of poetry.

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virilement, on la tient pour mâle; mais quand elle est amollie par les voluptés, bien qu’elle conserve de la raison encore, on la tient pour femelle.’109 Perhaps the best-known late medieval example of gender metamorphosis as allegory is Christine de Pizan’s metamorphosis into a man in the Mutacion de Fortune. In Christine’s case ‘l’âme se comporte virilement’, while Guillaume’s ‘soul’ in the Voir Dit is ‘amollie’ by possessive desire, resulting in his unstable ‘maniere de fame’ – ‘bestiality’ to Guillaume de Conches – in which reason plays a minor role. Since an ethical theme of Machaut’s art of poetry is the praise of women, how the confessor uses gender in an apparent amalgamation of praise and blame of the literal and/or allegorical woman must be explored. Importantly, as a topos or common place, gender can be variously described and elucidated. But in the allegorical mode (modus transumptivus) literal meanings become ‘other’ rather than just straightforwardly literal. This is apparent in Guillaume de Conches’s interpretation of the metamorphosis of Ulysses’s men into swine and the gender metamorphoses of Christine de Pizan and Machaut’s Guillaume. Recent scholarship has made the issue of gender allegory even more problematic by linking it to grammatical gender. Machaut offers a striking example in the Jugement Navarre when Charité defends the marriage of the Provençal woman because she enters into a union morally and socially acceptable, terminating abruptly her liaison with the Orléans cleric. Charité likens the new wife to an ente, a grafted young tree; here, the graft, based on a feminine noun, becomes the masculine noun arbre by her marriage, a ‘graft’ that is justified in terms of grammatical gender. ‘Ne demandez plus que fait elle, / Mais demandez me bien qu’il fait, / Car vostre ente un aubre parfait’ (JN, v. 2462–4; my emphasis) [Don’t ask me again how she is doing. Ask me rather how he is doing for your graft has become a tree]. If something improves and thereby acquires a new name and status, the change is laudable. This, Charité explains, occurred when the young woman entered into a good marriage. In effect, the allegory elevates the masculine noun above the feminine noun in moral, social, and grammatical terms. In considering the growth of the tree, Chasteté perceives Branches de bonne renommée, Fueilles d’estre bel emparlé, Fleurs d’avoir condition D’onneste conversation, Tant d’abit comme de maintien.  (JN, v. 2505–9) [branches of good reputation, leaves of being well spoken of, flowers of status and proper conduct in dress as well as in comportment.]

By being likened to a grammatically masculine tree, the demoiselle lost ‘d’ente le nom, / Et d’aubre a recouvré le nom’ (JN, v. 2467–8) [the name graft

109 Demats 1973, p. 147. Cf. the explanation of bestiality as lack of reason discussed above (pp. 84–5).

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and acquired that of tree] – she becomes a virago; morally, the young ente, in becoming an arbre, changes from demoiselle to dame. Like the Navarre’s grammatically female stork that exemplifies a male, the masculine tree represents a respectable, accomplished lady. Grammatical rather than sexual gender illustrates the mutation. Indeed, allegory broadens the moral context and the maniere of the person in that context; as Guillaume acquires maniere de fame and Christine maniere d’home, the Provençal demoiselle acquires the maniere de dame and the virtues of the virago. Underscoring the link between grammatical and sexual gender is the wellknown syllepsis that types the personification Malebouche as male in the Roman de la rose.110 Although malebouche is a feminine noun, the personification is a male personification that could have been understood in the thirteenth century and thereafter as both ‘bad mouth’ and more specifically as ‘male mouth’; the character does give voice to misogyny. Such syllepsis ‘n’est certes pas inédit dans la tradition allégorique …, mais il montre … une certaine indépendance entre l’acteur et le concept qu’il figure’.111 A striking example of such independence occurs in the Songe vert, when a young man, not a personification, expresses astonishment that a lady, who is a corps and a fleur, might love a creature (grammatically feminine but not sexually female) like him. Ma dame, s’il estoit ensi, Qu’un si gent cors fric et joli, Si noble et si tres bien paré De tot ço qu’afiert a bonté, Flor de beauté et nete et pure, Amast une tel creature112 Com jo sui ne si dolerose, Desur totes maleürose, D’amor e de joie banie. (v. 647–55; my emphasis) [My lady, if it were true that such a sprightly and joyous person, one so noble and well adorned with all that befits goodness, a flower of beauty unspoiled and pure, would love such a creature as I am, sorrowful and unhappy more than everybody else, banished from love and joy.]

Here, the male ‘creature’ preserves its feminine grammatical gender in the feminine attributes ‘dolerose’, ‘maleürose’, and ‘banie’; the poet extends the comparison to all – ‘totes’ – as all human ‘creatures’. Finally, an even more striking 110 On the connotations and ambiguity of the gender topos in the Roman de la rose, see Kelly 1995, pp. 92–3, 104–22. Evrart de Conty, following the Rose, makes the personification male (Echecs am2, v. 4631); when Jalousie and Malebouche are referred to together, the masculine plural is used (v. 4708, 4718, 4731, 4836, 4839). 111 Trachsler 2000, p. 337. 112 Spearing 2002, p. 633, notes that Margery Kempe refers to herself often as a ‘creature’.

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example is provided by the tournament in Jean de Meun’s part of the Roman de la rose. There, Peur, personified as a woman apposite to the word being a feminine noun, carries the day for Rose, because she – Peur – effectively halts a seduction that borders on rape (Rose, v. 15563–99).113 Here, Peur is a source of great strength, suggesting her metaphorical characterization as a virago in Christine de Pizan’s positive sense of the word.114 Such examples of contrasting gender characterizations and connotations occur elsewhere in Machaut’s poetry. Bestiaries, for example, can illustrate the opposition between grammatical and sexual genders. Allegorically, that is, sexual gender commonplaces prevail, indifferent to grammatical gender, as when the grammatically feminine, but not female, stork consoles himself ‘En ce qu’il en atent vengence’ (JN, v. 1676; my emphasis)115 [because he expects vengeance]. This example shows that Machaut does not always make grammatical gender per se an issue. Indeed, at times he alternates the gender of a personification. For example, not infrequently, he alternates masculine Espoir with a feminine Esperance in naming or referring to the same personification.116 Or he may use the distinction to refer to different kinds of hope, as in this reference to the arrow ‘Esperance’ and to ‘Espoirs’ as the personification that comes to his assistance; the arrow signifies desire whereas the personification represents good hope. Car ma dame, que Dieus gart, Pour un doulz riant regart, D’ardant Desir fist un dart,  Et un d’Esperance; Mais mort m’eüst sans doubtance Desirs et sans deffiance, S’Espoirs, ou j’ai ma fiance,  Ne fust de ma part.  (Voir Dit, v. 4359–65/4479–85) [For my lady – may God keep her! – in order to send a pleasant sweet glance made a shaft of burning Desire and another of Hope (feminine noun), but Desire would surely have slain me without challenge had not Hope (masculine noun), in whom I trust, been on my side.] Kelly 1995, pp. 34, 73, 140. Kelly 2007, p. 85. See also Badel, ed., Prunier, p. 12. 115 The masculine personal pronoun for the vicious stork recurs in the Navarre (v. 1677, 1680) as it does for the storks that support the ‘devouring’ mate (v. 1678–86). The male stork is, therefore, a syllepsis analogous to the male Malebouche in the Rose. ‘L’opposition homme–femme devient floue’ (Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, p. 143); this is the case on both literal and allegorical levels (cf. Attwood 1998, pp. 98–9; Jeay 2006a, pp. 312–13). On ‘gender reassignment’, see Rollo 2011, pp. 152–4; Mora-Lebrun 2008, pp. 325–44. 116 Cf. Remede, v. 3029/3065, 3200/3254, 3353/3373; VD, v. 4598–611/4718–31; Lai 17, v. 105–7, and 18, v. 17–24. Elsewhere Middle French’s ‘double gender’ for Amour does not produce, as far as I have been able to determine, transgender personifications like Espoir/Esperance but male or female personifications depending on the gender chosen for the personified word. As we shall see in chap. 6, the Chevalier errant has a god and goddess of love, personifications who do not always agree with one another. 113 114

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An author may even impose one sexual gender on the opposite grammatical gender, as in the Vergier, where damoisiaus include Loiauté, a feminine noun, and damoiselles include Souvenir, a masculine noun (v. 613–14, 621–2). In the Dit de la harpe too, the 29 harp strings (v. 277–80) are ‘sisters’ (v. 93–276); however, some ‘sisters’ – Deduit, Avis, Maintieng, and Scens (v. 176–7, 233–4, 247) – have masculine grammatical gender. Similarly, the feminine noun amour becomes Amour, a ‘frere germains’ (Harpe, v. 225) [blood brother].117 In these instances, as in the turtledove–stork comparison, there is gender indifference on the literal level since grammatical gender does not coincide with sexual gender. I find little allegorical significance in these instances of syllepsis. Despite the Dit de la harpe’s Amour emerging on stage as a ‘brother’, Machaut usually represents Amour as a female personification. In these instances, grammatical and sexual genders do coincide. In the Cerf blanc, for example, Amour, ‘roÿne / Des amoureus’ (v. 116–17),118 is a dame (v. 747, 762) and ‘la debonaire’ (v. 797). Likewise, Machaut occasionally makes the personification male by referring to it as ‘li dieus d’Amours, qui mes sires / Est’ (Prologue 5, v. 3–4/117–18)119 [the god of love who is my lord], or by simply using the masculine gender, as in ‘bon Amour’ and ‘mon souverain seignour’ (Lai 14, v. 87, 90)120 [good Love, my sovereign lord]. In the Behaigne, ‘Amours … fu biaus a devis, / Et gracieus’ (JB, v. 1786–7) [Love was remarkably handsome and gracious], but, some hundred lines further on, ‘he’ metamorphoses into the female gender as ‘Amour, ma dame’ [Love, my lady] (JB, v. 1884). Further, in the Dit de la fleur de lis, v. 171–2, we learn that ‘le lis est fleur masculine. / La marguerite est femenine’; this is grammatically correct, but both flowers refer to the poet’s lady – a metaphor for virago – and offer an apposite likening of their floral attributes to the lady’s fine qualities. The attributes, then, suggest Machaut’s indifference to the grammatical gender’s relation to sexual gender unless some significant metaphorical intention is evident. In instances such as these, it behooves the reader to consider context. In the Voir Dit, for example, Amour is at one point a ‘jouvencel’ (VD, v. 7242/7315) [young man] who is subsequently referred to as ‘elle’ (VD, v. 7301/7375, 7310/7383) [she] and ‘la’ (v. 7344/7417) [her], because the context designates a grammatically feminine ‘ymage’ of Amour (VD, v. 7260/7333, 7342/7415). In another instance, Amour personifies not Guillaume’s love for Toute Belle, but male friendship, as the speaker makes clear: ‘Telz vous sui je’ (VD, v. 7346/7419)

Cf. Bétemps 1998, pp. 145–6. Cf. the analogous ‘Roïne d’amors’ in the Songe vert, v. 242, and in the Chevalier errant (discussed in chap. 6). 119 This is true in the Rose, although the noun there, when not personified, remains feminine; see, for example, Rose, v. 4318, 4341, 4360, 4733, 20832–3 (as with Malebouche there may be variant readings in the numerous, diverse Rose manuscripts). 120 The fluctuation is similar to variation in grammatical gender when referring to majesté as his Majesty/sa majesté when a king in modern French can be referred to as elle; see Grevisse 1961, §378bis, and Kelly 1995, pp. 108–10. 117 118

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[such am I to you].121 Interestingly, Toute Belle’s wish to be a man in order to be with Guillaume often likens her feelings for him to the friendship that her detractors promote. Her, as it were, male sentement corrects implicitly their erroneous view of her love for her magister. These are striking examples of gender on both literal and allegorical levels, displaying gender indifference as well as gender conformity and distinctions between sexual and grammatical gender on both literal and allegorical levels. Sexual gender usually acquires greater significance if it refers to commonplace norms in larger moral contexts like the evaluation of Toute Belle’s and Guillaume’s constancy or instability. However, gender is not necessarily a defining feature in literal fables that, as examples, are subjected to allegorical readings. Every example must be examined on its own significant and, at times, subtle terms in context. Medieval literature, for example, does not often portray personifications as having sex. But exceptions do occur, as when the male and masculine Amant makes love at the end of the Rose with the grammatically masculine Bel Acueil of his female Rose. So do, implicitly, Malebouche and his ‘amie’ (Rose, v. 10896),122 Abstinance Contrainte. Personifications do not always disturb as visualized images because authors work with their grammatical gender to depict matching sexual genders. Variations on this norm may find unproblematic explanations when the personification is described as a statue or a painting or if the relationship is not sexual. However, the practice does become problematic if the sexual gender requires moral or social significance, as with the Rose example of Amant and Bel Acueil’s intercourse, or when one’s sexual character is impugned, as is the case when Toute Belle’s confessor casts aspersions on Guillaume’s masculinity.123 Here, as Guillaume de Conches puts it, ‘cette métamorphose ne se produit pas en essence, mais selon la similitude morale’.124 Attracting attention through a hint of scandal, such ambiguous depictions, however they are interpreted, draw attention to the poet’s effective use of allegory. It shows readers, including apprentices and other poets, how to devise an interpretation consonant with conventions, but which also force a look, through their disjointure, at the poem’s ‘scaffolding’ – a much desired effect for someone learning to ‘build a house’, much as Geoffrey of Vinsauf teaches. Usually commonplaces such as ‘women are changeable’, ‘men are stable’, or ‘women are passive’, ‘men are violent’, are taken literally. But, as we have seen, some examples modify gender commonplaces. Thus, the Navarre Medea’s reaction to infidelity, infanticide, is as violent as the stork’s, whereas the Behaigne’s nobleman remains as passive as a turtledove. Of course, modifications in traditions on love existed prior to Machaut Cf. above, pp. 170–1. Cf. Rose, v. 11171–3, 12029–34, 14713–15. 123 Of course, what is controversial will vary depending on the epoch in which the controversy is located. Here Chaucer’s reference to multiculturalism over the centuries is applicable. 124 Demats 1973, p. 147. 121 122

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(although I have found none depicting his special sense of good love). Thus, in the Ovide moralisé’s fable of Phebus’s attempted rape of Dané, Dané illustrates abstinence voulue, not abstinence contrainte, when she flees Phebus; her abstinence is threatened from without, not from within. Condemning abstinence contrainte, the anonymous author of the Ovide moralisé makes this distinction explicit: ‘Je ne tieng pas la vierge a sage / Qui son cors garde, et de corage / Est corrompue ne faussee’ (Ovide mor, Premier Livre, v. 3133–5) [I don’t consider the virgin wise who keeps guard over her body while her heart is corrupt and false]. Nete doit estre la pensee, Et pour Dieu charitablement Doit vivre chaste, ou autrement Je ne pris riens sa continence. (Ovide mor, Premier Livre, v. 3136–9) [Her thoughts should be clean, and she should live chastely out of charitable love for God’s sake; otherwise I do not esteem her continence.]

Dané’s flight from rape exemplifies this lesson. She metamorphoses into the laurel tree, an evergreen example of virginal stability.125 Toute Belle adheres to Dané’s standard: her love is chaste. Yet even chaste love can generate a variety of narratives, because there are degrees in perfection. Guillaume is no Phebus in bed with Toute Belle, nor is he the chaste virgin Galaad, who never feels the lure of carnal desire; similarly, Toute Belle is not Perceval’s sister who, like Galaad, ‘fu toz jorz virge en volenté et en ovre’ (Queste, p. 588) [was always a virgin in will and deed]. Indeed, remaining a virgin in her relation to Guillaume, Toute Belle allows for affectionate embraces and kisses, unlike Perceval’s sister, who allows herself no affectionate gestures. Between the two extremes is the example of the once tempted Perceval in the Queste del saint graal who backslides momentarily, thereby remaining a virgin in body but not always chaste in mind (Queste, pp. 298–304). Machaut and Toute Belle would have known this array of perfectibility from reading the romance she refers to at one point (VD. p. 162g/104).126 As poets learn, there are species in an ideal that apprentices wishing to ‘vivre seculerement’ might consider as morally variant Erlebnismuster. Machaut’s apprentice can learn that when contradictions arise between a commonplace norm for the sexual gender of the individual, a moral allegory may explain them. Thus, Guillaume becomes a commonplace moral woman because, as Toute Belle’s confessor puts it, ‘Trop souvent mue vos courages’ 125 By contrast, in the Roman de la rose Malebouche’s ‘beloved’, Abstinence contrainte, is a feminine personification that parallels what Malebouche is hiding beneath his own hypocrisy. 126 ‘Perchevaus’ is named in VD, v. 6107/6180.

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(VD, v. 8698/8783) [your heart changes too often]. Worse still, ‘Socrates li bons et li sages / N’estoit mie si fort estables / Com vos courages est muables’ (VD, v. 8699–701/8784–6) [Socrates, the good and wise man, was never as stable as your heart is mutable]. Toute Belle is the Voir Dit’s Socrates in this respect (VD, v. 4741–56/4814–29). In effect, her emotional stability realizes her wish to become a man, although it does not allow her to be with her poet more often.127 Machaut’s gender allegories suggest cultural forces at work. Trying to understand them today in medieval terms may be complex, many-sided, and controversial – as when the maniere de fame as commonplace is the inferior type. In this case, we become the Meliador maiden objecting, like Christine de Pizan, to medieval authorities. Whenever gender becomes an issue, especially in examples that have more than one allegorical meaning, multiple readings do not simplify the matter. But their subtlety may make them provocative as contraires choses and thereby promote debate, reconsideration, and the reader’s own gloss. When a god in a given fable can represent Christ in one allegory, but the devil in another, we may find the glosses mutually exclusive. Ovid’s fable of the attempted rape of Dané by Phebus in the Ovide moralisé works in this vein. In one moral allegory, Dané shows how bad hope, called ‘vaine esperance’ or ‘fole Esperance’, differs from good hope or ‘bone esperance’,128 the theological virtue to which Machaut relates good love in the Confort d’ami. The distinction opens the fable to allegories in which Dané’s virginity represents the Virgin Mary, whereas Phebus, the would-be rapist, represents God who authored the Immaculate Conception. In doing so, God conjoins rather than opposes good love and wisdom. Likewise, Dané’s metamorphosis into a laurel harmonizes with some of the botanical allegories discussed above. The laurel tree that she becomes in order to escape rape is a masculine noun – le laurier in French. It is also, positively in this instance, an evergreen tree because Dané remains forever a virgin; when she assimilates with the Virgin Mary, we sense intimations of an ever virgin queen. If Dané’s wish to remain chaste harmonizes easily with Mary’s virginity, a major adaptation of bygone multicultural norms is necessary if the would-be rapist is to become God Himself, and the attempted rape can be read as the realization of divine love and will in Immaculate Conception. Of course, unlike Dané, Mary consented. Medieval examples, then, illustrate the subtle ways by which poets fashion allegories and how medieval readers may have read them. Diverse readings invited apprentice poets to explore the specific context chosen for a specific exemple, the play of adaptation on both literal and allegorical levels, and audience knowledge. For her part, Christine de Pizan invites readers of her Advision

127 VD, v. 169–76, pp. 138b/86, 160a/102, 286c/208. Guillaume excuses himself implicitly for not visiting her more often, as a man should, not because he has ‘maniere de fame’, but because of his maladies (VD, pp. 122–4b/74) and what we might call his ‘maniere de vieux’. 128 Ovide mor, Premier Livre, v. 2866, 2873, 2877.

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Cristine to discover their own allegories while reading her treatise. Just as the author of the Ovide moralisé did when reading Ovid. The readers of the Voir Dit and apprentice poets would have to consider how both antecedent sources and received commonplaces and authorities were imitated, emulated, adapted, changed, and contradicted. This is part of the poetic art that Toute Belle has mastered when, in her complainte, she corrects Guillaume in the second half of the Voir Dit. It is also the source of the subtlety that pleased Christine de Pizan in the best poetry. However, multiple readings also lead to disagreement and debate, both within Machaut’s compositions and in implied audiences. This brings us to the debate mode.

5

The Debate Mode Rethorique oue jugemenz.1 (Thèbes, v. 4992) Grant bien est du recorder Quant on voit gens bien acorder, Et plus grant bien de mettre accort Entre gens ou il ha descort.2 (VD, v. 8970–3/9055–8)

Although almost all of Machaut’s dits treat issues centering on love, the Confort d’ami’s attempt to solve love’s commonplace problems relies on firmer religious and moral foundations than was common in earlier love poetry.3 The poet’s allusions to Boethius are testimony to this conviction. They also testify to his reliance upon his late medieval audience’s knowledge of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, an influential work throughout the Middle Ages.4 Moreover, beginning in the thirteenth century there appear a number of French translations and adaptations into French of Boethius’s work for lay audiences like those Machaut addressed.5 Importantly here, the Consolation and its French versions contain dialogue and debate that serve in form and substance as models for Erlebnismuster in Machaut’s dits. And, as we have seen, Boethius’s worldview in the Consolation along with its French translations and adaptations informs Machaut’s conception of good love and, at the same time, provides a broader context as well as a deeper, firmer foundation for his dits on love. Dialogue and Debate6 Dialogue is the most common mode in Machaut’s dits and lyric clusters. It may take the form of a modus docendi, when, for example, Guillaume instructs ‘Rhetoric with its verdicts’. ‘It is a great good to recall the times one sees people agree, and an even greater good to reconcile those who disagree.’ 3 Two medieval Latin poems illustrate such solutions to the world’s and the individual’s confrontation with evil: Jean de Hauville’s Architrenius and the De Vetula sometimes attributed to Richard de Fournival. On ‘philosophical visions’ like these, see Lynch 1988, esp. p. 7. 4 On the Christianization of Boethius, see Courcelle 1967. 5 See Cropp 1987, 1997, and 2005; Armstrong and Kay 2011, esp. pp. 89–96; TransMed, vol. 2:1, pp. 377–88. 6 Much of what follows relies on Badel’s insightful discussion of dialogue and debate 1 2

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a nobleman on love and other obligations in the context of noblesse oblige. Elsewhere, personifications like Amour and Esperance teach Guillaume about different kinds of love. While dialogue is most wide-ranging in the Confort d’ami, the Fontaine amoureuse, while developing the Confort’s treatment of love, shows Guillaume sharing prominence with other less literally autographical figures like the nobleman’s lady whose confort d’amie teaches her beloved nobleman how he should think, feel, and act during their separation. The Dit dou Lyon develops dialogue as well, but in this dit Guillaume is a spectator. In the Alerion, there is dialogue between Guillaume and various falconers; it alternates with interior monologue as he experiences the different loves represented allegorically by the dit’s raptors. In the Vergier, the judgment dits, and, most importantly, the Remede de Fortune, Machaut reprises Guillaume’s role as one who learns from various exemplary figures, for example, the kings in the Behaigne and Navarre; personifications like Amour in the Vergier; Bonneurté, her companions, and the judge and his assistants in the Navarre; and Esperance in the Remede. The Voir Dit deploys anew some of these figures as Guillaume engages in direct or epistolary dialogue with Toute Belle, various contemporary personages (the Duke of Normandy, the Duke of Bar, and Thomas Paien), fictional or autographical personages (Guillaume’s secretary and Toute Belle along with her relatives and acquaintances), and personifications (Esperance as well as Toute Belle’s ymage). Taking these diverse configurations into account, dialogues in Machaut’s dits identify Guillaume as a central recurrent figure.7 But his persona changes from dit to dit. He is an observer and commentator in the Behaigne, Lyon, Fontaine, and a reporter of events in the Prise d’Alexandrie. A pupil analogous (mutatis mutandis) to the Consolation’s Boethius figure, he listens to the god of love in the Vergier, to hunters in the Alerion, and to Esperance in the Remede. He is a master for Charles de Navarre in the Confort d’ami and a litigant with Bonneurté in the Navarre debate, and a poetic secretary in the Fontaine. Only in the Voir Dit, thanks to its enhanced narrative mode, does he appear in multiple roles, alternately serving as Toute Belle’s master in the art of poetry, as her and Esperance’s pupil in the art of love, and as self-appointed judge who evaluates which of several scripts or Erlebnismuster best describes Toute Belle’s conduct and his own love. Finally, in the Prise d’Alexandrie he comments on and, occasionally, critically judges Pierre de Lusignan’s actions that he relates in chronological order.8 Various other figures adopt these roles in his dits, but Guillaume is the most consistent exemplar of them. In Machaut’s dits, the debate mode, or desputoison, often arises out of dialogue.9 The mode first appears in the Vergier where personifications debate (1988a). On the generic relations among debate and dialogue in dits, demandes d’amour and jeux-partis in Machaut and his environment, see Cayley 2012. 7 Cf. Doudet 2008, pp. 219–21. 8 See Delogu 2008, pp. 92–123. 9 Badel 1988a, pp. 95, 103.

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various venues in a love case. The two judgment dits articulate debates that lead to a final judgment. In the Behaigne, the debate between the nobleman and lady begins after a casual encounter and dialogue; in the Navarre, a debate arises during Guillaume’s initial encounter with Bonneurté while he is hunting, when the personification voices her objections to the Behaigne verdict and accuses Guillaume of misogyny. In the Voir Dit, we have seen the debate mode emerge in Guillaume’s mind during his continuatio amoris when voices in dream and waking world question Toute Belle’s constancy and mock Guillaume’s love as foolish. Courtly love poetry has always used the debate mode.10 One person seeks another’s love. To gain that love is to receive mercy. The way to mercy – the gradus amoris – is fraught with contention about proposed actions and sentiments. As we have seen, in the Voir Dit the continuatio amoris is just as turbulent.11 Likewise, Machaut’s lyric poems imply debate and even realize minidebates in some lyric clusters. Differences of opinion among suitors, suited, and confirmed lovers find expression, explicitly or implicitly, in the debate mode, leading potentially to quarrels and blame, but also to resolution and love. With the debate mode, we enter the realm of poetic devices that articulate an art of love and various opinions about different kinds of love and actions suitable in love and lovemaking. Consequently, Machaut’s dits and lyric poems show the advanced apprentice how to construe and resolve debate. Indeed, his dits, a genre that Jacqueline Cerquiglini has aptly termed a ‘forme polémique’,12 represent debate as a mode that ‘nous permet peut-être de mieux comprendre par ses tensions, ce qui fait l’une des caractéristiques du dit’.13 The ‘mentalité juridique’14 that fosters debate obviously met the interest and expectations of medieval audiences.15 Therefore, Toute Belle must learn to use the debate mode in order to complete her apprenticeship. As we have seen, she does so in the Voir Dit’s contentious continuatio amoris. To write a dit or even lyric verse the apprentice must learn to invent dialogue and construe debate. In this chapter, therefore, we shall be looking at the ways Machaut sets out formal debates in the trial mode and the judgments they lead to in the Jugement Behaigne and the Jugement Navarre; then we shall compare this trial mode with the debates Toute Belle reads in the Voir Dit Guillaume/ 10 See Solterer 1995; Léonard 1996, pp. 262–8, 323–5; Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 45–8, 190–4 (on the debate mode in medieval theater); Cayley 2012. More generally, see Cardelle de Hartmann 2007, pp. 48–50, 104–62. 11 Poets after Machaut show the same nexus of problems, leading from dialogue to debate, most notably in Froissart’s Prison amoureuse, Christine de Pizan’s Duc des vrais amants and Cent ballades d’amant et de dame, Jean de Werchin’s Songe de la barge, ­Chartier’s Livre des quatre dames and, of course, his Belle dame sans mercy and the poetic debate that it provoked. 12 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, p. 155. 13 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, p. 158. Cf. Cardelle de Hartmann 2007, pp. 50–1. 14 Jacqueline Cerquiglini in Poirion 1983, pp. 281–3; cf. Doudet 2008. 15 Taylor 2007.

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Machaut wrote for her. I begin with a common feature in Machaut’s debates, one that contributes to the tension that accompanies their reception: dubitabilia.

Dubitabilia At the outset of his translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Nicole Oresme identifies debates like those that arise when Machaut takes up issues concerning morality, social conduct, and love.16 He contrasts such issues with those in mathematical and, implicitly, scientific and philosophical discussions, realms in which certainty was deemed possible in Machaut’s time. Christine de Pizan too distinguishes in her Advision between faith that she deems certain and her knowledge and opinions that cannot be absolutely confirmed and, therefore, whose uncertainties lead to debate.17 The diverse readings of examples debated in chapter four illustrate such opinions, giving rise to dubitabilia or open questions for consideration.18 In the Policraticus, John of Salisbury defines dubitabilia as follows: ‘Sunt autem dubitabilia sapienti quae nec fidei nec sensus aut rationis manifestae persuadet auctoritas et quae suis in utramque partem nituntur firmamentis’19 [Open questions for the learned person are those that neither the authority of faith nor of the senses or of manifest reason are convincing and that derive support for both sides]. John of Salisbury goes on to include among dubitabilia questions about Providence, the origin of the soul, chance and free will, and the definitions of space and time as well as problems arising in nature like the cause of high and low tides and the source of the Nile, problems for which there was no certain solution in his time.20 We can add Machaut’s good and bad love to this list. Love is a truly vexed, albeit attractive topic for debate in French literature, and not only in the Middle Ages. The open questions love raises treat probabilities or possibilities – opinions like those that oppose defenders and critics in the Roman de la rose debate. Deriving from disagreements that seek resolution in debate, open questions in vernacular poetry look to a specific judge or other authority to ‘close the case’. This might well explain why, in the Rose debate, Christine sent documents to the Queen for judgment. Her actions are like Machaut’s choice of the King of Bohemia in the Behaigne and the King of Navarre in the Navarre as judges. As kings, they are deemed to be fair, rational, and experienced judges. Similarly, from the perspective of the anonymous Tresor amoureux, judges should evince noble qualities and have experience in dealing with debatable issues: ‘Prenez Cf. p. 98. Kelly 2007, esp. pp. 98–9; such issues and their contingency are scrutinized in HellerRoazen 2003; Armstrong and Kay 2011. 18 Cf. Moos 1988a, p. 64, and 1988b, pp. 295–6. 19 Quoted from Moos 1988b, p. 295 n. 579; cf. Badel 1988a, p. 107, on the heuristic intent of debate rhetoric. 20 Moos 1988b, p. 295 n. 579. 16 17

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juge qui soit de noble affaire, / Sage, courtois qui ait sentu le trait / Que bon Amour scet aux vrais amans traire’ (TAm, p. 99: XXIII, v. 19–21) [choose a judge of noble standing, prudent, courteous and who has felt the shaft that good Love knows how to let fly at true lovers]. The writer who records debate as greffier (TAm, p. 206: v. 2265) or antigraphe must carefully and accurately report the procedure in his or her dit.21 The authority of noblemen who decide debates in Guillaume de Machaut’s two judgment dits derives from the principle known as endoxon.22 Endoxon refers to opinions that are deemed authoritative or generally credible because they are held by a majority of people, by the wiser men among them, or by recognized experts, authority that Machaut attributes to Boethius but that he also grants to high nobility. Because of their authority, their verdicts become authoritative in Parkes’s sense, noted above, of authority as sententiae. Moreover, by ascribing his own opinion to these authorities, Machaut authorizes his own judgment,23 which may account for Bonneurté’s criticizing him as the author of the Behaigne rather than the King of Bohemia who renders judgment; she may be implying that Machaut erred in ascribing the judgment to the King of Bohemia. In Machaut’s judgment dits, then, noblemen belong among the wise because personified agents like Reason, Avis, and Mesure inform and order their thought as they arrive at a verdict. In the Confort d’ami and the Fontaine amoureuse, however, Guillaume assumes the role of wise counselor of his patrons.24 Machaut’s noble patrons include powerful rulers: Jean de Luxembourg, the King of Bohemia, in the Jugement Behaigne, and Charles, the King of Navarre, in the Jugement Navarre.25 By means of a dream, Machaut allows in the Voir Dit a king, or more precisely a roi qui ne ment analogous to the Duke of Normandy, the future Charles V – ‘sui sa droite creature’ (VD, v. 3364/3466) [I am his true creation] – to appear as counselor for the distraught Guillaume in the dit’s continuatio amoris. Finally, a priest as father confessor is Toute Belle’s advocate in the debate about her constancy and Guillaume’s instability.

21 Christine’s ‘antigraffe’/‘antigraphe’ (Advision, pp. 6: line 140, 16: line 12) has an analogous role in the Chemin de long estude, v. 6329–69, as does Froissart as registreur in the Joli Buisson, v. 412, 421. Guillaume too ‘copies’ the nobleman’s complainte in the Fontaine amoureuse, copying here including versifying. 22 See HWR, vol. 2, cols. 1134–8. 23 Endoxon includes the artist as master of his or her craft (Moos 1988b, p. 4). On Guillaume’s stance as authority in the Fontaine amoureuse, see McGrady 2006b. 24 Kelly 1999b, pp. 9–12. Machaut identifies a potential weakness of judges when they are evil, as is the case with Susanne’s lecherous judges whose authority comes from their age: ‘Car li jugë encïen furent’ (Confort, v. 249) [because the judges were old] but whose perjury and lust a divinely inspired child unmasks. A striking illustration of Christine’s daring originality occurs when, by questioning male authority on women, she questions the authority of the contemporary endoxon (Cayley 2004; Kelly 2007, pp. 78–9). 25 See also Musso, ed., in VD, pp. 791 s.v. ‘Bar’, and 795 s.v. ‘Normandie’; and ed. Leech-Wilkinson, pp. 726–8.

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In the Navarre, however, Machaut, alias Guillaume, becomes a scapegoat26 who suffers the fate of the hapless ass in La Fontaine’s fable. This turn of events actually faults some of Guillaume’s authorities who, like the old judges who falsely condemn Susanne in the Confort, ‘reveal’ Toute Belle’s inconstancy. Given the prominence of debate in Machaut’s dits, these problems are striking because they implicitly raise questions about the authority of late medieval endoxon – of, notably, the nobility and ecclesiastics in the Behaigne, the Navarre, and the Voir Dit debates and, more broadly, in the diverse, even comic depictions of Susanne’s judges and of the poet figure Guillaume from dit to dit. This is because they debate dubitabilia – open questions regarding opinions that are dubitable. How do Machaut’s debates proceed to judgment?

Debate Protocol in the Behaigne Christa Schlumbohm has shown that the Behaigne follows a script – the partes orationis that conform to protocol in juridical rhetoric.27 Beginning with an exordium (JB, v. 1–124), the dit depicts a commonplace springtime setting in which an aggrieved lady and a lovelorn nobleman meet and begin a conversation. They soon slip into a debate about the relative intensity of their suffering. Following the partes orationis, the dit’s narratio (JB, v. 125–860) sets out the reasons for their grief, hers from bereavement, and his because of inconstancy. A propositio (JB, v. 861–80) then defines the issue on which they disagree: which suffers more, the bereaved or the victim of betrayal? This is the open question. The ensuing argumentatio, or actual debate, presents proof, or probatio (JB, v. 881–928), followed by counterproof, or refutatio (JB, v. 929–1167). This is the dit’s modus probativus et improbativus. A concluding peroratio recapitulates the arguments (recapitulatio, JB, v. 1509–608), adding the nobleman’s emotional appeal (affectus, JB, v. 1609–920) based on human victimization under Fortune. Schlumbohm notes in her analysis that Machaut amplifies on the nobleman’s fate by depicting him as using experience and logic to undermine the woman’s case, seemingly anticipating and preparing for the verdict in the man’s favor. The woman makes no rebuttal. In other words, the verdict becomes a foregone conclusion because Machaut, as author, seems to favor the nobleman’s case as seen in his use of amplifying devices and in his failure to give the lady a rebuttal of the man’s final appeal. In the Navarre context, this apportioning of space to the nobleman in his favor becomes trop to the lady’s po (see pp. 151–2). The judge pronounces in his favor.

On Machaut as scapegoat in this dit, see Girard 1982. On what follows, see Schlumbohm 1974, pp. 240–61; cf. Lausberg 1973, §§260–442. On the use of the partes orationis in classroom composition in the Middle Ages, including glosses that apply to women speakers, see Woods 2009. 26 27

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Debate Protocol in the Navarre Schlumbohm does not discuss the Navarre, but it is not difficult to discover the same protocol in its reversal of the Behaigne judgment. Thus, the exordium (JN, v. 1–540) reports the human devastation caused by the plague in France. After the plague subsides, Guillaume hastens out into a joyous springtime world. While coursing hares, he encounters Bonneurté. In her narratio (JN, v. 541–1442) she objects to the Behaigne judgment as an attack on women. Like Schlumbohm, Bonneurté notes the earlier dit’s amplification of the nobleman’s plight, implicitly favoring his case; she blames the amplification on Guillaume’s misogyny. The propositio (JN, v. 1443–548) summarizes briefly the issue: is Machaut alias Guillaume at fault for the Behaigne verdict? The debate then takes place before a new judge, Charles of Navarre. Furthermore, as we have seen in chapters one and four, the arguments alter the Behaigne’s debatable issue significantly and profoundly by opposing two extremes, misogyny and misandry; that is, Machaut reconfigures the issue as a question of who suffers more in love, the man or the woman, regardless of the cause of suffering. Although refocusing the issue on a hierarchy of sexual genders, the opinions still fall in the realm of dubitabilia. The Navarre’s argumentatio (JN, v. 1549–3354) is much longer than in the Behaigne, intertwining probatio and refutatio through the juxtaposition of numerous examples as proof and counterproof. The peroratio recapitulates briefly the principal arguments (recapitulatio, JN, v. 3355–64) and concludes with Bonneurté’s emotional appeal for a favorable judgment (affectus, JN, v. 3365–92). Just as the nobleman’s opinion was amplified in the Behaigne, the Navarre counters by developing Bonneurté’s appeal, adding to the arguments of the personifications that support her. Guillaume argues his case alone. The judgment against Guillaume (JN, v. 3393–4006) identifies the faults that he is guilty of: failing to acknowledge that death causes greater sorrow than infidelity, immoderation as witnessed in his disagreeing with and lacking respect for the noble Bonneurté, and misogyny evidenced by his claim that, whatever the cause of grief, suffering is more intense in men than in women. Guillaume must, therefore, make amends by writing three different poems: a lay, a virelai, and a ballade (JN, v. 4173–89). The Behaigne and the Navarre conduct formal debates before persons deemed to be competent judges by the standards of late medieval endoxon. They are competent because of their rational, alert, and noble minds. In the Behaigne the King of Bohemia heeds the words of Loyauté, Amour, Jeunesse, and Raison (JB, v. 1621–2), an array of personifications analogous to but not identical with those in the Vergier debate.28 The judge’s advisers and, therefore, the context

28 In the Vergier, the personifications at the court of the god of love are more diverse. They include the six ‘damoisiaus’ (v. 605) Voloir, Penser, Dous Plaisir, Loiauté, Celer, Desir (v. 613–14), and the six ‘damoiselles’ (v. 607) Grace, Pitié, Esperance, Souvenir, Franchise, and Attemprance (v. 621–2).

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change in the Navarre: Avis, Congnoissance, Mesure, and Raison analyze and evaluate the debate (JN, v. 3427–8, 3497–8).

Debate Protocol in the Voir Dit Before examining more closely the verdicts in the two judgment dits, we must consider debate protocol in the Voir Dit. The three debates in this dit require less formal scripting because they transpire and are judged in Guillaume’s mind. Importantly here, they also mirror what may transpire in the minds of audiences, suggesting readings that the Voir Dit itself does not contain, and, by extension, in the works of subsequent poets who construe differently debate and even write new debates (see chapter six). In the Voir Dit, Guillaume becomes the judge but he is not a king; indeed, he is less qualified to judge and, reflecting that assessment, is finally corrected by Toute Belle’s confessor. The issue is also more personal than in the judgment dits: he is both judge and party to the debate because he fears that his own lady has been unfaithful or inconstant, leaving him flummoxed at the open question.29 As we have seen, the Alerion resolves the question of inconstancy without much ado. The betrayed lover stops loving the unfaithful beloved, regardless of whether she is allegorically represented by the inconstant sparrow hawk or the fickle gyrfalcon, because each is obviously at fault; more importantly, there is no debate because the inconstancy of the beloved is depicted as obvious. More in line with the Voir Dit, the nobleman in the Fontaine amoureuse fears infidelity although he has not observed any actual wrongdoing on his lady’s part. Indeed, she offers consolation – her confort d’amie – and, with the magnanimity of good love, reassures her distraught lover by arguing that their love can endure despite separation thanks to good hope. At the end of the Voir Dit, similar comfort resolves issues after Toute Belle, aided by her confessor, confronts and disproves Guillaume’s suspicions and confounds his jealousy. The emotional satisfaction of this ‘happy ending’ is adumbrated in this chapter’s second epigraph. For our understanding of Machaut’s arts of love and poetry, it is important to note that the Fontaine amoureuse and Voir Dit treat the uncertainty inherent in open questions. Significantly, this treatment moves the debate from juridical rhetoric focused on determining a verdict based on valid or invalid evidence to deliberative rhetoric that weighs the course of conduct to follow. As we have seen, the Voir Dit’s Guillaume is a timorous lover from the start. Nonetheless, his gradus amoris progresses to the ‘consummation’ under Venus’s cloud in which he and Toute Belle are overwhelmed with love. Je demourai tous esbahis Et aussi com tous estahis; 29 It is still an open question today, given diverse scholarly opinions discussed in chap. 2 on what transpires beneath Venus’s cloud.

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Et ma dame estoit esbahie Et un petitet estahie. (VD, v. 4076–9/4196–9) [I remained stunned and totally overwhelmed; and my lady was stunned and somewhat overwhelmed.30]

Since deliberative concerns outweigh juridical outcomes here, virtue and custom no longer serve as the sole determinants of action. In the narrative context, Toute Belle acts to preserve her honor, thereby implicitly locating herself among the alerions, not the sparrow hawks or gyrfalcons. Now, in the Voir Dit, the question of constancy and fidelity arises in the terres inconnues of their ongoing relationship. Unlike the judgment dits, the Voir Dit offers no certainty, only a more or less open-ended exemplarity. Constantly deliberating, Guillaume alternately doubts, then heeds different interpretations of what Toute Belle does and feels while concomitantly weighing her reassuring account of her activities and sentiments. Essentially, the mapping out of the lovers’ emotions and thoughts in this manner allows the reader to become Guillaume’s judge. Guillaume’s affectus is profoundly implicated in a decision that, in the judgment dits, relies heavily on reason, clearly making dubitabilia the primary context for consideration – ‘S’il est voirs ce qu’on m’en a dit’. Yet, it is Guillaume who must make a decision before the reader and apprentice poet can evaluate his choice. Before probing the Voir Dit’s debates further and the judgment Guillaume finally makes regarding Toute Belle’s constancy, let us return to the judgment dits to examine how their judges arrive at verdicts. We can then compare their procedures with Guillaume’s own deliberations and judgment in the Voir Dit.

The Articles of Judgment in the Navarre Machaut’s Jugement Navarre sets out a procedure for resolving the ‘debat’ (JN, v. 1505) or ‘descort’ (JN, v. 1612)31 between Guillaume and Bonneurté (JN, v. 3851).32 First, the litigants agree on the judge who should hear their case (‘devant vous plaidïer,’ JN, v. 1507). The judge resolves the debate with the counsel of Congnoissance, Avis, Raison, and Mesure (JN, v. 1583–602), who personify his thought process in arriving at a verdict. The terminology and proOn this translation see Roques 1982, p. 167. Cf. Berger 2003, esp. pp. 203–4. 32 Debate concerning antecedent events is different from jeux-partis. The latter are, as it were, quodlibital debates about fictional actions or emotions that are in conflict (Schlumbohm 1974, pp. 236–40, 252–4, 261–2). Typical in jeux-partis is the absence of judgment. A judgment dit is a debate when standing alone, as in manuscripts that contain only the Behaigne; but when read together in other manuscripts, Machaut’s two judgment dits constitute a virtual jeu-parti between the King of Bohemia and the King of Navarre because their different judgments are not appealed within their respective dits.. 30 31

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tocol that the Navarre provides for these deliberations show how he uses the modus probativus et improbativus to achieve rational judgment. The ‘articles dou jugement’ (JN, v. 3387), as Bonneurté calls them, derive from specific topical questions that identify what to consider in arriving at judgment. Four points or ‘poins’ (JN, v. 3462, 3477, 3567) must be dealt with, according to Avis, in order to define the issue and permit judgment that resolves the debate. Point is a term that is quite specific here. It is part of a draft statement or formula that frames the debate by ‘establishing a set of expectations and criteria for judgment’.33 The term links Machaut’s poetic judgments to rhetorical tradition by adapting Latin terminology – punctum – to Machaut’s Middle French point. In classical rhetoric the iudicii quaestio, or Question for Decision, determines the Points to Adjudicate (iudicatio) (AdHer, I.xvi.26; Caplan’s translations), a sense that fits the Ciceronian use of punctum. Point acquired this sense in French by the thirteenth century if not earlier.34 For example, in Brunetto Latini’s Tresor, ‘devisement’ identifies a technique that ‘nombre par parties les poins k’il voudra prover’ (Tresor, p. 358: III.49, line 1)35 [numbers as parts the points he wishes to prove], and, as such, devisement forms a variety of the forma tractatus. The ‘points to adjudicate’ in the Navarre take the form of questions to answer in rendering judgment. In interpreting the Navarre judgment, identifying the points to adjudicate reveals the procedures by which the judge and his counsel resolve the case as well as the grounds on which the Navarre reverses the Behaigne verdict. We can use the same procedure in considering the Behaigne deliberations and verdict as well as Guillaume’s interior deliberations in the Voir Dit. Thus, so that the Navarre ‘procès’ (JN, v. 842, 1795, 2538) [trial] be ‘en fourme’ (JN, v. 843, 1795), it must follow ‘la juste voie / De droit’ (JN, v. 855–6) [the proper procedure in law]. First, the two ‘parties’ or litigants (JN, v. 3357) present their respective case or ‘plait’ (JN, v. 1515, 1548, 1630, 2202, 3016, 3371) as outlined above. Afterwards, the judge retires with his counselors to determine his verdict (jugement). It is then that Avis states the four ‘points’ that must be considered in passing judgment.36 After Bonneurté faults Guil-

Mortensen 2008, p. 53. FEW, vol. 9, p. 594. For additional examples of point in this context, see Godefroy, vol. 10, p. 367: ‘sujet spécial dont on s’occupe’; DMF, p. 487: ‘Nœud d’une affaire, question principale’; T-L, vol. 3, col. 2105: ‘das Einzelne in einer Gesamtheit’; FEW, vol. 9, p. 586 (all with examples). Thus, Bonneurté ‘y mist de biaus parlers tant / Qu’elle mena l’entention / Dou fait a declaration, / De point en point, de tire a tire, / Si bien qu’il n’i ot que redire’ (JN, v. 1432–6) [spoke so eloquently that she brought her interpretation of the deed from point to point in sequence so well that there was nothing to correct]; ‘Cils poins ne se puet soustenir’ (JN, v. 1542) [this point cannot be sustained] and ‘Prouvez ce point’ (JN, v. 2559) [prove this point]. 35 Cf. Messelaar 1963, esp. pp. 3, 121. 36 Cf. Bétemps 1998, pp. 229–30. 33 34

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laume for wronging women by the Behaigne verdict, the points to adjudicate focus on that issue. The first three points are as follows: What wrong or crime was committed? ‘quels est li meffais’ (JN, v. 3443) or ‘forfait’? (JN, v. 3447) Who was wronged? ‘a qui il a esté fais’? (JN, v. 3444) What caused the wrongdoer to commit the wrong? ‘Quel cause l’esmuet ad ce faire’? (JN, v. 3450) Upon due consideration of the foregoing points and providing answers to each, the judge should – this is the fourth ‘point’ – proceed to judgment according to what law dictates or custom requires regarding the wrong committed, that is, to ‘sieuir les poins de droiture / Ou coustume attraite de droit’ (JN, v. 3456–7), so as to determine what ‘amende’ (JN, v. 920; cf. v. 3493) the guilty party owes. Congnoissance then reviews the four points outlined by Avis (JN, v. 3461–2) and, vouching for their validity, passes them on to the King of Navarre. Here, however, Mesure intervenes. Following a slightly different order from that enunciated by Avis but retaining the same formula, she rejects the Behaigne verdict. In the earlier Behaigne, the King of Bohemia concludes that the man whose beloved proved unfaithful suffers more than the woman whose beloved dies because the sorrow caused by inconstancy is more long lasting than that caused by death. By conjoining Guillaume with Machaut as figure and the actual author, ‘Machaut’ is found guilty of finding in the man’s favor. Mesure indicts him by resolving the four points outlined by Avis and approved by Congnoissance. She then adds a fifth ‘point’ (JN, v. 3538): the king should practice the same moderation in rendering judgment that litigants should strive for in actual debate (cf. the courtesy required in debate as discussed in chapter 4, pp. 154–5).  Amis, je te chastoy: Se tu ne mès Mesure en toy, Elle s’i mettra maugré tien. Ceste parole bien retien. S’elle s’i met, tu és peris; Se tu l’i mès, tu és garis. (JN, v. 3561–6)37 [My friend, I warn you: if you do not include Measure she will impose herself in spite of you. Remember these words. If she imposes herself, you have lost; if you include her you are saved.]

Mesure then condemns Guillaume for this very fault: ‘il se desmesura’ (JN, v. 3591) [he became immoderate] by opposing Bonneurté, a lady of higher stand-

37 A similar opinion is expressed in the Confort d’ami, v. 1675–702, and in the Voir Dit, v. 6375–90/6448–63. Mesure is, therefore, a moral and social imperative in Machaut’s œuvre (Newels 1989, pp. 198–9; Imbs 1991, passim).

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ing than he (JN, v. 3594–614).38 His immoderation during the trial compounds the wrong he committed in writing the Behaigne judgment. If Guillaume is guilty of desmesure because he dares to disagree with the noble lady Bonneurté,39 his defense of the Behaigne verdict is ipso facto invalidated. According to Reason, moreover, his immoderation stems from stubbornly and thus irrationally persevering in opposition to Bonneurté rather than acknowledging his error and making amends (JN, v. 3771–83). He therefore commits a wrong (‘meffait’, JN, v. 3805) against ‘les dames de haut pris’ (JN, v. 3798)40 [ladies of high worth]. On the narrative level, Guillaume offends noble ladies whom, according to Machaut’s art of poetry, he should defend. On the allegorical level, however, dame here obviously includes personifications of feminine grammatical gender like Bonneurté (cf. JN, v. 4162–4) and, more significantly, the noble idea she personifies. It is important to recall that Guillaume does not recognize the lady when they meet nor does he ask her name or station in life, in part because he is absorbed in coursing hares. He is still living in the world of good and bad fortune – of, that is, the exuberance of the hunt after the woes he experienced during the plague.41 Nonetheless, Bonneurté’s appearance and retinue should have cautioned him.42 When she first appears, Bonneurté is described as ‘Une dame de grant noblesse,43 / Bien acesmée de richesse, / … a belle compaingnie’ (JN, v. 545–7) [a lady of high nobility, richly adorned with marks of distinction and in fine company], suggesting adherence to sumptuary laws. Beginning with the Remede de Fortune, Bonneurté embodies Boethius’s felicity in Machaut’s dits, that happiness that lies outside and above Fortune’s realm and that derives from one’s innate virtue.44 By failing to recognize or take account of Bonneurté’s nobility, Guillaume fails to evaluate what is at issue in the debate. More specifically, he did not discriminate in the Behaigne between felicity, or bonneürté in 38 Wise women in Machaut’s endoxon are usually personifications. Toute Belle is an exception. 39 Guillaume goes hunting after the plague ends because it is a noble activity (Jeay 2006a, p. 302), although Machaut was probably not of noble birth (Earp 1995, pp. 4–5). In the Alerion, a bird is summarily put to death for attacking the eagle, its ‘king’ (v. 3475–578). 40 In the Voir Dit Toute Belle asserts that, by doubting her constancy, Guillaume sins against ‘noblesce’ (VD, v. 5900–3, 8067–70); elsewhere Guillaume contrasts his ‘petitesce’ with Toute Belle’s ‘hautesce’ (VD, v. 1267–8/1337–8). 41 Machaut’s public might have their own understanding of the coney hunt, treated not only in its erotic connotation (Roman de la rose, v. 15105–14), but also in Christine’s Duc des vrais amants (v. 83–107) as a hunt for love – the life of the Lyon’s ‘frere aisié’ and their sisters. In allegory, the motif can evoke amor voluptuosus, or sexual immoderation and mollesse (on this word’s erotic connotations in Old and Middle French, see Kelly 1995, pp. 119–21). 42 Kay 2007, pp. 106–7. 43 Machaut emphasizes her nobility more than once (JN, v. 739–41, 750–4, 1131–54). Contemporary audiences may have recognized Bonne de Luxembourg, Jean II’s first queen, in Bonneurté (Earp 1995, p. 25). 44 Kelly 1978, chap. six; Mulder 1978, pp. 37–41, 62–4.

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Boethius’s sense, and mere happiness, as suggested by the coursing of hares, that is, activities subject to Fortune’s mutability. Readers of the dit in anthology manuscripts would see Bonneurté in a new, clearer light as soon as they came to the Remede. In addition to his desmesure, Guillaume is guilty of two additional misdeeds. The first is the Behaigne verdict itself. That judgment is wrong because death is now deemed the cruelest misfortune that can befall a human being (JN, v. 3620–6; cf. v. 3209–12).45 A bereaved lover’s grief can never be assuaged, while victims of infidelity or inconstancy will overcome their loss as time passes, given that ‘on se puet trop mieus passer / De ce dont on puet respasser’ (JN, v. 3625–6) [one can much more easily endure what one can recover from]. Indeed, Guillaume’s rapid recovery from his loss of the sparrow hawk and the gyrfalcon in the near-contemporary Alerion supports this judgment.46 The third wrong occurs during the Navarre debate itself, when Guillaume launches a misogynist diatribe against women, based on the premise that women are changeable whereas men are stable, and concludes that, as an ancestor to La Fontaine’s jeune veuve, the bereaved lady’s ‘natural’ mutability will quickly diminish her grief (JN, v. 3019–70): ‘sa nature li enseingne / Que tost rie et de po se pleingne’ (JN, v. 3029–30) [her nature teaches her to become happy quickly and to complain about very little]. This is a commonplace reading of the gender topos, itself a variety of the nature topos. Guillaume’s immoderation being evident in all three wrongs, Mesure pronounces her verdict as follows (I treat the points in the order Avis gives them): What wrong was committed? Guillaume defended the man in the Behaigne (JN, v. 1013–30), not the woman: ‘se mist toute sa vigueur / Pour lui deffendre encontre li’ (JN, v. 3588–9)47 [he strove with all his might and main to defend him against her]. In so doing, he wronged women both on the narrative level by his judgment of the bereaved woman and on the allegorical level by his failure to recognize what the personification of the noble Bonneurté actually represents (JN, v. 3813–32). Who has been wronged? Guillaume ‘A attenté contre Franchise, / Et tout de sa premiere assise’ (JN, v. 3581–2) [attacked Franchise right from the start]. As ‘the free and frank bearing that is visible testimony to the combination of good birth with virtue’,48 Franchise is an attribute of Bonneurté’s nobility that should have been recognized and respected from the start, not only as an ideal but also in the person of the bereaved woman. What caused Guillaume to commit the wrong? Desmesure: ‘Par ces raisons de The god of love contrasts his actions with those of Death in the Vergier, v. 329–46. In the Behaigne, Machaut does not consider the woman’s love surviving into the afterlife, perhaps because of the importance of delectacion and the body in that love. 47 Including Machaut’s own addition of the gentleman’s affectus followed by the lady’s silence. 48 Keen 1984, p. 2. 45

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Mesure a / Les regles et les poins perdus’ (JN, v. 3592–3) [for these reasons he failed to follow Mesure’s rules and points]. The answer to this ‘point’ combines the third and fourth articles of judgment. The judgment takes a lighter turn when deciding on a suitable ‘amende’. To atone for his three wrongs (JN, v. 4033–43) – desmesure, misogyny, and failure to acknowledge that death causes greater suffering than inconstancy – Guillaume must write three poems: a lay, a virelai, and a ballade (JN, v. 4181–9). He immediately begins to write the ‘Lay de plour’ that is appended to the Navarre in some manuscripts,49 which relates a woman’s grief for a deceased beloved.50 But what about the misandry imputed to Bonneurté in Guillaume’s indictment? We can start to answer that question by reviewing the Behaigne judgment in the light of the same articles of judgment that the Navarre uses.

The Articles of Judgment in the Behaigne Judgment in the Behaigne is not so much a matter of right or wrong, as in the Navarre, since the issue at hand is the degree of suffering, that is, the relative emotional impact of death or infidelity (JB, v. 1923–8). Moreover, Guillaume is an observer or reporter, not a litigant or judge. The wrongdoers – Death and the unfaithful lady – are not being judged either. In the bereaved lady’s case, no judge on earth can find Death guilty. In the man’s case, although the inconstant woman causes his grief, her change of heart is not at issue: the man excuses her change because of the sincerity of her new love. By transferring her affection from him to another man, he argues, his lady is loyal to Amour, a meschiés, or misfortune, caused by God and Nature (JB, v. 851–60) – but not by Fortune (JB, v. 820–2) – rather than a mesfait, or misdeed, on her part. And, like the aggrieved woman confronting death, the man refuses to indict either God or Nature.51 Since, by these considerations, Reason effaces the wrong, the points 49 Earp 1995, p. 341. On manuscripts that contain the ‘Lay de plour’ directly after the Jugement Navarre, see Earp 1995, p. 365; the lay also appears independently in some manuscripts and may have been written before the Navarre. Recycling a previously written poem is a reprise (as defined in the Introduction); however, such repetition may give the earlier poem a new meaning because of the new context or because of its links to other poems, as in a cluster. 50 The lay’s subject matter implicitly corrects the Behaigne’s judgment regarding the suffering caused by death. Perhaps the two unwritten amendes would have dealt with misogyny and desmesure. 51 The man’s refusal to indict God, Nature, or his beloved contrasts with the violent vengeance Bonneurté argues that men customarily take on unfaithful women (JN, v. 1631– 702). Loange 225/209, v. 13–16, offers a variant on inconstancy from the perspective of the new woman: ‘certainement bien sçay / Qu’une autre amoit, quant premiers l’amay. / Or ay son cuer si franc et si entier / Qu’autre de li jamais avoir ne quier’ [I know for sure that he was in love with another woman when I first fell in love with him. Now I have his heart so noble and true that I don’t ever want anyone but him]. She got him and that is all that matters to her. Since love causes the change, this interloping lady justifies the change, much

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to adjudicate found in the Navarre are not applicable here, and all that remains is to determine who, by the losses of bereavement and infidelity, suffers more.52 The judge’s advisers in the Behaigne are not the same as in the Navarre.53 Reason’s intervention is significant too. No longer excluded by Amour, as in the Dit dou vergier, Raison knows that the debate must be resolved by judgment. Significantly, the Behaigne’s Reason does not condemn wrong; she effaces it: ‘Raison y est qui le meffait efface’ (JB, v. 1491) [Reason is there to efface the misdeed]. Accordingly, exemplifying such effacement, the nobleman’s refusal to blame his beloved’s new love is reasonable. Nonetheless, Reason and Loyauté also argue that the man suffers more than the woman. The King of Bohemia along with other counselors – Amour and Jeunesse – agree with them. Making matters more complex, however, Amour, Loyauté, and Jeunesse do not agree with Reason on what should be done after the verdict has been pronounced. They think that the nobleman should remain faithful to his untrue lady whereas Reason thinks he should forget his inconstant beloved, as Guillaume does in the Alerion. But Machaut’s thought on good love had not advanced that far when he wrote the Behaigne. In this dit, as noted above, love still seeks delectacion and the body is of prime importance. The nobleman’s case in the Behaigne is certainly complex. As a spurned lover, he is jealous, but the cause of his grief, according to Reason, lies deeper. He was foolish (as was his former lady) to fall in love in the way he did: ‘folement s’est d’amer entremis / Sanz mon conseil’ (JB, v. 1725–6) [he foolishly fell in love without consulting me]. If Reason is absent, not surprisingly, love becomes irrational. The wrong to be effaced, then, is love itself, the view favored by Toute Belle’s detractors too. Reason here echoes her counterpart in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la rose but not in the Vergier. While ignoring Reason is both lovers’ fault in this judgment dit, the man’s irrationality only explains his ongoing grief; it does not diminish his suffering. In the Behaigne, that is, the man lacks the finality of death. The living presence of his inconstant lady prolongs his suffering. Reason explains why.  Pour ce que Compaignie, Amours, Beauté, et Joinece la lie, Et Loyauté, qu’oublïer ne voeil mie,  En grant folie, En rage, en duel, et en forsenerie Le font languir, et en grant jalousie, Et en peril de l’ame et de la vie.  (JB, v. 1733–9) as the Behaigne nobleman does, by refusing to inculpate herself because of the sincerity of her new love. Since Amor vincit omnia, Fortune and Amour work for her in happy tandem. Here inconstancy, when the new love is sincere, is not a wrong because it is de sentement, thanks to God, Nature, and/or Fortune. 52 Cf. Imbs 1991, p. 93. 53 On the different personifications that advise the king in each judgment dit, see Kelly 1978, p. 139.

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[Because Companionship, Love, Beauty, happy Youth, and Loyalty, whom I do not want to forget, cause him to languish in great folly, rage, grief, madness, great jealousy, and in peril of his soul and life.]

Thus, the aggrieved lover is not consoled because, according to Reason, his love is irrational; the last line also suggests that it is sinful. Although Amour, Loyauté, and Jeunesse want the man to continue loving despite his suffering,54 the King of Bohemia notes perceptively that this is not the issue (JB, v. 1923–8); the judge is to decide which causes lovers to suffer more, death or infidelity, not whether they should continue to love or erred in falling in love without consulting Reason. The case is dismissed thanks to Reason’s ‘effacement’ of the alleged wrong: the litigants should stop loving foolishly, although to do so remains more difficult for the nobleman than for the lady; therefore, his suffering is declared more intense than hers.

Debatable Issues and Conflicting Judgments The Behaigne–Navarre divergence poses an important question for medieval audiences and apprentices: do Fortune, God, and/or Nature cause different degrees of suffering as the Behaigne argues or is gender the primary factor, as the Navarre litigants argue? This is obviously an open question. The issue survives into the Voir Dit. But in this dit, diverse Erlebnismuster highlight the art of poetry for the apprentice poet with greater subtlety. The Voir Dit returns to the core issue in the Jugement Navarre: misogyny and misandry as con­ traires choses. It also brings to mind the point made by Pascale Bourgain regarding the contrast between diverse medieval ideas about a subject and what our modern views may be. Neither word, misogyny nor misandry, existed at the time Machaut was writing.55 However, I believe that, in his case, we can vouch for a valid Middle French expression for both modern words, even if precise connotations and historical contexts differ. Thus, Christine de Pizan, an authority on these matters, refers in the Cité des dames to ‘vituperes de femmes et de leurs condicions, et non mie seulement un ou .ij. …, mais generaument’ [misogynist statements about women and their character, not just by one or two men but generally], including authorities in the endoxon who ‘tous accordent une semblable conclusion, determinant les meurs femenins enclins et plains de tous les vices’ (Cité, p. 42) [all come to a similar conclusion, judging women’s ways to be inclined to and replete with all the vices]. She wrote the Cité des dames in order to combat such ‘oppinions frivoles, sanz fondement de raison’ (Cité, p. 500) [frivolous opinions lacking rational foundation]. Her goal is to exemplify On these unresolved issues, cf. Palmer 1999, p. 83. RobertH, p. 1253, dates misogyne from the sixteenth century, misogynie from the nineteenth; however, the adjective becomes common only in the nineteenth century when earlier gender prejudices were justified by ‘scientific’ evidence, much as racial prejudices were. 54 55

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virtue in good women, an intention that fits Machaut’s praise of virtuous women and the ennobling love they inspire. In medieval terms, then, the Navarre judgment faults Guillaume and Machaut for ‘vituperes de femmes’. Nonetheless, as we have noted, misandry, or vituperes de homes et de leurs condicions, is also voiced by Bonneurté and her sisters. Reading the Navarre judgment along with the continuatio amoris plot in the Voir Dit allows for more circumstantial consideration of at least one writer’s view on both varieties of gender prejudice. The Navarre debate is decided largely on the basis of multiple fictional examples, about half of which are produced by personifications of feminine nouns. When the King of Navarre judges in Bonneurté’s favor, he does so using the examples that the opposing litigants introduce. In reversing the Behaigne verdict, the judge in effect decides that Guillaume’s vituperes de femmes is prejudicial but that Bonneurté’s vituperes de homes is not. Women, he decides, do indeed suffer more than men, no matter what the cause of suffering. The key example is the power, authority, and fraternity of men against women illustrated by the stork fable with which Bonneurté launches her indictment of the Behaigne. The Voir Dit debates are similar to those in the Behaigne and Navarre in some ways, but the script for resolution is significantly different. Turning on the question of whose love is good or bad, Toute Belle’s or Guillaume’s, misogyny once again proves to be a central factor. Moreover, from the perspective of Machaut’s art of poetry, the Voir Dit debates show Toute Belle, the apprentice poet, how to compose debates on open questions. But since the Voir Dit is the crucial example of debate for this apprentice, I will briefly summarize first the ‘points’ the Voir Dit raises for adjudication before examining the arguments, counterarguments, and the initially open-ended character both of the Voir Dit’s ordonnance in Guillaume’s mind and of the debate that ensues between him and his male friends on his side and, on the other side, that between him and Toute Belle and her confessor, their opponents.56 I begin with the articles of judgment. Who is wronged? As in the Behaigne–Navarre debate, two issues generate the debate. In the first instance, Guillaume is wronged by an inconstant Toute Belle; in the second, Guillaume wrongs Toute Belle by his jealous doubts. What is the alleged wrong? In both cases, inconstancy and/or infidelity. What is the cause of the alleged wrong? Emotional instability, a mutability attributed to both Toute Belle and Guillaume. What must the guilty party do to make amends? Restore constancy and good hope or stop loving. If successful, this solution will establish a middle ground between erotic love as desire, as in the Vergier, and abandoning a bad love, as in the Alerion. In the middle ground that Toute Belle and Guillaume both agree 56 Later, after Guillaume admits his mesfait in doubting Toute Belle’s love, he promises to make amends (VD, v. 6039/6112). He presumably does so by writing a lengthy ‘escusance’ (VD, v. 6209/6282) after which she pardons him (VD, v. 6213–14/6286–7). An analogous debate arises briefly when Esperance accuses Guillaume of having wronged her by failing to recognize her role in comforting him. He atones by writing a ‘Lai d’Esperance’ (VD, v. 4220–97/4340–417).

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on, they reaffirm good love, a solution that is morally acceptable, because it is chaste, sufficient, and sincere (de sentement). As in the Navarre, so in the Voir Dit, ‘qui puet au moien venir, / C’est le plus seür a tenir’ (VD, v. 6375– 6/6448–9) [whoever can achieve the mean is on the surest grounds]. This is the desirable conclusion to the Voir Dit described in this chapter’s second epigraph and justification of the, as it were, settlement before the trial. The ‘mentalité juridique’ apparent here accounts for the number of debates introduced by various authority figures who intervene in the Voir Dit. A roi qui ne ment in a dream, a noble friend, a priest, ‘what people say’, and Esperance variously describe and interpret as members of a virtual endoxon. The debate takes place in Guillaume’s mind, with Toute Belle in epistolary exchanges between them, and in communication with diverse witnesses who offer their testimony and opinions favoring one side or the other. There is no formal court setting with open debate like that in the judgment dits. The litigants, Toute Belle and Guillaume, are both juges and parties. The narrative mode follows the chronological sequence of thoughts, emotions, dialogues, dreams, examples, and epistles discussed in chapter two. This leads to the decision on both sides to reconcile, restore good love, and remain stable in it. Reason again effaces all wrong as in the Behaigne. Debate begins with the attack on Guillaume’s love by Toute Belle’s detractors. Male friends claim that he is foolish to persevere in love in the face of Toute Belle’s alleged insincerity, inconstancy and/or infidelity, and gender. An unidentified nobleman (like the kings in the judgment dits, a potential judge in the medieval endoxon) asks Guillaume to consider what amounts to the four points outlined above as articles of judgment. They succeed in making him suspect that he may well have been wronged and deceived by a changeable, unstable young woman. Urging him to extricate love from his heart, their advice echoes both the Behaigne’s Reason and the Alerion’s Guillaume: love comes to an end when confronted with inconstancy, and the good lover is free to seek anew a good, worthier love. This is the exemplary lesson in the Alerion. Se tu aucune chose pers, Soiez avisiez et apers Que tu puisses par bien ouvrer A point ta perte recouvrer Ou chose qui ta perte vaille. Ad ce ne pues tu faire faille.  (Alerion, v. 2999–3004) [If you lose something you should be advised and aware that you may, by right conduct, recover fully your loss, or something that is of equal value. In this you cannot fail.]

Such council befits good love and good hope. Reason supports this program in the Alerion (v. 4356–402). It becomes the lesson the Alerion teaches: ‘Amez, si comme j’ay amé’ (v. 4789) [Love as I have loved], Guillaume exclaims at the end of the dit.

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However, the Voir Dit’s Guillaume is not as dispassionate as his counterpart in the Alerion. To be sure, like the ass in La Fontaine’s fable, Guillaume becomes at times the butt of ridicule and mockery on account of ‘ceste dame qui t’assote’ (VD, v. 5710/5783) [that lady who besots you]. Moreover, his male advisers do not favor looking for a new love. Rather, male solidarity and companionship should replace the donna mobile, allowing them to stand united against all women. We are back in the all-male milieu of Cicero’s De amicitia.57 Elsewhere Guillaume is faulted because ‘folement vo temps usés, / Qu’englués58 estes et rusés; / Et soiés certains qu’on s’en moque’ (VD, v. 7394– 6/7467–9) [you are wasting your time foolishly, for you are both caught and deceived; rest assured that you are a laughing stock]. These claims inspire Guillaume’s doubts and jealousy, thereby reducing his capacity for rational evaluation. Moreover, according to the detractors, Toute Belle incites mockery by showing everyone Guillaume’s letters (VD, v. 7362–74/7435–47), proof that she cannot be sincere about their love. Being immature (the age topos) like the inconstant fourteen-year-old in the Behaigne, and as changeable as Fortune because she is a woman and, as we have seen, shares the same grammatical gender with Fortune (the gender topos), Toute Belle is accused of following the customary conduct of Fortune and of toute belle. Or est ma dame comparee A Fortune la forsenee, Quar bien puelent aler ensemble Pour ce qu’a Fortune ressemble En cas de variableté, Ou il n’a point d’estableté.59 (VD, v. 8337–42/8410–15) [Now my lady is compared to mad Fortune, for they can indeed be assimilated because she resembles Fortune with respect to her mutability in which there is no stability.]

Toute Belle’s detractors cast her as the virtual personification of the misogynist’s Everywoman. The use of a commonplace misogynist norm – a commonplace Erlebnismuster for toutes belles – in the Voir Dit’s modus descriptivus buttresses the accusa57 On medieval adaptations of Cicero’s conception of friendship, including friendship between a man and a woman, see Mews 2007. 58 Englués refers literally to a kind of bird trap that has also served as a metaphor for entrapped lovers (DMF, p. 234). 59 Toute Belle’s detractors describe women by recycling misogynist commonplaces like those in the Navarre (cf. JN, v. 3019–70). Machaut’s readers and apprentices familiar with his frequent condemnation of those who disparage women will sense the irony or even hypocrisy of the role Guillaume assumes in these conversations. He has forgotten why Toute Belle believed their love could be widely known: it is chaste. The reaction of her detractors anticipates Christine de Pizan’s argument, voiced by Sebile de Monthault, that, if people learn that a woman is in love, they will always jump to the conclusion that there has been a sexual meffait.

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tions by Toute Belle’s detractors. The context they choose is the donna mobile – così fan tutte – that, as commonplace, can easily be applied even to otherwise good women like Toute Belle (VD, v. 7370–89/7443–62). As discussed earlier, Guillaume’s first, albeit false dream offers him further evidence of her instability. In it, Toute Belle’s image, a portrait allegedly drawn true to life – ‘faite au vif’ (VD, p. 172a/110) [lifelike] – changes her blue raiment that betokens constancy to green that translates as inconstancy: ‘en lieu de bleu, dame, vous vestés vert’ (VD, v. 7596/7669) [instead of blue, my lady, you wear green]. Indeed, Amour herself – again, the noun and the personification are feminine in the Voir Dit – is changeable and uncertain and is therefore implicated in Toute Belle’s instability. This argument mirrors Guillaume’s Remede complainte that conjoins Fortune and Amour. As we have seen in chapter four, the feminine gender of the three nouns – Toute Belle, Fortune, and Amour60 – supports the assimilation. Guillaume even retrieves the Alerion’s sparrow hawk to confirm the change he suspects in Toute Belle (VD, v. 8343–50/8416–23). Toute Belle, then, is a woman whose modus agendi conforms to that of both Fortune and Amour. All three being changeable and inconstant,61 their common grammatical gender bundles these commonplaces in order to argue that Toute Belle is guilty of inconstancy and unworthy of Guillaume’s love because she is a woman. The dream leaves Guillaume unsettled. Indeed, unlike most dream visions that end abruptly (for example, in the Roman de la rose62), the waking phase is important in the Voir Dit because Guillaume considers the dream’s truthfulness: is his songe a mensonge? It is here that Guillaume’s uncertainty reveals his instability in spite of the narrative fact that, from the very beginning of their relationship, he has recognized estableté as one of Toute Belle’s primary virtues: ‘Estableté en vous pas ne chancelle’ (VD, v. 6132/6205)63 [Stability in you does not waver]. It does waver in him. Instability being common among lovers, whatever their gender, Guillaume’s own instability catches him up in internal debate: ‘S’il est voirs ce qu’on m’en a dit, / Autrement ne di je en mon dit’ (VD, v. 8269–70/8341–2)64 [if what people have told me is true; otherwise I don’t say so in my dit]. In spite of these reports – ‘Ce qu’on m’en a dit’ – at least one of her detractors concedes that she is not intentionally flighty. ‘Car elle est bonne et preude fame’, as the nobleman who reports her alleged misconduct puts it, ‘Sage, honneste, cointe et apperte, / Et n’est ombrage ne couverte’ (VD, v. 7387–9/7460–2) [for she is a good and worthy woman, prudent, honest, elegant, and open, nor is she easily offended Bétemps 1998, p. 57. Cf. Mulder 1978, pp. 38–9. 62 Cf. Kelly 2002, pp. 131–4. 63 The Confort d’ami promotes the same virtue when Guillaume admonishes Charles of Navarre: ‘Pour Dieu, ne soies variables, / Mais justes, fermes et estables’ (v. 2887–8) [For God’s sake, do not be changeable, but just, firm, and stable]. 64 The refrain is repeated (VD, v. 8269–70/8342–3, 8285–6/8358–9, 8301–2/8374–5, 8317–18/8390–1, 8335–6/8408–9, 8349–50/8422–3). In Machaut’s BalNot 20, a woman’s voice reports that a man who heeded misogynist médisance left her. 60 61

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or secretive]. Unlike Guillaume in the Navarre, he does not ignore her nobility; but she is a woman and, therefore, naturally changeable in spite of herself. The fool, claims the same detractor, is Guillaume for not realizing this and acting rationally by terminating his relationship with her. Guillaume becomes hesitant because of the narratives her detractors invent. One of Machaut’s ballades, voiced by a woman, offers an interesting perspective on different kinds of evidence by distinguishing sharply between hearsay and eyewitness accounts. On ne puet riens savoir si proprement D’oïr dire comme on fait dou veoir; Mais ce qu’on tient et voit tout clerement Doit on croire sans nulle doute avoir.65 (Loange 192/152, v. 1–4) [One can know nothing so well from hearsay as from sight; but one must believe without any doubt what one grasps and sees with one’s own eyes.]

In Guillaume’s case, however, what he sees is in his imagination. He relies only on what he hears, a fact underscored by his failure to visit Toute Belle during the continuatio amoris; moreover, there is no indication that her detractors made any attempt to confront her with their accusations. This sharply contrasts with Toute Belle’s engaging her confessor. Failing to make such efforts causes disarray, just as the ballade predicts. Et qui legierement croit, Souvent sa pais et sa joie en descroit, Car maint meschié sont venu et norri De legier croire encontre son ami.66 (Loange, 192/152, v. 5–8) [And that’s why the credulous person’s peace and joy often diminish, for many misfortunes have occurred and been fed by easily suspecting one’s beloved.]

The ballade’s lady claims, as Toute Belle might, that her beloved doubts her love because of ‘faus rapors, qu’ailleurs mes cuers ne soit’ (v. 14) [false rumors that my heart has gone astray]. The ballade lady’s mistake is in not confronting her beloved with the evidence so that he might defend himself. This is Guillaume’s fault too in the Voir Dit: he hides his suspicions while being on the lookout for signs of Toute Belle’s inconstancy. As an apprentice in the art of poetry, Toute Belle must evaluate the Voir Dit’s plot on the basis of the conduct depicted and the dialogues recounted in the dit, much as Guillaume does in evaluating Toute Belle’s first rondeau. Such readers On this passage, see Leach 2011, pp. 255–6. As noted in chap. 4, ‘par legierement croire’ is the fault the confessor accuses Guillaume of. 65 66

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may well be perplexed. The assertion by Guillaume’s friend, ‘soiés certains qu’on s’en moque’ (VD, v. 7396/7469), contradicts frequent reports of and allusions to both public and private interest in and approval of Toute Belle’s love and poetry; throughout the dit even members of her own family and her close acquaintances accept her relationship with Guillaume.67 Indeed, at one critical moment, Toute Belle asserts that ‘onques en ma vie je ne trouvai personne qui me blamast de chose que je feysse pour vous’ (VD, p. 538e/414) [never in my life did I encounter anyone who blamed me for anything I did for you]. She expresses similar conviction in one of her ballades: ‘Je sui de li en tous lieus honnouree / Et par son bien mon honneur croist et dure’ (v. 6499–500/6572–3) [I’m honored everywhere because of him; thanks to his goodness my honor grows and endures]. Importantly, since Belle’s honest and innocent trust in Guillaume has been unwavering, her sorrow is all the more profound when she learns that he doubts her constancy. She considered ‘vostre cuer si bon et si estable que vous ne m’oublieriés mie; et toute personne qui ha bien et loiauté en li, le doit ainsi penser des autres’ (VD, p. 536a/414) [your heart to be so good and stable that you would never forget me; and anyone who is good and constant ought to think that others are the same]. Here we see Toute Belle’s good love relying on good hope rather than doubting Guillaume’s love. For his part, Guillaume proves unstable, backsliding into possessive desire and jealous doubts. From a love based on virtue patterned on the Boethian model of felicity, his love mutates into a false good based on claims that both Fortune and Amour support. In short, the apprentice finds models for two Erlebnismuster, that of good love and that of bad love.

Social Judgments in the Voir Dit During the Voir Dit’s continuatio amoris the interest and even curiosity of outsiders68 that Toute Belle mentions turn in rapid crescendo to médisance.69 Allegations of misconduct that emanate from several quarters echo the advice articulated by Raison, Loyauté, and the judge in the Behaigne,70 advice the Behaigne’s nobleman cannot follow because of his ongoing love for the young lady

67 VD, pp. 96g/48, 124b/74, v. 1353–5/1423–5, 2295–301/2397–403, 3572–82/3674–84, 3831–2/3933–4, 3906–9/4008–11, pp. 428l/322, 434c/326, 436g/328, 452hi/340, 456a/344, 462h/348, 508e/390, 516a/396, 520e/398, 522k/400, 536b/414, 540–2h/416, 556a/428, 576–8ef/442, 680c/530. Cf. Leech-Wilkinson 1993b, passim on pp. 106–32. 68 For example, VD, pp. 422–4bcd/318–20, 426i/322, 432b/326, 448c/338, 538e/414, v. 6499–500/6572–3. 69 VD, pp. 518c/396, 538d/414, v. 7360–401/7433–73, 7412–17/7485–90, 7496– 509/7569–82, 7514–57/7587–630, pp. 672–4b/524–6, v. 8427–34/8501–7, p. 730b/578. Toute Belle refers to médisants, pp. 780–2d/620. 70 JB, v. 1746–9, 1836–45, 1972–88; cf. pp. 202–3.

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who left him.71 In the Alerion, Guillaume confronts inconstant loves too. But in this dit, unlike his namesake in the Vergier and the Voir Dit, Guillaume evaluates the sparrow hawk’s and gyrfalcon’s infidelities and the alerion’s constancy rationally and dispassionately. His decision to terminate the inconstant loves at once is based on visual evidence, not hearsay. The same action is promoted in a Louange rondeau. Amis vrais ne se doit traire Où loyauté ne repaire, Ains s’en doit dou tout retraire, Car trop en puet empirer, N’il ne porroit son preu faire.72 (Loange, 54/247, v. 4–8) [A true lover must not go there where loyalty is absent; rather he must totally withdraw from it, for his worth may decline and he could accomplish nothing worthwhile.]

In the Voir Dit too, as indicated above, one of Guillaume’s counselors argues that the only reasonable option is to stop loving once and for all (VD, v. 7397– 9/7470–2). In the end, Guillaume wisely decides not to be hasty. Seeking a middle way (VD, v. 8421–36/8494–509), he tests Toute Belle in order to see, or at least hear or read, how she responds or reacts to his inquiries. According to this script, Guillaume maintains his relationship with Toute Belle, but not as openly as he did heretofore. Yet, by testing rather than openly confronting her with the accusations he has heard, he becomes duplicitous. In conformity with the bestiary examples of the stork in the Navarre and the sparrow hawk in the Alerion, the Voir Dit’s Guillaume shows how the falcon, and thus the lady, should be treated, first when the bird hunts as it should and the hunter rewards it with the prey’s heart, and second when it refuses to hunt as it should and is punished by the hunter’s denial of the heart.73 It follows that the changeable lady, like the falcon in this example, should be denied her lover’s heart until he is certain that she conforms to what is expected of her. In this, Guillaume is akin to the Rose’s domineering, but jealous husband who tries to keep his wife in place using verbal and physical abuse.74 But since Guillaume is not Toute Belle’s husband, if she refuses to become ‘reasonable’, the lover should abandon her because ‘s’amour rien ne me valdroit / Puis qu’en li loiauté JB, v. 1140–7; cf. v. 1731–2, 1744–5. Cf. Loange 192/152, and VD, v. 3443–8/3545–50. In the Alerion, v. 4236–48, the flighty gyrfalcon resembles the Toute Belle her detractors depict. 73 Machaut’s comparison of the beloved to a falcon that desires the heart first appears in the Behaigne, v. 1096–9. This example also parallels the apprentice who does not heed the master’s instruction – another parallel between apprenticeship in love and that in poetic composition. 74 Since Toute Belle seems to know the Rose (VD, p. 162g/104), she could appreciate this likening. 71 72

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faudroit’ (VD, v. 8419–20/8492–3) [her love would be worth nothing to me since she lacked loyalty]. When Toute Belle learns of Guillaume’s suspicions, the effect on her is devastating, but not debilitating. As an apprentice, she sees how good love may turn bad when confronting inconstancy like that evident in Guillaume’s own instability and duplicity. She contests his opinion as the mistress in the art of love supersedes the pupil in the art of poetry. She rebuts her mentor’s suspicions firmly and rationally. Her rebuttal redefines and reconfigures the debate in her favor. Toute Belle’s defense bears comparison with another Machaut ballade. Just as Toute Belle’s detractors use the donna mobile commonplace, so too the lady in ballade 108/147 reconfigures it as the unstable man commonplace. In the ballade, the lover says that ‘on dist que pas ne suis loiaus’ (v. 11) [people say that I am not faithful], a claim that his lady believes (v. 4). But, he asserts, ‘Amours scet bien qu’onques mal ne folie / Je n’i pensay qu’onneur et courtoisie’ (v. 20–1) [Love knows for sure that I never intended wrong or foolishness, but only what is honorable and proper]. This response follows Toute Belle’s own script when she claims that ‘il n’a au jour de hui homme vivant ou monde a qui j’aie donné ne promis m’amour que a vous’ (VD, p. 736b/584) [there is no man alive anywhere today to whom I have granted or promised my love except to you]. Like the ballade’s narrator, Toute Belle boldly corrects Guillaume’s doubts about her love, defending her conduct as blameless in Letter 43.75 In doing so, she faults Guillaume’s judgment, casting him anew in the role of erroneous, rather farcical litigant and lover. Toute Belle’s rebuttal goes even further than the lover in ballade 108/147. She does not simply proclaim her innocence. Here we can recall again the Navarre’s turtledove and stork example. Like Guillaume, the stork relies on his ‘brothers’ to fault his errant beloved. But Toute Belle, who is also alone at first, does not remain passive. She seeks help in a sector where good love, virtuous and chaste, becomes indisputable: the confessional. She confesses her good, sincere love to a priest who is also Guillaume’s friend and then sends him to Guillaume with permission to reveal her confession (VD, v. 8506–19/8591– 604, pp. 746–8b/592). Due to the sacrosanct character of confession,76 the priest vouches for her sincerity with his own, personal testimony. This is virtually unimpeachable evidence, for, if she and the priest are lying, then Toute Belle has sinned. Moreover, if the priest connived with her to concoct the alleged confession, he would represent a version of the Rose’s Faux Semblant. In this script, Toute Belle’s love cannot survive into Heaven. But there is none of this 75 Her claim is consistent with what follows. Toute Belle’s alleged désamour up to this point is a figment of Guillaume’s imagination. 76 Though a cleric and perhaps magister artium (Poirion 1965, p. 193; Earp 1995, p. 8; Robertson 2002, p. 36), there is no evidence that Machaut took orders and became a priest qualified to hear confession; the same may be said of Guillaume in the Voir Dit (Earp 1995, pp. 5–6, 7–8; Leech-Wilkinson, ed., Voir Dit, pp. xii–xiv).

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imagined plot in the Voir Dit. Supporting the positive interpretation of Toute Belle’s confession, the priest accuses Guillaume to his face, whereas none of Toute Belle’s detractors appear to have confronted her, nor does Guillaume ask them to or do so himself. The confessor also seems to have Reason on his side, as he mounts a point-by-point rebuttal of the charges against Toute Belle by her detractors. Once again, one might say that Reason effaces wrongdoing by correcting twisted waxen images. The confessor recalls Toute Belle’s recognition of Guillaume’s integrity at a time she had faith in his love, an expression of her own good hope even now when she has reason to doubt the sincerity of his allegedly good love. Toute Belle’s belief and profound disappointment are substantiated in the correspondence between herself and Guillaume. For example, in Letter 32, she asserts that ‘je ne pense pas tant de mal en vous come vous faites en moy …, si tien je vostre cuer si bon et si estable que vous ne m’oublieriés mie; et toute personne qui ha bien et loiauté en li, le doit ainsi penser des autres’ (VD, p. 536a/412–14) [I do not think that there is so much ill will in you as you do in me, and I consider your heart to be so good and stable that you would never forget me. And everyone who is good and loyal ought to think that way about others]. She is harsher in Letter 43. By doubting her constancy, Guillaume proves that, as she puts it, ‘vous estiés variables et que vous ne teniés pas bien verité’ (VD, p. 736b/584) [you were changeable and did not have a firm grasp on truth]. As a result, Guillaume is gullible (VD, v. 8511–14/8596–9); indeed, he forgets his past experience. It follows that Guillaume has wronged Toute Belle by his suspicions. Machaut’s art of poetry is also a factor in the lovers’ debate. Toute Belle knows that the very production of good poetry depends on being sincerely in love. After all, at the beginning of the Voir Dit Guillaume could not write poetry because   je n’avoie vraiement Sans, matiere ne sentement De quoy commencier le sceüsse Ne dont parfiner le peüsse, Qu’Amours, qui or fort me maistrie, Sur moy n’avoit nulle maistrie.77 (VD, v. 61–6) [truly, I did not have the mind, material, or feeling with which I could begin it (i.e., a poem), or with which I could finish it, for Love, who now strictly masters me, had no mastery over me at that time.]

Underscoring the importance of good love in the art of writing poetry, the Prologue’s Nature says that ‘Vien ci a toy, Guillaume, qui fourmé / T’ay a part, pour 77 Cf. VD, v. 7473–89/7546–62. If his love for Toute Belle must end, he will fall into the same poetic lethargy and impotence he escaped from when Toute Belle first contacted him (VD, v. 7478–83/7551–6).

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faire par toy fourmer / Nouviaus dis amoureus plaisans’ (Prologue 1, v. 3–5) [I come to you here, Guillaume, I who formed you different in order to have you fashion pleasing new dits about love]. Indeed, ‘it is because [Machaut] is a poet that he has to love’.78 The same holds for his apprentice poet, Toute Belle. Moreover, Amour, who intervenes next in the Prologue, underscores the fact that, as poet, he is obliged to praise ladies. Mais garde bien, sur tout ne t’enhardi A faire chose ou il ait villenie, N’aucunement des dames ne mesdi; Mais en tous cas les loe et magnefie.79 (Prologue 3, v. 21–4) [But take care above all not to be so bold as to write anything vile, or to slander ladies in any way; but always praise and exult them.]

Taking Amour’s words into account, médisance is precisely how Guillaume wrongs women in the Voir Dit. Misogyny is an inadmissible commonplace; it is credible only in the tavernes Machaut does not write for. The apprentice poet should bear these principles in mind when imitating his or her master and evaluating the Voir Dit’s debate. The Voir Dit illustrates debates that arise in the mind when confronting open questions. As noted earlier, just as every man may represent Everyman, by analogy Toute Belle can epitomize toute belle, a species of Everywoman.80 By suspecting that his lady is inconstant Guillaume gives vent to the very misogynist slander against toutes les belles that the Prologue implicitly condemns. By contrast, Toute Belle does not fall prey to the misandry that emerges in the Navarre debate. In Letter 43 she claims that she would never say or do anything ‘en lieu ou il vous tournast a villenie’ (VD, p. 736b/584) [anywhere that it might be interpreted as vilifying you]. Guillaume’s intemperate words, villainous ideas, and immoderate actions condemn him as forcefully as they do his counterpart in the Navarre. Having shown that Guillaume’s interpretation of the changing colors in Toute Belle’s dream image is a ‘meffait’ (VD, v. 8579/8664), and that likening her to Fortune is ‘villenie’ and ‘grant simplece’ (VD, v. 8595–6/8680–1) [great simplemindedness], her confessor revises the comparison with Fortune, alleging that Guillaume is himself an exemplar of Fortune because of the very mutability of his feelings for and conduct towards Toute Belle.81

Zeeman 1988, p. 836 (her emphasis); cf. Boulton 1993, pp. 165, 167, 192. See also Prologue 5, v. 169–82. 80 Cf. VD, v. 292–9, p. 80b/36, v. 3211–30/3313–32, p. 426i/320. 81 Leach 2011, pp. 245–6, discusses a woman who confronts the same problem in one of Machaut’s lyrics. 78

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Inventing New Issues: Debate in the Prise d’Alexandrie I conclude this chapter with the Prise d’Alexandrie, Machaut’s last major dit before the Prologue. This has the advantage of showing how Machaut brings together and illustrates a number of signature features of his art of poetry while extending that art to subjects beyond the art of love, without, however, entirely abandoning love as a feature of the good life and as a special model for understanding broader moral and social issues.82 The Alexandrie shows noteworthy features of the debate mode in Machaut’s art of poetry,83 including dialogues, deliberations, and debates in the rhetorical mode.84 As in the Confort d’ami, so in the Alexandrie Machaut adapts his art of poetry in the dits on love to dits on other subjects. More specifically, in the Alexandrie the apprentice can find more examples of the debate formula, as Machaut adapts it to historical example: the life and career of Pierre de Lusignan. Although more nearly a historical narrative poem, the Prise d’Alexandrie is still a dit (v. 1061, 8435, 8827/1060, 8434, 8826/8432, 8824). It illustrates the same art as Machaut’s other dits, including even some of his ideas on love and the good life. Foremost is the ideal of pleasing ‘dames & … damoiselles’ (v. 271) [ladies and maidens] who strive for honor and love God (v. 1891, 3559, 5905– 7/1890, 3558, 5904–6/5903–5). Such love between men and women is noble.85 Jédouin de Beauvillier is an example, he who ‘moult amoit / Armes, honneur, honneste vie, / Et croy qu’il avoit belle amie’ (v. 5881–3/5880–2/5878–80) [loved armed combat, honor, an upright life, and I believe he had a fair beloved]. But the dit also offers different perspectives on love, including friendship or male love, the ideal of Toute Belle’s detractors. Thus, the noble love that Pierre de Lusignan feels for Charles I of Luxembourg, the Holy Roman Emperor who was also the son of Machaut’s first benefactor, is ‘humbles & piteus, / Plus que turtre ne colombele,86 / N’amis vrais à s’amie bele’ (v. 1009–11/1008–10; variant ‘sa dame bele’) [humble and tender more than that of a turtledove or dove or of a true lover for his beautiful beloved]. Pierre exemplifies here ennobling love as the chaste friendship of highborn men discussed by Jaeger. Machaut also chastises those who fail to meet these high standards, notably the knights who, like the ‘frere aisié’ in the Dit dou lyon, ‘aiment mieus pais que bataille’ (v. 1909/1908) [love peace more than combat]. Pseudo-Crusaders, they promise to join Pierre de Lusignan but fail to appear at the gathering place. They include Pierre’s ‘friend’, the Holy Roman Emperor, who becomes by 82 All five manuscripts containing the Prise d’Alexandrie are anthology manuscripts (Earp 1995, p. 233). 83 Hurworth 2002. Cf. Stahuljak 2012. 84 Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 55–61. 85 On the likelihood that Machaut wrote the Dit de la marguerite to celebrate his young patron’s love for a beautiful woman, see Earp 1995, p. 231 (with additional bibliography). 86 This emotional friendship is, therefore, analogous in its intensity to the ‘turtledove love’ women feel in the Jugement Navarre as distinguished from the violent love characteristic of men in love with women.

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his inaction a ‘frere aisié’ analogous in the friendship context to the Alerion’s gyrfalcon in male–female love. Those like the emperor who do not fulfill their crusading vows shame themselves publicly. ‘Honneur, amours & dames,’ Pierre exclaims, ‘Que direz vous, quant vous verrez / Ces gens qui sont ci esserez?’ (v. 3559–61/3558–60) [Honor, Love and ladies, what will you say when you see these men who are so in error?] Such friends as ‘lovers’ are inconstant friends.87 Several episodes in the Prise d’Alexandrie turn on the truth-telling role of the dit’s narrator and, specifically, his témoignage in reporting diverse debates.88 Machaut vows as chronicler to tell all without prevarication, because ‘verité ne quiert nulls angles, / N’elle n’a que faire des jangles’ (v. 7378–9/7377–8/7375–6) [truth does not seek twists and turns and has no place for idle opinions]. Thus, Machaut reports that, in a trial before the pope and many worthy men (endoxon), Pierre denies all responsibility for the disorder in Europe that he is accused of having caused.89 Yet, creating ambiguity, Machaut reverts in another place to the Voir Dit’s assertion that it is dangerous to tell the truth when silence would be prudent (v. 8164–87/8163–86/8161–84).90 Later, again echoing the Voir Dit, the narrator qualifies a witness’s report: ‘comme Gautiers91 le m’a dit, / Autrement ne di je en mon dit’ (v. 8826–7/8825–6/8823–4)92 [as Gautier has told me; I don’t say it any differently in my dit], words that echo Guillaume’s response to the accusations of Toute Belle’s detractors. More closely related to Machaut’s vow to speak only honorably of women is his condemnation of Pierre de Lusignan for mistreating Marie de Giblet, a widow of noble birth whom Pierre tried to force into marriage with a tailor (Alexandrie, v. 8382–461/8381–460/8379–458).93 In doing so, Pierre wrongs a noble lady (Guillaume’s fault in the Navarre). Here too, Machaut vows to tell the whole truth.94 Car ci doy dire verité, Qu’amour, haine n’amité Ne me puissent ad ce mouvoir, Que mensonge face dou voir. (v. 8384–7/8383–6/8381–4)

On this judgment, see Delogu 2008, pp. 109–11. On temoignage in Machaut’s time, see Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, p. 168; Delogu 2008. 89 See Delogu 2008, pp. 112–14. 90 Cf. Delogu 2008, pp. 115–16, 122–3. 91 Gautier de Conflans is one of Machaut’s principal oral sources on events related in the Prise d’Alexandrie (de Mas Latrie, ed., Alexandrie, pp. xxiii–xxvi, 313 s.v. Conflans; ed. Hardy, p. cxx). 92 Similarly, v. 7994–5/7993–4/7991–2, 8434–5/8433–4/8431–2. 93 See de Mas Latrie, ed., Alexandrie, p. 290 n. 86/8381–460, and ed. Palmer, pp. 451–2 nn. 8393ff and 8450ff; ed. Hardy, pp. xciv–xcv, cv–cvi, cxvi, 355; Badel 1996, p. 475; Delogu 2008, pp. 116–17. 94 The Prise d’Alexandrie confronts an issue familiar from Froissart’s two versions of Edward III’s rape of the Countess of Salisbury, a divergence based on his relations with his patrons (Zink 1998, pp. 56–7). 87 88

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[For here I must tell the truth, because neither love, hatred, nor friendship can make me turn truth into falsehood.]

Refusing to disfigure his waxen matiere, Machaut criticizes Pierre’s attempt to force the widow’s remarriage as abuse of the franchise of all worthy ladies, an honor the nobleman ought to hold inviolate. Machaut bases his case on the authority of the Roman de la rose (v. 8487–93/8486–92/8485–90).95 Readers should take note of this nobleman’s abuse of authority, Machaut’s narrator insists, and, at the same time, evaluate their own conduct in the light of Pierre’s: ‘Je vous requier, pour Dieu merci, / Chastiez vous & mirez ci’ (v. 8460–1/8459– 60/8457–8) [I call upon you, for God’s sake, to learn from this and mirror yourself in it]. Assuming the role of the Voir Dit’s blackened crow, Machaut tells the truth about his patron, albeit without, apparently, any dire consequences. Of course, Pierre was dead by the time Machaut completed the dit. Important as well for his art of love and poetry, Machaut draws attention to the relation between consideration and connaissance that comes to the fore in the Alexandrie’s description of Pierre’s upbringing. Beginning with a reference to the age of accountability in Pierre’s cursus aetatum at the time when he ‘laissa l’estat d’innocence, / Et prist à avoir congnoissance’ (v. 265–6) [takes leave of the age of innocence and begins to acquire knowledge and understanding], Pierre acquires connaissance first by upbringing and education. In learning to please ladies and maidens, he takes a first step towards good love, arms and honor, as well as love for God. During this time, as Machaut describes it mythographically, Hébé, goddess of youth, unites with Minerva, goddess of wisdom, and other unnamed, but nurturing goddesses, to instruct Pierre in the virtues that he must strive for in a good life (v. 145–58, 287–90).96 As demanded in the Alerion and the Remede, Machaut emphasizes an early education and upbringing for whatever task – armes, amours, autre art ou lettre – that the young man will follow in adult life. The goddesses’ success is apparent in some events during Pierre’s later life – for example, when he intervenes in a debate as to whether they should besiege Alexandria.97 In these deliberations, the participants consider five ‘points’ or ‘choses’ that are raised against beginning the siege (v. 2643–4/2642–3): (1) the city is inhabited by a large force determined to defend it; (2) the defenders’ walls, towers, and ‘artillery’98 seem insurmountable because of their position high above those who would attempt to scale the walls; (3) there is no haven for retreat should the assault fail; (4) even if the siege succeeds, the Saracens will 95 Guillaume’s faults against Franchise are condemned in the Navarre (see above, p. 200). Is this also a reference to the Jealous Husband’s treatment of his wife? It obliquely fits Marie de Giblet who was tortured to death for refusing to marry the tailor (Alexandrie, ed. Hardy, p. 356). 96 Cf. Ribémont 2010, pp. 124–5. 97 On the background to Machaut’s largely laudatory description of Pierre’s role in these critical debates, see Delogu 2008, pp. 100–3. 98 On the rise of artillery in Machaut’s time, see Keen 1984, pp. 241–2.

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shortly receive needed reinforcements from their allies whereas the Crusaders do not have the same hope, Pierre’s ‘friend’ the Holy Roman Emperor having failed to appear (v. 2651–98/2650–97); and, finally, (5) the common soldiers oppose the siege (v. 2600–11/2599–610). In the council itself the participants include ‘les sages qui furent là’ (v. 2617/2616) – the endoxon. These men at first favor retreat because, they opine, the obstacles are so great that only God can give them victory (v. 2692/2691). This very point, however, provides the opening Pierre needs to change their mind, recalling as well one of the criteria in the use of examples: avoid arguments that an opponent can turn against you. After their successful landing on the shore before Alexandria, God granted that the Crusaders defeat and push their opponents back into the walled city. Will not God continue to aid His own? Et s’avons heü tele honnour, A l’aïde Nostre Signour, Qu’onques chose plus honnourable N’avint à nul de nous, sans fable. (v. 2714–17/2713–16) [We have achieved such honor with Our Lord’s help that, without doubt, never did anything more honorable befall us.]

God, Pierre de Lusignan argues, chose him to undertake the crusade that began in earnest with the landing before Alexandria.99 In an abrupt turnabout, the council decides in Pierre’s favor. Faith triumphs over fear. The siege is successful: the walls are scaled, the gates thrown open, and the city taken. But holding the city raises new fears. So the barons convene another council to decide how to deal with their God-given victory. This time the opposition prevails, especially after some barons and the foot soldiers desert to the ships. The Viscount of Turenne makes the case – complete with points (cf. v. 3338/3337) – for evacuating the city that they cannot, he argues, hold against the reinforcements they see gathering among the Saracens. Despite Pierre’s counterarguments and those of the papal legate, the council sides with the viscount as do all the troops still in the city. The miraculously captured city is abandoned without a fight, illustrating how uncertainty in deciding on a course of action can elicit changes and overturn past successes and decisions. The debates in Machaut’s judgment dits, the diverse interpretations – textual, medieval, and modern – of Toute Belle’s character, actions, and the purity of her love show how diverse interpretations can lead to harmful outcomes. Yet, such interpretations prove critical in evaluating the actions, motives, and thought of Pierre de Lusignan, who, like Guillaume, also failed in some tasks because of his moral instability,100 instability that becomes part of the dit and its truth. ‘La question se pose: le texte, cache-t-il ou révèle-t-il la vérité? Ce jeu de trans99 Ribémont 2010, pp. 124–5; cf. Toute Belle’s allusion to the providential love she shares with Guillaume (p. 81). 100 Hurworth 2002, p. 111.

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parence et d’opacité laisse apparaître que toute vérité, toute révélation, n’est que partielle, précaire, provisoire, elle peut basculer à tout moment puisqu’elle implique la connaissance du moi et de l’autre.’101 Even in a ‘historical’ dit like the Prise d’Alexandrie, ‘tout message est susceptible de plusieurs lectures’.102 This medieval variety of postmodernism finds, perhaps, its best expression in the Voir Dit’s crow fable. The lesson is to keep silent out of fear not only of a king or master, but also because uncertainty in identifying truth even in opinion rationally constructed and grounded may prove to be false and harmful. These episodes in the Alexandrie illustrate in a more conventional context the formula used in the love debates in Machaut’s judgment dits. As in those love debates, the Alexandrie debates or, perhaps more accurately, deliberations, exemplify consideration, connaissance, and judgment in diverse contexts. Finally, they make clear the adaptability of Machaut’s thought on good love and his art of poetry to new contexts like those of the faith and honor that Machaut emphasizes in the Confort d’ami. Love poetry is becoming at most a pleasing medium for treating larger moral and social issues.103 These new directions evident in the Alexandrie predominate in the dits treated in the next chapter. In them too the evolution in art of love and art of poetry continues along the same lines set out by Machaut, but with new, sometimes surprising results.

101 Hurworth 2002, pp. 115–16. The question reminds one of the uncertainties that arise in interpreting the Venus cloud episode in the Voir Dit. 102 Hurworth 2002, p. 117. 103 Cf. Lusignan 1986; Guichard-Tesson 2007; Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 7–9, 56–8, 143–4, 201–2.

PART III Machaut’s Legacy in Poetry and Music

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Machaut as Pre-Text: Imitation and Emulation Souvent demander et tres bien retenir les choses demandees, et bien souvent aussi moustrer et enseignier les choses retenues, font souvent le disciple son maistre surmonter.1 Il appartient a tout homme bien discipliné enquerir de chascune chose la certainneté selon la maniere et en tant comme la nature de elle le puet recevoir et le requiert. Car c’est presque semblable ou pareil que le mathematicien reçoive persuasion, et que le rethoricien requiere demonstracion.2

The first epigraph to this chapter mirrors in traditional language Toute Belle’s rise as apprentice love poet. Her progress towards independence in Machaut’s twin arts of poetry and love demonstrates successful completion of her apprenticeship. Indeed, she finally surpasses her master in the art of love while teaching him to remember and practice what he teaches in the art of poetry; as poet, she begins to write independently. In effect, in the Voir Dit she becomes a model for all those apprentices and rewriters alike who follow in Machaut’s wake and practice his art. The second epigraph, from Nicole Oresme’s translation of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics,3 points to the uncertainty that Machaut and his epigones confront as poets. In love, the uncertainty motif is obvious throughout Machaut’s œuvre. 1 Echecs mor, 39v6–8. ‘Asking questions and remembering well what has been asked, and frequently showing and teaching what one has learned, often make the pupil surpass his master.’ 2 Ethiques, p. 107. ‘It behooves every well-educated man to seek certainty in everything in conformity with its kind and insofar as its nature can accept and require it. For it is in much this way that the mathematician accepts proof whereas the rhetorician requires argument.’ In gloss 5 to this passage, the glossator (or a scribe) has obviously confused or revised the terminology: ‘Persuasion est raison vraysemblable non pas evidente, et induit a soy assentir a la conclusion; mais elle n’y contraint pas. Et en usent communelment advocaz. Et n’a point de lieu en mathematiques, mais tant seulement demonstracion qui est tres certainne, necessaire et evidente’ [Proof is a credible argument that is not obvious and that brings one to accept its conclusion; but it does not force one to agree. It is in common use among lawyers. It has no place in mathematics in which only argument that is very certain, necessary, and obvious is acceptable]. Here I use the terminology in conformity with Oresme’s translation, not its gloss. 3 On this translation, see now TransMed, vol. 2:1, pp. 62–3.

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In broadening the subject to include philosophical, moral, and social issues, as Machaut does in the Confort d’ami, quandaries arise when neither faith nor mathematics produces Oresme’s persuasion. Machaut consequently turns to rethorique and musique for his demonstracion. In this chapter, I examine some works that follow the model of this foremost poet and premier rethorique of his time after he passed away. One might say that these poets are Toute Belle’s alter egos.

Contextualization Poets in Machaut’s time evince ‘an increasingly intellectualized vernacular love poetry’ as well as a growing awareness of ‘the distinction we should acknowledge between intellectual context and what poetry is doing on its own literary terms’.4 This ‘contextualisation de la poésie lyrique’5 is evident in a number of dits written after Machaut. Using subtlety such as he displays in the last part of the Voir Dit, they turn more and more to the broader context in which he treats ideal love in the Confort d’ami. Of course, the focus of fourteenth-century authors on ‘intellectual context’ and ‘what poetry is doing on its own literary terms’ is already apparent in Jean’s Roman de la rose and in the Ovide moralisé. In these works the literal fiction of their examples – ‘what poetry is doing on its own literary terms’ – covers poetically and allegorically historical, scientific, and moral truths – an ‘intellectual context’ that prepares the way for a historical dit like the Prise d’Alexandrie. Exploring how poets practice Machaut’s contextualization of examples proves to be critical. As in the Confort d’ami, then, examples form part of a rhetorical argument that builds on Boethius along with Machaut’s own moralization of ‘courtly love’ in the Remede. Love continues to find its place in new contexts that emphasize morality, religion, government, and even science.6 ‘La poésie amoureuse se fait donc scientifique,’7 but not mathematical: rethorique and musique remain the arts of argumentation. The formal montage is apparent in the insertion of ‘encyclopedic texts’ into the new work’s love plot. These texts are ‘pieces from the encyclopedist’s map of knowledge’ that authors ‘insert and variously frame within other texts’.8 The contextualization that marks the Confort 4 Swift 2008, p. 160 n. 1; cf. Badel 1980, pp. 85, 87; Huot 1993a, pp. 239–40, 246–7; Cerquiglini-Toulet 2008. 5 Wolfzettel 2006, p. 156; cf. pp. 150–6. 6 Badel 1980, p. 85. 7 Badel 1980, p. 87. 8 Armstrong and Kay 2011, p. 106. On this ‘théorie du réemploi’, see also CerquigliniToulet 1993b, pp. 67–9. Indeed, ‘tout personnage peut cacher une histoire et chaque réflexion une digression’, including ‘digressions encyclopédiques’ (Trachsler 2000, pp. 356, 363); as in Evrart de Conty’s Echecs amoureux, ‘la incontestable vocación pedagógica del exégeta satura el texto de numerosas digresiones de tipo didáctico’ (González Doreste and Braet 2008, p. 64). Cf. also Szkilnik 2011.



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and the Fontaine brings to the fore a Machaut who reconsiders love alongside other duties in larger moral, social, and scientific contexts. This evolving and broadening contextualization is even more striking in the Prise d’Alexandrie’s evaluation of Pierre de Lusignan’s conduct during his crusading venture. Apprentices like Toute Belle would note Machaut’s shifting contextual emphasis and hierarchies in these works. Open questions emerge that not only lead to speculation on issues that engage learning, social and personal morality, and faith, but also reveal much about the late medieval art of poetry and its relation to Machaut’s evolving art of good love.

Intertextuality and Apprenticeship Recent studies evince a growing awareness of how medieval writers used sources. That is, we have begun to realize that medieval writers looked upon their sources as resources from which poets could draw material to rewrite in a new work.9 This conception of invention derives from a notion that Horace laid down and that remained constant and commonplace throughout the Middle Ages: it is preferable to make old matter new than to write using entirely new, unknown or unfamiliar matter.10 We can now appreciate how their art of poetry uses medieval terminology to define critical, interpretive approaches to medieval rewriting of source material by focusing on how readers and, more specifically, authors read their antecedents. Michael Riffaterre’s conception of intertextuality shows how a second author might construe a new work in intertextual terms. Riffaterre defines what he terms ‘l’intertexte’ as ‘l’ensemble des textes que l’on peut rapprocher de celui que l’on a sous les yeux, l’ensemble des textes que l’on retrouve dans sa mémoire à la lecture d’un passage donné’.11 Actually, his words apply to both the modern critic and the medieval commentator and glossator practicing a species of comparative literature. Riffaterre explains further the intertexte as an ‘inconnu’ when the reader first takes it up; more specifically, an author will strive to ‘cerner le manque du texte, et compléter un message dont le vide partiel, dont l’incomplétude l’invite à le reconstituer’.12 This may include encyclopedic texts. 9 Cf. Cizek’s insightful use of the art of mining quarries for material to reshape as a metaphor for medieval resourceful use of sources (Cizek 1994, pp. 55–63). 10 Copeland 1991, pp. 168–78; Cizek 1994, pp. 50–4; Kelly 2004a. I have discussed techniques and stages Macrobius defines for rewriting in the Saturnalia to show how he believed Vergil emulated Homer as an auctor in Bonaventure’s sense of an original rewriter (Kelly 1999a, chap. two). See Minnis 2010, pp. 94–5, on Bonaventure’s classification of kinds of rewriting, ranging from scribes and compilers to commentators and authors, depending on the extent to which the rewriter follows the source or rewrites it using his or her own ideas. 11 Riffaterre 1981, p. 4. Swift 2010 uses his definition of intertextuality in discussing later medieval responses to Jean de Meun’s Rose. Plumley 2012 also uses the concept of intertextuality, as defined by Kristeva, to discuss auto-citation in Machaut’s music and poetry. 12 Riffaterre 1981, p. 7.

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Thus, the medieval distinction between materia remota as untouched source material and materia propinqua as the adaptation of that material to what the author construes anew meshes with Riffaterre’s terminology. Indeed, Toute Belle rewrites Guillaume’s lyric materia remota as materia propinqua in her own lyric responses to the poems he sends her13 much as they both respond to each other’s material in their epistolary exchanges. Dovetailing with how they rewrite their sources, autobiographical memory becomes poetic autography when Machaut adapts events in his own life to the new dit’s fictional material. By rewriting, then, Toute Belle and Guillaume invent a new text. That is, in Machaut’s case, he first ‘présuppose un texte’14 – an ‘archetypal’ or mental materia propinqua, as Geoffrey of Vinsauf might put it – that he composes, either by imitation or emulation of sources, using commonplace scripts like the gradus amoris and other ritualized Erlebnismuster, or, finally, by what he recalls and even by reprises of antecedent poems, as in the Polypheme example Machaut takes from the Ovide moralisé in the Voir Dit. Toute Belle proceeds in this way while reading the poems, letters, and the Voir Dit that Guillaume sends her.15 The exchanges between Guillaume and Toute Belle correspond to the way medieval readers consider and then construe material before they, as writers, shape what they have construed in new compositions. As Geoffrey of Vinsauf puts it, ‘Opus totum prudens in pectoris arcem / Contrahe, sitque prius in pectore quam sit in ore’ (Poetria, v. 58–9) [as a prudent workman, construct the whole fabric within the mind’s citadel; let it exist in the mind before it is on the lips (Nims, p. 20)]. Geoffrey’s well-known advice serves, then, as a medieval precursor of Riffaterre’s modern theory of intertextual reading, a precursor that, ultimately, goes back to Macrobius and Horace. Indeed, the Voir Dit names several works that recent scholarship has identified as belonging to Machaut’s intertextual materia remota: Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and its French versions, Fulgentius, the Roman de la rose, and Ovid in any number of the medieval moralizations of his fables that Machaut may have known. Working with these pre-texts, as Sarah Kay notes,16 Machaut See my Introduction and chap. 3. Riffaterre 1981, p. 6. 15 He sends an incomplete version of the Voir Dit for her consideration and correction (VD, p. 592d/456); she returns it with her comments (pp. 600b/460, 742h/586). 16 Kay 2008. However, in line with the discussion of Machaut’s good love, I do not understand her emphasis on ‘the right to personal affliction’ (my emphasis). Of course, ‘such affliction was an essential part of being a poet’ for most medieval authors (p. 27); suffering could be the sufferer’s own fault (as the thrashing oneself metaphor suggests). As Judson Allen puts it (1984, p. 218), ‘human destiny is not to escape suffering, but to achieve the typology of it – Adam, David, Solomon, and Sampson are good figures, and their figural existence is the end of their exitium, towards which … feminine wiles invite. [This] leads not to catastrophe, but merely through catastrophe to truth.’ This happens to Boethius, Job, and Griselda who are variants on this Erlebnismuster for human suffering. In Machaut’s love context Fortune guarantees affliction. Strictly speaking, I suppose one does have the ‘right’ to 13 14



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adapts Boethius’s moral philosophy to new, poetic ends; his rewriting ‘constitutes a major philosophical reorientation of [his] Latin model’.17 Especially important in this reorientation is the replacement of consolation by comfort, the usual Old and Middle French translation for Boethius’s consolatio, including the comfort that Guillaume so insistently asks for from Toute Belle. Machaut’s adaptation of Boethius’s consolatio, his materia remota, as the materia propinqua of the Remede de Fortune requires a broader review of the medieval French art of poetry. I begin with the period prior to Machaut before moving on to his legacy in several late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century authors.

Truth, Fiction, and Internal Glossing before Machaut French achieves prominence as a literary language in the twelfth century. Dazzling displays of ornamental subtlety sparkle in Thomas d’Angleterre’s Tristan et Iseut and Chrétien’s Cligés. Although by and large less spectacular in terms of embellishment, the narratives by the first Partonopeu author, Marie de France, the romans d’antiquité, and Gautier d’Arras stand honorably alongside Chrétien’s other Arthurian romances. All these authors illustrate the prominence of rhetoric in narrative composition and the success with which French authors adapted the Latin art of invention to the French language and art of poetry.18 This holds as well for the lyrics of the trouvères, including Chrétien, as well as of the troubadours that preceded and influenced them.19 Rhetoric in its medieval environment is concerned with moral truths, not with logical demonstration or scholarly evidence and analysis (cf. the second epigraph to this chapter). The distinction is evident in the definition of logic in Deschamps’s Art de dictier as ‘une science d’arguer choses faintes et subtiles, coulourees de faulx argumens’.20 The Ovide moralisé illustrates this quasirhetorical sense of logique in its interpretive agenda. Its mythographic fables offer diverse allegorical readings concerning the truths of faith, dogma, science, history, and morality. All these readings emerge from beneath the surface of fictional narratives and thereby intellectualize poetry using various modi tracsuffer from love or, more broadly, from war, the plague, illness, torture, the infirmities of age, all sources of suffering in the Middle Ages. But who would want that right? In these cases one is victim. Machaut’s reading of Boethius shows that one does have ‘the right’ to escape ‘personal affliction’. Liberation from Fortune’s downturn is the primary goal of Machaut’s good love because it frees the lover from the suffering caused by desire. 17 Kay 2008, p. 31; cf. Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 89–96. 18 Kelly 1992; James-Raoul 2007. Note the recent suggestion that Chrétien’s romances read better as poetry than as narrative (Thinking, 2011, esp. p. 11). 19 See, for example, Mölk 1968; Paterson 1975; Dragonetti 1979; Handbook, chap. eighteen (by Nathaniel B. Smith) and nineteen (by Elisabeth Schulze-Busacker); Kay 2001; Kelly 2005 and 2011, pp. 391–409. 20 On argument as rhetorical argumentum, a verisimilar fiction that serves as an example, see chap. 3, n. 8.

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tandi to contextualize the work’s surface narratives. The allegorical mode in particular facilitates the passage of Ovid’s Metamorphoses as materia remota to new materia propinqua in the Ovide moralisé through intertextes that, as ‘encyclopedic texts’, its anonymous author integrated with Ovid’s rewritten fables. In medieval poetic efforts to mine narratives for layers of intellectual ore beneath their literal surface, truth was an important driving force and desideratum for twelfth- and thirteenth-century writers.21 Yet, as we have seen, there was peril in stating literal truths, as some authors acknowledge in their own version of Machaut’s ‘Souvent meschiét de dire voir’ (VD, v. 7793/7866), a danger Machaut faces in all his dits.22 According to one thirteenth-century romancer, this is especially so when writing about or for powerful patrons. Car en voir dire apertement N’a fors que tristece et torment. De ceus qui or sont maintenant Ne puis faire conte avenant Se je vueill dire verité. Pour ce me vient en volenté De dire, c’on ne m’en repraigne, Des aventures de Bretaigne.23 (Claris, v. 81–8) [Speaking the truth openly brings nothing but grief and torment. About those alive today I cannot tell an acceptable tale if I want to tell the truth. Therefore I have decided to speak of the adventures in Britain in order to elude blame.]

The Claris author’s words echo Machaut’s own ruminations on truth-telling in the Voir Dit as well as in the Prise d’Alexandrie. This hesitation fueled a tendency to claim that one is speaking a truth or teaching a lesson only in general terms. But it also became common to leave the final judgment to the audience or, more pragmatically, to the author’s patron.24 The resulting open questions

Kelly 1992, chap. 6. Cf. Ehrhart 1999 on the Fontaine amoureuse. 23 Cf. Claris, v. 1–130; Pierreville 2008, pp. 207–8. The anonymous author couches criticism in abstractions (Pierreville 2008, pp. 222–3); in her Introduction to the edition Pierreville refers to losses in the Holy Land that may well explain the Claris author’s reluctance to speak out. For earlier examples of this anxiety, see GMaréchal, v. 5143–8, and Durmart, v. 4332–40. On the cleric incapable of doing more than record issues too great for him to comment on, see Badel 1988a, p. 104; on the simpleton like some of Machaut’s ‘Guillaumes’ who fails to comprehend the truths he mouths, see Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 172–7. 24 Cf. the proposal that Machaut wrote the Navarre correction of the Behaigne at the instigation of Bonne de Luxembourg (Earp 1995, pp. 25–6). A common example of the patron’s influence is, of course, Marie de Champagne’s san in the composition of Chrétien’s Chevalier de la charrette, about which interpolations have proliferated (Bruckner 1986). 21 22



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may rely upon the debate or jeu-parti model,25 or judgment may reveal a patron’s intertexte. As the author’s freedom to ‘voir dire apertement’ evolved, allegory and Ovidian exemplification emerged as major modes, especially under the lasting influence of Jean de Meun’s part of the Roman de la rose.26 The danger the Claris author saw in ‘voir dire apertement’ gave way to a safer ‘voir dire covertement’ or ‘en partie’. That is, the scope of allegorical conceptualization and expression of truth broadens while, at the same time, fictional debates about truth proliferate, relying on authorities, including credible, cogent examples like Deschamps’s literal, but ‘faulx argumens’. These fictional examples reveal their truth metaphorically and thus subtly. Poetic subtlety for medieval authors meant deploying digressive, descriptive, and debate modes to shape inscribed encyclopedic texts. Jean de Meun showed the way by making Guillaume de Lorris’s love allegory a source of disquisitions on a variety of topics extraneous to the story begun by Guillaume, but present in Jean’s projected intertexte or, perhaps more accurately, intertextes. Jean recontextualizes in this way his amorous materia remota by continuing it without changing a word, but definitely reconstruing its meaning. Jean’s ample use of digressions, descriptions, and debates has led many scholars to justify them in terms of his supposed encyclopedic intentions. Yet, as an encyclopedia in its usual sense, Jean’s Rose fails miserably, at the very least because it lacks encyclopedic scope and arrangement. Thus, Brunetto Latini’s Tresor easily outdoes it – not to mention the works by Vincent of Beauvais. Those who see the Rose as an encyclopedia marginalize the kind of montage his new amalgam actually illustrates. It contains, of course, ‘encyclopedic texts’, but Guillaume de Lorris’s love story served Jean more profoundly as an intertexte that raised larger moral and social issues that Guillaume’s incomplete poem ignores, a kind of composition that anticipates Machaut’s Confort d’ami. With them, Jean defines emotions and recontextualizes conduct not only in love and in diverse kinds of love, but also in any rational vs. related irrational conduct. In Riffaterre’s words, Jean strove to ‘cerner le manque du texte, et compléter un message dont le vide partiel, dont l’incomplétude l’invite à le reconstituer’. To Jean’s mind, the incomplete state of Guillaume’s Rose (Rose, v. 10496–624) invited continuation that not only completed its fictional narrative, but also amplified on its significance by inserting encyclopedic texts that recontextualize and reconfigure Guillaume de Lorris’s narrative wax. To this end, Jean expounds on topics such as friendship, deceit, women, creation, and salvation using new materia propinqua. By drawing on diverse sources while adapting them, Jean invents a new context in which he reconstrues Guillaume de Lorris’s romance with a sens that stimulates open questions and debate about its significance and meaning.

25 26

Badel 1988a, p. 103. Huot 1993a; Minnis 2001; Swift 2010; Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 73–80.

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Although Jean promised a gloss to his narrative (Rose, v. 15115–23), none has been found. Scholars usually have in mind systematic accompanying glosses like those in the Ovide moralisé or external glossing as commentary like Evrart de Conty’s Echecs moralisés written to explain his Echecs amoureux. Have we rightly understood Jean’s reference to his ‘glossing’? If Jean is referring to the descriptions, digressions, and debates – the ‘encyclopedic texts’ he inserts into his narrative and amplifies as the plot advances27 – as glosses, then his internal glossing is better seen as analogous to the glosses that elucidate the thirteenthcentury Queste du saint graal.28 Toute Belle might well see in this technique a common feature of literary glossing.29 But there is also a significant difference between glossing in the Queste and in Jean’s Rose. The authoritative and literal glosses to the Queste are absolute when they are set out by recognizable religious authorities. However, in the Rose, internal glossing by Ami, the Vieille, Faux Semblant, Nature, and Genius lead to the riote of Machaut’s tavernes, not to the Holy Grail or Reason’s ‘integumanz’ (Rose, v. 7138). As contraires choses, these opposing glosses demand subtle readers and invite debate. Rather than voir dire apertement, that is, Jean’s procedure, voir dire covertement, is allegory using poetic integumanz that his Guillaume refuses to consider, but that are nonetheless present in Jean’s intertexte. Here, the apprentice poet could note how he made materia remota into materia propinqua. The technique does not have to include the same lesson, as Machaut shows in the Vergier, his own rewriting of material from Guillaume de Lorris. The absence of a clear-cut moral leaves the Rose suspended in ambiguity, forcing readers to judge, individually or during discussion and debate, what the work means or, perhaps more cogently, how it can be read and applied to their own experience and beliefs. Like literati of the late Middle Ages, writers too, viewing the Rose as a model to imitate and emulate, might include diverse, even contradictory readings in their compositions much as the author or narrator, or diverse narrators like those in the Roman de la rose, do. This is the poetics of late medieval contraires choses and dubitabilia. In Machaut’s case, the Voir Dit too is open to diverse individual readings like those discussed in chapter two.30 While allowing for these diverse readings or intertextes, the reader may consider his or her own thoughts and feelings – an awareness of his or her 27 Cf. Kelly 1995; see also Huot 1993a. Brandsma 2006 suggests how extradiegetic audiences may be influenced by intradiegetic audience reactions. A later reader’s intertexte can go very far in glossing the Rose independently, as Jean Molinet does in his Roman de la rose moralisé or Evrart der Conty in his Echecs amoureux, or even in some modern ‘glosses’ of Jean’s romance. 28 See Tuve 1966, chap. five; Strubel 2002, pp. 158–61. 29 Toute Belle alludes to the Roman de Lancelot (Voir Dit, p. 162g/104), which implies that she is familiar with the Queste branch of that cycle and its subtleties; for other allusions in the Voir Dit to ‘Lancelot adventures’, see ed. Imbs, VD, p. 794 s.v. ‘Lancelot’ (to which add v. 6106/6179). She could also have appreciated formal resemblances between it and the Rose that she also knew. 30 Cf. Coleman 1996, pp. 115–17; Roy 1999b.



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place in the moral or social universe the dit depicts. Christine de Pizan encourages such invention of personal intertextes in her Gloss to the Advision; such intertextual reading and self-examination may well have been taken for granted in her time. More importantly, in the context of Toute Belle’s apprenticeship, intertextes allow for imitation and emulation like that we have observed in her exchanges with Guillaume in the Voir Dit. The same awareness of the author as reader stimulates the new author’s intertextes. The ambiguity Jean de Meun generates continues as a narrative mode after him even in works that do not contain an actual debate. Leach finds it, for example, in Jean de Condé’s early fourteenth-century Messe des oiseaux. ‘Although it is not itself a debate poem, like many such poems Jean’s Messe refuses to resolve its tensions within the text. Instead the poem forces its readers to fall back on their own reason to come to the right conclusion (even if, perhaps particularly if, they have found the exposition of the wrong one pleasurable).’31 We have observed the same diversity in modern interpretations of the Venus cloud episode as well as of Genius’s sermon in the Roman de la rose.

Choices In his dits written before the Voir Dit, Machaut uses the dialogue and debate modes to relate episodic encounters. But in the Voir Dit he foregrounds narrative and plot, an emphasis he further deploys in his next dit, the Prise d’Alexandrie. The journey motif becomes prominent,32 especially in the form of the narrative motif of the homo viator in bivio or in trivio.33 Pierre de Lusignan in the Prise d’Alexandrie, followed by the Chevalier in Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant, the lover/narrator in the Tresor amoureux, and an analogous figure in the Echecs amoureux, must, like Guillaume in the Voir Dit, make choices at crucial narrative or intellectual crossroads.34 While, generally speaking, Machaut’s dits depict choices among different kinds of love and lovers, the works that grow out of Machaut’s ‘school’35 make the crossroads, whether literal or allegorical, into a didactic lesson on crucial choices in one’s moral and social life. Froissart’s dits too depict confrontations with crucial choices. To be sure, the Hainaut poet’s conception of love does not echo Machaut’s concept of good love, nor does Froissart seek a deeply philosophical or ethical foundation for love or any other human activity. The personification Philosophie in the Leach 2007, p. 242 (her emphasis); see also Huot 1993a, pp. 313–15. On what follows, see Segre 1990, pp. 25–66; Strubel 2002, pp. 216–27. 33 Maupeu 2007, pp. 186–99; cf. Harms 1970. 34 Cf. in the TAm, pp. 56–64, 241–71; in the Chevalier errant, pp. 41: v. 70–2; 42–3: v. 4–12; 47–8: v. 195–226; 1033–164; in encounters with Nature, Venus, Diana, Amour, Pallas, and Juno (Echecs am1 (I), v. 675–98, 707, and Echecs mor, pp. 377–435; cf. as well pp. 261–86). 35 Segre 1990, p. 61. 31 32

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Joli Buisson, for example, is an epicurean, youth-oriented philosophy whereas Jeunesse is soberly aware of the other ages that lie ahead.36 The love Froissart’s dits exemplify declines with youth’s passage until the aging narrator finally turns to the Virgin Mary and religion. Continuing in this vein, Froissart’s later Meliador extols chivalry and a conjugal morality based on chivalric courtship and noble marriage.37 Froissart’s romance relates a five-year quest with frequent interpolations, notably the inserted lyrics by Wenceslas de Brabant, one of his patrons. The growing importance of narrative in some late medieval dits permits greater emphasis and reflection on the changes and choices in life over time. As Froissart’s Jeunesse recognizes in the Joli Buisson, the cursus aetatum script facilitates the relocation of the gradus amoris of youth in new, more ‘adult’ contexts. As the narrator moves on to new and different ages and contexts, new Erlebnismuster replace earlier topical schemes. Froissart’s Joli Buisson de jonece is a prime example of this adaptation, as is Charles d’Orléans’s Songe en complainte.38 The different ages in life that make for reinterpretation of experience prove crucial, as authors use them to depict educational experience and maturation that vernacular poetry treats on ‘its own literary terms’. The intent is not to confront French-reading publics with the profound issues debated in the universities. Rather, parler vulgairement brings received knowledge to the laity who sought direction in their own social, political, and moral lives during especially turbulent times of schism, war, plague, and social instability. Machaut’s moralization of love poetry is a step in this direction. At the same time, love recedes as topic before larger ethical issues that emerge as life goes on and that readers may wish or feel compelled to probe when evaluating their own lives. Authors accordingly foreground dialogue and debate as opinions diversify and open questions multiply. During the years of crisis in the Hundred Years War, confrontation with such choices is one of the best ways to detect in a medieval author that subjectivity which Michel Zink defines as ‘le point de vue d’une conscience’.39 Individual truths confront and inform individual choices, forcing reconsideration as real or apparent discrepancies or contradictions arise. In this context, every reader and author becomes a Meliador maiden evaluating what he or she reads in the light of personal interpretive intertextes. The issues become increasingly complex when faith provides absolute truths that are not immediately evident or agreed upon. Indeed, the Schism joins the Hundred Years War and the plague as source of uncertainty and deep anxiety. On a broader, sometimes universal scale, individual experience confronts the same uncertainty that Guillaume and

Kelly 1998, pp. 112–13, and 2010a, pp. 97–8. For a thorough study of Froissart’s evolution, see now Schwarze 2003. 38 Kelly 1978, pp. 204–6. 39 Zink 1985, p. 8; cf. my application of Zink’s conception of medieval subjectivity to the case of Christine de Pizan (Kelly 2007, chap. six). 36 37



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Toute Belle do in their amorous relationship because of war, disease, and natural calamities.

Machaut’s Legacy Asking not only how Machaut wrote, but also how he became an exemplar of the art of writing poetry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, I have up to this point depicted Toute Belle’s apprenticeship in the art of poetry as representative of how a more accomplished pupil in Machaut’s ‘school’ might learn to compose more demanding pieces. In order to complete this survey of apprenticeship, we must now move beyond the Voir Dit to observe how, implicitly or potentially, Toute Belle might have written Machaldian poetry. To do so, as indicated above, I shall look at some writers who came after our premier rethorique.40 This allows us to see how diverse ‘apprentices’ as epigones carry Machaut’s legacy on into the next generation of poets. Thus, I examine these dits and some inserted lyrics as if Machaut’s apprentices wrote them – a fiction – in order to gain purchase on the advanced stages of exemplary apprenticeship in Machaut’s twin arts of love and poetry – a truth – that the final, subtler parts of the Voir Dit point to. No dits extant today are attributed to Toute Belle or any other identifiable woman author before Christine de Pizan. After Christine rejected chaste love as an impracticable ideal, she turned, as much as professionally possible, away from love poetry to treat different moral or social topics of contemporary significance. Even when she did treat a good love like Machaut’s, it was in order to support Sebile de Monthault’s stern rejection. As we have seen, this is the course Toute Belle threatens to take should Guillaume’s love prove false. Other epigones follow various trajectories in their own œuvre, of which Deschamps’s and Froissart’s writings are obvious examples. The pedagogical mode becomes pervasive while poets diversify poetic matiere, culminating in Christine de Pizan and Alain Chartier, each a writer who ‘gladly wolde … lerne and gladly teche’ (CT, General Prologue, v. 308). Attempting to map out Machaut’s influence in late medieval France,41 one still faces enormous obstacles today. Much more has yet to be done before we can draw a relatively accurate picture of how the twin arts he favored were practiced by fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writers as well as determine Machaut’s place and influence in that tradition.42 Elizabeth Eva Leach has noted, 40 A number of scholars have treated the way Machaut was read by his successors, especially Deschamps, Froissart, Oton de Grandson, Christine de Pizan, and a few others. See, for example, Schilperoort 1936; Huot 1987; Bétemps 2002; Strubel 2002, esp. pp. 187–201; McGrady 2006a. Here I focus on three dits that have not yet been generally studied as epigonal works. 41 Altmann 2012; McGrady 2012. 42 Badel 1988a and b; Cerquiglini-Toulet 1988; Léonard 1996; Strubel 2002.

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for example, that, by and large, Machaut’s conception of good love does not appear to have been well received by his epigones.43 Nonetheless, some dits of the period do reflect features of Machaut’s twin arts of love and poetry. Indeed, the authors of the writings discussed in the rest of this chapter have enough in common with Machaut’s to merit attention to how they reconstrued his legacy. In analyzing the medieval dit, we are today about where we were in the late 1950s and the 1960s when Chrétien de Troyes emerged as the central author of Arthurian romances, with the result that many contemporary authors and, especially, authors who wrote after him were largely ignored or downgraded.44 Similarly, today Machaut is the central author and the principal reference for dit composition, while some of his epigones await more study. In an attempt to remedy somewhat this neglect, I focus in this chapter on three dits. All three use the exemplary, allegorical, and debate modes in order to open love poetry to broader social, moral, scholarly, and religious contexts adumbrated in Machaut’s dits. As Badel has noted, La vie amoureuse y cède devant l’action et la contemplation. La grande tradition courtoise s’investit dans le lyrisme et, dans une mesure moindre, dans les dits et débats. Elle ne disparaît pas entièrement du poème, mais même les récits les plus proches de Guillaume de Lorris font la part belle à Raison. Qu’elle gronde ou console, cette puissance règne sur la littérature du XIVe siècle, même si elle est nommée Connaissance, Entendement, Philosophie, voire Pallas. Fortune, autre figure très présente, ne dispute pas le premier rang à Raison, elle en est l’auxiliaire dévouée. L’une et l’autre donnent à la littérature de la gravité, sinon une tristesse que les malheurs du temps expliquent assez.45

Each of the three dits discussed below reveals a marked movement away from the traditional love motif, however it is defined or depicted, towards larger issues. However, their encyclopedic texts are no longer shaped only as digressions; they become integral parts of the narrative. Although less well known than their contemporaries Froissart and Deschamps, they develop in interesting ways the art Machaut illustrates (I have occasionally referenced their reception of Machaldian ideas and art in the previous chapters). In doing so, they confront issues Toute Belle herself might have considered had she written dits in imitation of those she knows by Machaut as her cursus aetatum progressed along with (in Zink’s words) ‘le point de vue’ of her ‘conscience’. Critically, the three dits are not mere imitations; they are emulations illustrative of pupils named in the Echecs moralisés and quoted in this chapter’s first epigraph who, if they do not surpass their master, do at least move beyond 43 Leach 2011, p. 177. She also reports some historical background for the threat to Toute Belle’s honor in the fates of nobility who violated moral and social strictures (pp. 179–80). 44 Cf. Arthur French, chap. ten, esp. pp. 394–7; Zink 1988. 45 Badel 1988b, p. 146. On the prominence of melancholy in these writings, see Cerquiglini-Toulet 1993b; Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 127–34.



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him. That is, these writers surpass the master’s preferred matter of love while still practicing his arts of poetry and depicting variant loves. The commonplace model implicit or explicit in all three is the ages of life script.46 In the order that I treat them here they are: the anonymous Tresor amoureux, a debate poem on the troubled relation between love and other features of a noble life in quest of connaissance; Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant, a prosimetrum that follows a narrative trajectory plotted as the Chevalier’s cursus aetatum until late in life he finally attains connaissance based on a traditionally Christian morality and worldview; and, finally, Evrart de Conty’s verse Echecs amoureux and his Echecs moralisés, a prose commentary or what the author calls a declaracion47 on his verse dit. Each work narrates in its own way an apprenticeship to life, its choices and vicissitudes; each does so with an art of poetry analogous to that Machaut uses in his own dits.

Debates and Audiences in the Tresor Amoureux: Amour and Connaissance The anonymous48 Tresor amoureux is a dream vision (see TAm, p. 53: v. 36–45 and rubric) in which the narrator meets Connaissance, who then introduces him to Amour, the god of love. Each personification he encounters instructs him on his upcoming journey into life and love.49 Amour, of course, emphasizes the love life, but his50 instruction and subsequent debate with Connaissance at the end of the Tresor locate the theme of love in broader moral and social contexts. Congnoissance fait concevoir Qu’est amours de loyal amy;51 Congnoissance fait parcevoir Fiere haïne d’ennemy; Congnoissance à homme endormi Fait esveillier son sentement;52 Congnoissance fait clerement Congnoistre tous oscurcis fais,

Badel 1988b, pp. 153–7; cf. Cerquiglini-Toulet 1993b, pp. 92–3; Strubel 2002, p. 207. On declaracion as commentary or gloss, see Echecs mor, 5r31–4, 14r29–34, 15r39–v5, 26v1–6, 37r44–v3, etc. 48 Unless the name ‘maistre Lucas’ (TAm, p. 93: XVIII, v. 5) refers to the author. The title maistre suggests clerical status. The original editor attributed this dit to Froissart, but the attribution is probably wrong (Scheler, ed., Œuvres Froissart, vol. 1, pp. lxii–lxvi; Strubel 2002, p. 180). 49 Strubel 2002, pp. 215–16. 50 Amour as god of love is a male personification in the Tresor. 51 In the Tresor context, this description comprehends both love and friendship. 52 Perhaps an allusion to dream vision as dorveille and, allegorically, an awakening of the young man to his feelings and desires, a sense evident in Villon’s Lais (Kuhn 1967, pp. 113–40). On dorveille, see pp. 282–3. 46 47

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Tant que par bon entendement Congnoissance met tout à pais. (TAm, pp. 240–1: XXIX, v. 11–20) [Connaissance makes one understand the love of a loyal friend/ beloved; she makes one perceive an enemy’s fierce hatred; she causes a sleeping man’s feelings to awaken; she makes one know all that is obscure such that she achieves accord through mutual understanding.]

In other words, Connaissance’s finesse is the source of subtlety in dispelling uncertainties in order to achieve agreement on complex social and moral issues. In the Tresor amoureux personifications like Connaissance and Amour move about and speak amidst architectural and topographical settings that are glossed allegorically, such as, notably, the tents of Amour and Connaissance pitched side by side near the palace of Beauté,53 in which the narrator-lover becomes greffier, or clerk of court, for a time. Amour’s tent houses his ally Nature (p. 59: v. 230). Connaissance’s tent rises up to ‘pur ciel’ as the firmament or even Heaven (p. 57: v. 154); her tent is inhabited by Loyauté, Raison, and Souffisance (p. 58: v. 172–5).54 The narrator’s beloved dwells in the palace that, allegorically, represents ‘le temps de la vie presente’ (pp. 60–1: v. 266, 285) [the present life], and therefore an early stage in the narrator’s life, suggesting that, as one passes through life’s cursus aetatum, connaissance as experience and knowledge will grow, evolve, and deepen (although beauty may well decline). Indeed, we learn that the Tresor amoureux is written in order to recall what the dream reveals to the narrator (p. 55: v. 88–94) as well as to help him understand his experiences and, ultimately, assist him in seeking ‘l’ordenance de ce monde’ (p. 252: XLI, refrain) in which he finds himself;55 Connaissance teaches that ‘moralité et hystore’ reveal ‘l’ordenance de ce monde’ (p. 251: XLI, v. 2–10). In this framework, lengthy discussions and debates treat ‘D’armes, d’amours et de moralité’ (pp. 77–8: I, refrain). In terms of the Tresor’s relation to Machaut’s poetry, most obviously, the dit’s title recalls the tresor motif in the Voir Dit; as in Machaut’s dit, it is an attribute of the narrator’s beloved. But tresor, so important in describing Toute Belle’s virtues, is less precisely analyzed in the Tresor amoureux. The narrator’s lady is guardian of her treasury of mercy (p. 197: v. 1983); she is supported in this effort and defended by diverse personifications, notably by Dangier as gatekeeper (p. 199: v. 2027) and Grace as treasurer (p. 207: v. 2284–5). Grace decides which requests to grant from her ‘treasure’ (pp. 207–8: v. 2285–7, 2306– 7). Other figures guard the lady and the palace much as the rose’s guardians do in the Rose.56 The narrator remains ‘Greffier du Tresor Amoureux’ (p.  206: v. Modeled on or inspired by the château built by Charles V (TAm, p. 288 n. 11). Strubel 2002, pp. 328–9. 55 Pp. 56: v. 123–34; 64: v. 379; 76–7: v. 788–96 (see also pp. 242–3: XXX, v. 21–30, and XXXI). 56 Besides Amour himself, Grace, and Dangier, the Tresor amoureux refers to Amour’s 53 54



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2265) until Amour dismisses him for alleged lack of commitment to him (pp. 271–2: v. 2931–48). As greffier, the narrator is the clerk designated to keep a record of court proceedings – in effect by writing this dit in order to record and better understand the dialogues and debates that comprise most of its content. The narrator’s task is made more difficult by the conflicting opinions of Amour, Connaissance, and, implicitly, the dit’s multiple readers and judges. Amour asks the narrator to write the Tresor (p. 74: v. 712–18), anticipating his assignment as greffier further on, but also bringing the narrator into conflict with the god when he situates Connaissance on a higher plane than Amour (pp. 261–3: v. 2574–656). To assist the narrator in his task, two guides are named, Morpheus and Orpheus (p. 71: v. 617–18). Together they will show him how to compose a dream vision using ‘Rethorique’ in the sense of French-language versification, an art closely allied, as in Machaut, to ‘Musique’ (p. 72: v. 631–41). The breadth of the discussion ‘D’armes, d’amours et de moralité’ in the Tresor amoureux is evident in the topics that lead to debate. Whoever wrote the Tresor amoureux did so in modes reminiscent of those favored in the Voir Dit. Indeed, much in the anonymous dit conforms to Machaut’s art of poetry. Thus, the author is concerned not only with small vices in composition (p. 281: v. 3185–94), but also with the dit’s ordonnance – what Amour refers to as ‘la maniere comment il se doit ordener’ (p. 74 rubric) [the way it should be ordered]. These concerns rely upon judgment, a judgment discussed not only in the lengthy, but lively conversation between the narrator and a squire, but also again, near the end of the dit, in the acrimonious debate between Amour and Connaissance. As often in Machaut, the intended readers57 will be the ultimate judges of the issues raised, especially that select group or endoxon that Connaissance calls ‘tous li plus letré’ (p. 265: v. 2720). Still, as we have also seen in Machaut, the larger, more ‘democratic’ number of potential judges makes for uncertainty in resolving the open questions the Tresor amoureux raises since readers, even ‘learned’ readers, may well disagree as much as the dit’s own speakers do. The Tresor amoureux captures other aspects of Machaut’s work. Thus, while it contains no lengthy reprises like Machaut’s Polypheme extract from the Ovide moralisé in the Voir Dit, there are echoes of Machaut’s verse in some relatively commonplace references to both amour and moralité. These include not only echoes of Machaut’s art of poetry like those mentioned above. More important mother Venus, Hardement, Desir, Penser, Beau Parler, Espoir, Loyauté, Doulx Regart, Beau Maintien, Maniere, Cortoisie, Bonté, Beauté, Honneur, Humilité, Cremeur, and Honte. All are attributes of the beloved. 57 There are multiple references to these readers throughout the dit: pp. 68: v. 500–24; 74–6: 705–76; 77–8: I–II, v. 1–10; 80: III, v. 21–30, and IV, v. 1–4; 119–20: XLII; 121: XLIV, v. 3–4; 136: v. 1304–8; 138: v. 1368–73; 186–7: v. 1608–19; 236: XXIV, v. 29–38; 258: v. 2482–90; 260–3: v. 2543–656; 275: v. 3021–32; 275–6: v. 3041–60; 278: v. 3116–24; 280–1: v. 3163–200.

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for the narrator is the subject of love and moralité that the ‘plus letré’ will consider in both the dialogue/debate between the narrator and a squire and that between Amour and Connaissance with which the dit concludes. The topics, moreover, include the link between love and reinvigoration that makes action possible and, in Machaut’s case, accounts for his ability to begin writing again after Toute Belle contacts him for the first time. In the Tresor amoureux too, love is the ‘Mouvement et cause premiere’ ‘Pour tous amans resvigorer / Pour tous amans leurs faiz58 produire’ (TAm, pp. 92–3: XVII, v. 4, 7–8) [impulse and first cause … to reinvigorate all lovers so as to produce their deeds/poems]; in consonance with this sentiment, the lover must honor all ladies for the sake of his beloved (p. 114: XXXVI, v. 26–8). Further, as Machaut shows in the Lyon and the Alerion, so too in the Tresor amoureux not all loves are alike, even when they are good. The lover should strive for the best kind of love (pp. 163–4: XIX) by relying on both reason and mesure, as argued by Connaissance (pp. 242–4: XXXI–XXXII). To underscore the virtuous nature of good love, the Jupiter–Io fable explains that Io allegorically shows (pp. 267–8: v. 2795–828) how Reason moderates desires and effaces all vices (pp. 245–7: XXXIV–XXXV), just as the personification is said to do in Machaut’s Behaigne: ‘Elle [Raison] est à tous vices escluse’ (p. 246: XXXV, v. 3)59 [she is sluice gate to all vices], presumably stopping the vices while allowing the virtues to pass. Critically echoing Machaut, desire in the Tresor amoureux is dependent on hope to achieve the ‘amour pure’ that the narrator evokes early on (p. 151: VII, v. 29), with Reason functioning as an essential agent in the attainment of such love (p. 152: VIII). In this way the Tresor amoureux conjoins the Machaldian arts of love and poetry in the context of moralité. As a ‘traittié’ (p. 244: XXXII, v. 23), the Tresor amoureux also shares Machaut’s heavy reliance on the debate mode. Thus, its complex forma tractatus contains seven parts explicitly identified. Four parts in octosyllabic couplets à rimes plates alternate with three sets of ballades60 that report ongoing discussions and debates between the narrator and a squire, both of whom are in love. Likewise, in the dit’s last part, Connaissance and the god of love debate their respective opinions on the good life. More echoes of Machaut reverberate in this final debate, as each personification critiques the narrator’s text in a manner that leads to a provisional intradiegetic denouement when they agree to let the work’s extradiegatic audiences judge the controversy. This is Amour’s idea. A term for poem (T-L, vol. 3, cols. 1600–1). An image therefore of Reason as a faculty that regulates the emotions. 60 The distribution and versification are carefully planned (pp. 75–6: v. 734–62; cf. Scheler, ed., TAm, p. 290 nn. 739–55). There were to be 800 lines in each of the four octosyllabic parts 1, 3, 5, and 7. There is a discrepancy in parts 1 and 3 that contain, respectively, 796 and 798 lines because of lacunae in the sole surviving manuscript (see pp. 290 n. 796 and 295 n. 1598). There are 44 ballades in parts 2 and 6 and 40 ballades in part 4; each ballade segment includes a cluster of twelve ballades entées (pp. 94–108: XIX–XXX, 159–73: XV–XXVI, and 224–38: XV–XXVI). The ‘grafts’ are rondeaux the lines of which recur as reprises at set places in their conjoined ballades. 58 59



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   Et fist Amours une telle ordenance Que pour lui et pour Congnoissance Et chascun, pour tant qu’il li touche, Mettroient le fait en la bouche De ceulz qui ce livre liront, Et bien justement esliront Les arguemens hault et bas Pour appaisier tous les debas.  (p. 278: v. 3116–24) [And Amour established a procedure for himself and for Connaissance as well as for each person insofar as it applies to him or her, such that judgment will be left to the book’s readers. They will select accurately its arguments high and low in order to resolve the debates.]

Among these ‘arguemens’ (in the sense of debates), we also find echoes of Machaut’s good love as the pure love noted above. The Tresor amoureux, then, offers a perspective on medieval composition that illuminates the ways we have used to read and understand Machaut’s poetry on its own terms. First and foremost is the readers’ role in evaluating the opinions that the dit treats in the debate mode. Indeed, debate is the Tresor’s primary modus tractandi. Early on, then, the narrator meets a squire who is distraught because of an unhappy love. He suggests that they converse on some subjects of mutual interest, and they agree to discuss and even debate one another’s views on love and other related topics. Parlons d’armes, se c’est vo grez, Ou d’amours et des haulz degrez Où les amoureux fait embatre, Et nous y trouverons assez A quoy nous nous porrons esbatre.  (p. 85: IX, v. 23–7) [Let’s talk about arms if you like, or about love and the high status it makes lovers strive after; there we’ll find lots to amuse ourselves with.]

The squire immediately begins the dialogue by asking the narrator questions about both love and arms that he seeks answers for; he insists on answers coming ‘De vostre propre sentement’ (p. 86: X, v. 6). The conclusion of the Tresor amoureux summarizes the issues the debate raises, but without offering authoritative answers or judgment. Connaissance and Amour agree that the issues raised by the narrator and squire fall under two heads. The first is ‘D’armes et d’amours’ (p. 276: v. 3049) [about arms and love], the second ‘De science et de bon eür’ (p. 276: v. 3053) [about knowledge and good fortune]. Like the Navarre’s points to adjudicate, seven questions address the issues the debate raises. But, notably, they are addressed to the dit’s readers for consideration, not to a single noble patron. They move from the more

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specifically chivalric issues of arms and love to the human condition and the wide diversity among human beings, their actions and their emotions.61 1. Is it preferable to attain honor and fame in arms or in love? (p. 276: v. 3064–9)62 2. To live in constant delight (‘deduit’), is it preferable to serve love faithfully or to follow arms honorably? (p. 276: v. 3070–4)63 3. Is it preferable to have knowledge together with a good conscience or good fortune in the uncertain life at court? (p. 277: v. 3075–80)64 4. Can there be anyone so well born that he could honorably follow both arms and love? (p. 277: v. 3081–6)65 5. Why is Love more successful in pursuing one person than a hundred others under his domination? (p. 277: v. 3087–90)66 6. How can Nature allow a child of noble character to become ill-bred? (p. 277: v. 3091–6)67 7. Why, of all the children born of the same father and mother, does only one child excel? (p. 278: v. 3097–104)68 Reader-judges are to consider the strong and weak points in the debates and resolve the issues as best they can. Importantly here, we detect in this procedure what is implicit in many of Machaut’s debates: the jeu-parti tradition that leaves final judgment to an audience, whether it be a patron as in Machaut’s judgment dits, a larger participating public analogous to Toute Belle’s detractors and defenders, or solitary readers, including those like the Meliador maiden who finds a love poem well written, but not expressive of the kind of love she espouses; but, also as in the jeu-parti tradition, no final judgment is reported in the dit. One can therefore foresee diverse debate procedures, perhaps less orderly than fictional debates or less lively in deference to social hierarchies and prejudices that might take place in social settings as well as in individual minds. In any case, the anonymous author seems to anticipate a more open, diversified audience than his thirteenth-century counterpart who wrote Claris et Laris.

61 The points to adjudicate are quoted with minor modifications from Kelly 1978, p. 119; see in general pp. 114–20 there. In the notes to each question, I have appended representative moments in the discussion between the narrator and the squire that focus on the specific question; however, in the actual debates the issues are interlaced, and even fused, rather than systematically outlined. On the social and historical background for some of these demandes, see Keen 1984, chaps. 8–9. 62 See pp. 85–6: IX, v. 19–X. 63 See pp. 105–7: XXVIII–XXIX; 122: v. 806–10. 64 See pp. 109–11: XXXII–XXXIII; 210: v. 2392–400; 235–7: XXIV–XV. 65 See pp. 97–8: XXI; 116–17: XXXIX; 120–1: XLIII; 123–4: v. 865–80; 129–30: v. 1051–100. 66 See pp. 84: VIII; 93–4: XVIII. This distinguishes the lovelorn squire from the narrator engaged as his lady’s greffier. 67 See pp. 231–2: XXI; 245–50: XXXIV–XXXIX; 262–3: v. 2641–56. 68 See pp. 167–70: XXII–XXIV; 223–4: XIV; 232–3: XXII.



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Again as in Machaut, the Tresor shows how dialogue turns into debate. Both narrator and squire agree to confront one another’s views on love and, as it turns out, other topics in the demandes d’amour tradition.69 Not only does dialogue turn into debate, but the debate itself steers away from the gamesmanship of jeux-partis to broach deeper, more serious issues of late medieval life and morality. The first and fourth demandes illustrate this movement. ‘Comment se doit on maintenir / En servant armes et amours, / S’on veult loyauté soustenir?’ (p. 97: XXI, v. 1–3) [How should one act while serving love and arms if one wishes to uphold loyalty?] In debating this issue, a new element emerges that seems to replace personification by attributes perceived in individual human beings and that become emblematic of those traits. In the squire’s words, Vertus, vices, beauté, laidure Ne sont fins riens, se d’aventure N’ont leur lieu par condicion Sur aucun corps.  (p. 175: XXIX, v. 14–17) [virtues, vices, beauty, and ugliness are nothing at all unless, by chance, they happen to appear as somebody’s features.]

In keeping with this species of nominalism, there are as many kinds of love on a moral scale as there are people, an assertion that eliminates even the possibility of a generalizing definition of the idea (or its personification). This is how the poet accounts for human diversity without eliminating moral and social hierarchies the individual must confront. Asked how many kinds of love there may be, for example, the squire casts a worldwide net. Vous demandez quantes amours ils sont, Ou s’ils s’en font plus d’une loyaument? Mon petit sens à ce fait vous respont Qu’autant qu’il a dessoubz le firmament De cuers humains qui ont entendement, De manieres d’amours est il autant, Que pas ne sont l’une à l’autre semblant, Nes que les cuers sont d’un propos estable. Or y visés de ce jour en avant, Pour vous tenir à la plus honnourable.  (pp. 164–5: XX, v. 9–18) [You ask how many kinds of love there are or whether there truly exists more than one kind. With my small wit I answer that there are as many kinds of love under the heavens as there are hearts capable of discernment, and that those loves are no more alike than their hearts are fixed on a single goal. So aim henceforth for the most honorable kind of love.] 69 See Demandes. There is an example of the demandes d’amour in Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant, pp. 605–10.

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Here we move beyond the kinds of love mentioned in Machaut’s Lyon and Alerion towards a singularity like that adumbrated by the Meliador maiden. The diverse views of multiple human beings make for the uncertainty, contingency, and mutability implied by demandes 6 and 7 on the diverse natures of children of the same parents. This focus on the individual has important consequences for a social and political order that establishes social hierarchies on moral foundations, but that is threatened by human diversity.70 For his part, the narrator is delighted with the squire’s argument, for, according to it, love does not depend on birthright. Although birthright ennobles love, it is the heart, not birthright, that guarantees true nobility (pp. 169–70: XXIV); what still plagues lovers is that no heart is stable. Indeed, Amour,   escondit Tout aussi bien un roy, S’il n’est de son conroy, Qu’un qui garde aignelés.  (p. 171: XXV, pp. 19–22) [dismisses a king who is not of his host just as well as he does a shepherd who guards his lambs.]

To be sure, these lines do not go so far as to anticipate ‘a cotter’s babe … royalborn by right divine’ or a ‘lord lower than his oxen or his swine’ (Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’) among the myriad kinds of lovers and aristocrats spread out over the world. Still, in this context, even royalty becomes not an institution in itself – a real idea – but an attribute diversely applied to diverse, albeit socially select groups of people. On voit bien les enfans d’un paistre71 Ou d’un preudomme païsant Mener aus champs les brebis paistre, Qui depuis aprennent de chant Et de haulte clergie tant Qu’on les voit nommer de Paris Monseigneur l’evesque ou plus grant, Par le grant sens qu’ilz ont apris.  (TAm, pp. 211–12: I, v. 17–24) [We do see the children of a peasant or of a landed squire lead lambs to pasture who eventually acquire so much knowledge of chant and high learning that we see them named my lord bishop of Paris or to an even higher position thanks to the great learning they have acquired.]

Cf. Cerquiglini-Toulet 1993b, pp. 51–3; Keen 1984, chap. 8. The manuscript reads ‘prestre’ [priest] (Scheler, ed., TAm, p. 300 n. 211, 17). Scheler’s correction is credible, but not absolutely necessary. 70 71



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The lower classes are clearly not part of the Tresor amoureux’s deliberations; however, the noble class is not a monolithically defined species. Indeed, the poet assumes as many kinds of nobility as there are kinds of loves, and, consequently, nobles can be ignoble (see demandes 6 and 7). In language close to Tennyson’s, the squire suggests the socially disruptive implications of the dit’s view of diverse kinds of lovers who are more fortunate than the squire or, in the realm of science, diverse ‘letré’ who escape the fate of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, whose only access to the university is as stone mason. In the Tresor amoureux, then, digressions as encyclopedic texts, or the modus digressivus of the forma tractandi, and debate, or the modus probativus et improbativus, are the principal modes. The exemplary mode, or modus exemplorum positivus, is less extensive than in some of Machaut’s dits, but there are five examples of it. As noted above, Orpheus metaphorically represents music and rhetoric whereas Morpheus is linked to dreams. Music, as Amour describes it, seems to refer more precisely to poetry, or Deschamps’s musique naturele; Orpheus, he says, was the first to recognize the function of harmony and its diverse sounds, but not those ‘dont on fait les chançons’ (p. 72: v. 630) [with which one fashions songs], perhaps referring to monophonic song. Rethorique, for its part, represents the fixed forms: ‘Rethorique fait virelais, / Balades, chans royaus et lais’ (p. 72: v. 633–4) [rhetoric fashions virelais, ballades, chansons royales, and lays]. Moreover, the squire’s ‘historical’ examples bring poetry into the context of ‘moralité’. Thus, Boethius, like the narrator, first wrote ‘Chançonnettes’ from which he derived ‘parfaite consolacion’ (TAm, p. 216: VII, v. 9–10) [perfect comfort].72 But, after suffering the reverses of Fortune, he finds comfort in a philosophy that shows him how to recognize and reject false goods. A third example emerges in Socrates, a exemplar of those who, like Boethius and the squire himself, suffer from envy like that which torments the lion in Machaut’s Lyon (see TAm, pp. 216–19: VII–IX). This exemplifies the contrast between ‘Fortune et Bon Eür’ and ‘Sens / Et Science’ (p. 221: XII, v. 6–8) referred to in demande 3. The two remaining examples come towards the end of the Tresor. Much as Machaut moves on to ‘subtives fictions’ in the last part of the Voir Dit, so in the Tresor’s last part, two subtle examples illustrate the greater freedom in reconfiguration of secondary sources that Froissart’s Ovidian inventions exemplify. First, Amour meshes the Adonis and Atalanta fables, both found in the Ovide moralisé (X, v. 1960–2493, 3678–4127) – the former also appears in the Roman de la rose (v. 15627–737). To effect their amalgamation, the anonymous author radically revises the letter and the lesson of his predecessors (pp. 189–98: v. 1706–2002). Adonis is not Venus’s lover; rather, he is her son and Amour’s brother. But Venus still advises him to avoid hunting ferocious or violent beasts; allegorically, this means that she wants him to avoid loving above his station in life. He does not follow her advice, falling in love with Atalanta despite her 72

In Consolation, Book I, Prose i.

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higher social status, which explains why she outruns all those who race for her hand in marriage but are put to death for trying because she remains too far ahead of them. When Adonis informs his mother of his intention to race for Atalanta’s hand, Venus decides to assist him with the ploy of the three golden apples. Atalanta, being covetous, cannot refrain from fetching the apples.73 She loses the race; Adonis wins her hand (cf. demande 5). This rewriting of the Adonis fable may suggest a certain confusion in Amour’s mind between amour and social moralité, a confusion that Connaissance implicitly corrects in the dit’s second subtle example by recycling and conjoining two different fables: Io’s metamorphosis into a cow (TAm, pp. 244–6: XXXII, v. 21–XXXIV; 266–9: v. 2737–839), a fable also available in the Ovide moralisé (I, v. 3833–4012) and the Rose (v. 14353–64), and, as a separate fable, the disastrous flight of Pheton (TAm, pp. 250–2: XXXIX–XLI). Like the Atalanta fable, the Pheton fable is found not only in the Ovide moralisé (II, v. 1–1391) but also in Froissart’s Prison amoureuse.74 Connaissance uses these fables to move beyond the love context into the moral lessons that she wishes to emphasize. Thus, Io escapes the fields of Venus given over to debauchery stemming from human melancholy (p. 249: XXXVIII, v. 1–6) with the help of Jupiter, alias God, and Mercury, alias the Holy Spirit. This tale stands in opposition to Pheton’s fate. Like the schismatic popes in Europe, Pheton causes destruction the world over by his recklessness. Thus, if Amour’s Adonis fable illustrates the often socially disruptive ways of love, Connaissance’s version of the Jupiter and Io fable sets love aside in order to reveal the ‘ordenance du monde’ (p. 252: XLI, refrain) and its morality in both positive and negative scripts applied to social and religious contexts. Although the Tresor’s love plot locates and evaluates love and lovers and their diverse Erlebnismuster in the context of larger, potentially controversial social and moral value systems, the anonymous author advises caution for his aristocratic and ‘letré’ audiences. Machaut’s ‘Tous voirs ne sont pas biaus a dire’ is the guiding moral principle. In a digression on the Pheton fable, for example, Connaissance separates clerical from lay readers’ debates when absolute truth is at issue. The source of the digression is the anxiety felt because of the Schism that problematizes religious authority (ed. Scheler, p. 303 n. 251, 17).75 Indeed, the harm is glossed allegorically by two ‘Phetons’ who ‘ont a present / Le char d’or fin en habandon / Atellé à deux boux’ (p. 251, v. 18–20) [now have the chariot of fine gold carelessly hitched to two oxen]. In this context, silence is golden, and lay persons should hide their opinions in order not to suffer cruel punishment (pp. 256–7, v. 2417–45); they should rather leave to learned clerics (p. 254: XLIV, v. 5, 21) debate on such matters. Connaissance, anticipating La Fontaine’s fable in which the reed bends while the oak breaks in strong winds (p. 255, v. 2407–8), counsels prudent dissimulation. 73 74 75

Perhaps suggesting unequal marriages for monetary gain. Kelly 1978, pp. 166–9. Cf. Cerquiglini-Toulet 1993b, p. 28.



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Me vault il mieulz … Dissimuler qu’à me bouter en tence Ne me laissier batre ne affoler, Ainsi que font les aucuns qu’on detrenche Pour verité baisier et acoler.  (p. 255: XLIV, v. 25–30) [It is preferable for me to dissimulate rather than to thrust myself into strife or let myself be beaten or maltreated like some who are slain for kissing and embracing truth.]

Indeed, for the sake of truth as they perceive it, one often witnesses learned clerics well grounded in theology ‘decoler / et recevoir la mort en pacience’ (pp. 254–5: XLIV, v. 8–9) [who are beheaded and patiently accept death]. It does not behoove others to follow the route these martyrs take for the sake of truth (p. 254: XLIII, v. 27–30); the laity is not subtle or learned enough to correct or identify vices in others (p. 253: XLIII, v. 1–10). This conforms not only to Machaut’s dictum ‘Tous voirs ne sont pas biaus a dire’; it also validates the Claris et Laris narrator’s reluctance to write about contemporary mores or, in this case, religious opinions. We shall find another example of this caution in the Chevalier errant, where dissimulation becomes a social imperative for self-preservation – Faux Semblant as Prudence! The Tresor amoureux remains inconclusive. Its gradus amoris is incomplete; the narrator-lover awakens from his dream to await his readers’ opinions on the diverse questions raised and discussed by him and the squire and in the debate between Amour and Connaissance. These issues are summarized shortly before the dream ends in the points to adjudicate outlined above that are set out as demandes for readers to answer. In the final analysis, they, like Machaut’s Confort, open the dit to potentially broader moral, social, and religious contextualization in the minds of its readers – so many intertextes as Riffaterre defines them. In addition, the anonymous author introduces, as Froissart does in the Joli Buisson, the ages of life script, suggesting that love is for youth: ‘Jusques à tant que departir / Ils se veulent de vostre [Amour’s] court’ (TAm, p. 266: v. 2744–5)76 [until they wish to leave your (Love’s) court]. In the Tresor amoureux itself, Amour is convinced that lovers will agree with him (pp. 278–9: v. 3125–30). Connaissance, on the other hand, is equally sure that those ‘qui ont vraie congnoissance / De mes seurs77 et de moy aussi’ (TAm, p. 279: v. 3132–3) [who truly know my sisters and me] will side with her. Connaissance’s goal is self-knowledge – that is, ‘Congnoistre, bien et just76 Elsewhere the squire refers to his ‘passage’ (p. 101: XXIV, v. 21–2) through Amour’s realm. Charles d’Orléans represents these stages in his own life in the Retenue d’amours in which he ‘signs on’ to love service and the Songe en complainte in which he ‘signs off’ after long service (Kelly 1978, pp. 204–6). This becomes a major issue in the Chevalier errant; I discuss it in the next section. 77 The ‘sisters’ are the same Loyauté, Raison, and Souffisance who share Connaissance’s tent.

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ement, / Quel tu es’ (p. 248: XXXVI, v. 20–1) [to know, well and accurately, what kind of person you are]. The narrator can do so, she argues, by noting the kind of people he associates with; in doing so, he will quickly discover whether he is more inclined towards virtue or vice. Listing examples of types he may frequent – the religious and the noble on the one hand, wild ‘gens plains de desroy’ (p. 248: XXXVII, v. 13) on the other – ‘sans erreur, / Tu trouveras que tu es tel’ (p. 248: XXXVII, v. 8–9) [without fail you will find that you are that kind of person]. The Tresor amoureux goes no further, and, as with Machaut, the questions remain open despite the diverse, potentially controversial answers individual readers may offer. In leaving its readers to ask themselves the same questions while considering who they are as indicated by the kind of people they frequent, the Tresor amoureux implicitly raises a personal problem: what do those same readers propose do about it once they find out who they are? The Tresor’s introduction of human diversity, the passage of time, and the mutable ages and hearts of human beings builds on Machaut’s poetic treatment of love and its implications in larger contexts. Apprentice poets reading this dit will note how the Tresor sets out points to adjudicate and what procedures it follows in adjudicating them. They will also see how audiences, including readers, are drawn into debates in which diverse social, moral, religious, and other contexts surface as diverse, sometimes conflicting encyclopedic texts. Finally, they will learn how the norms of good love’s moralité apply equally well in evaluating other actions and emotions; poets will note how the anonymous author reconfigures commonplace features of Machaut’s art of poetry in order to compose and contextualize his new dit on its own literary terms.

Debate and the Ages of Life in Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant The Tresor amoureux closes with open questions that engage the two principal contexts exemplified by the two tents described at the dit’s outset: love in youth and connaissance in life. Thomas de Saluces’s Chevalier errant implicitly offers answers to these questions by reverting to the articles of faith presented in the virtually catechistic sermon with which Thomas’s Connaissance concludes this prosimetrum (pp. 1035–164). Thus, whereas the Tresor amoureux focuses on problems in love and knighthood, the Chevalier errant moves through and beyond these fallen ideals to allow Christian faith and morality to define and evaluate human life as a whole and in its different ages.78 Like Machaut’s Voir Dit, it contains an elaborate narrative that uses the errant life of the Chevalier, identified with Thomas himself, in an autography analogous in mode to that of Machaut’s Guillaume in the Voir Dit.79

78

dits.

79

Cf. Maupeu 2012, pp. 48–51, on life and Connaissance in this and other late medieval Cf. Bouchet 1995, 179–82.



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Thomas de Saluces wrote the Chevalier errant while imprisoned in Savoy and Turin.80 Ward suggests that Thomas had at his disposal a good library and that he was free to consult it while writing his prosimetrum; this is evident in the verse quotations, reprises that, like Machaut’s Polypheme example, he copied directly into his own dit or from dictation, although it is possible that he wrote some of his rather detailed summaries of earlier romances and chronicles from memory. In any case, Thomas exemplifies the reader with a good memory and knowledge of vernacular literature and pseudo-historical chronicles as well as an author who rewrites them in the context of an ambitious new work.81 The Chevalier’s modus tractatus has three branches that narrate the Chevalier’s peregrinations over time and through diverse realms. The branches are identified in the dit’s ‘Prohesme’ (pp. 36–7): 1. ‘La premiere branche traictera et dira des aventures qui lui avindrent, et comment il ala entre lui et s’amie en la court le Dieu d’Amours’ [the first branch will treat and relate the adventures he encountered and how he went together with his beloved to the god of love’s court]. This branch relates as well the Chevalier’s experiences at the court, including the war between the Jealous Husbands and the Courtly (mostly Adulterous but Faithful) Lovers. It concludes when the Chevalier’s amie disappears during a falcon hunt after which the Chevalier leaves court in search of her (pp. 38–651).82 2. ‘La seconde branche’ relates the Chevalier’s voyage to and sojourn at Fortune’s court. While there, he observes multiple examples of the goddess’s role in the fall of the mighty because of their faults and sins (pp. 652–885). 3. ‘La tierce branche’ relates the Chevalier’s search for ‘conseil de son couroux’ [counsel in his distress], because he failed to find his beloved and understand the ways of the world. Connaissance ‘conseilla sagement et droictement le chevalier et le reconforta et l’amonnesta de bien faire et de bonnes oeuvres’ [counseled the knight wisely and justly, comforting and admonishing him to do good through good works] (pp. 885–1165). Early on in the narrative, in a question addressed to his three companions Foy, Esperance, and Travail, the Chevalier evokes the errant character of his ­errances. Compaingnons[,] quelle part pourrons errer[ ?] Bien yert maintenant esprouvés Vostre sens et vostre conselz Afin que passer y puisson Toute ceste confusion. (pp. 61–2: v. 500–4; my added punctuation) 80 Ed. Ward, pp. xii–xiii; Busby 2006. Perhaps Thomas completed it or a second version in Paris (Trachsler 2000, p. 326 n. 118). 81 The Index of Names to Ward’s edition shows how extensive Thomas’s written or recalled sources are. On the importance of memory for the composition of the Chevalier errant and its ‘lieux de mémoire’, see Bouchet 1993, pp. 86–8. 82 She appears to have run off with another knight while the Chevalier was on a spying mission for the god of love among the Jealous Husbands (p. 655: 210, 25–34).

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[Companions, which way can we go? Now your wit and your counsel will surely be tested so that we may traverse all this uncertainty.]

Multiple questions with more precise answers, both good and bad, than those the narrator receives in the Tresor amoureux punctuate the Chevalier’s errances until later in life he makes his way to Connaissance and her thoroughgoing moral edification. On its narrative level, Thomas’s Chevalier errant is plotted like quests and errances in Arthurian romances.83 Atant je pris ma errée Et me parti de la contrée Et aloye aventures querant Ainsi comme chevalier errant.  (p. 54: v. 333–6; cf. v. 347–50) [Whereupon I set out wandering and left that country in quest of adventures like a knight errant.]

Part quest and part errances, the Chevalier follows a lengthy narrative trajectory from Connaissance through Amour and Fortune and, finally, back to Connaissance.84 He first encounters Connaissance when he reaches the age of accountability: ‘Tu n’ez plus valeton,’ she notes, ‘Ainz te vient barbe au menton’ (p. 39: v. 35–6) [you are no longer a young valet; rather your beard is starting to show on your chin]. He is knighted by a king that one rubric identifies as the god of love (p. 43), a claim not supported by the dit itself.85 Connaissance tells him which way to choose when he comes to a fork in the road: ‘bonne voye te vueil monstrer’ (p. 40: v. 54) [I want to show you the good way]. A homo viator in bivio, the Chevalier disobeys, preferring to follow the wrong path (pp. 50–1: v. 245–76). This sets the moral context as he wanders first into the realms of chivalry and ‘payenie’ over which the god of love has dominion (p. 122: v. 1811–12), then on to the court of Amour and from there to Fortune’s court, before he finds his way back to Connaissance many years later. By a virtual catechism analogous to but less wordy than that which the Dame des Belles Cousines imparts to the young Jean de Saintré, Connaissance lays out the principles86 for the good life in the midst of political, social, and personal anxieties

83 Trachsler 2000, p. 331. On the distinction first illustrated by Chrétien de Troyes between quest as search with a specific goal and errances as a knight ‘errantly’ wandering about hoping to encounter an adventure, see Kelly 2006a, p. 150; cf. also Brandsma 1996, pp. 36–42, and Winkelman 1996, pp. 77–82. 84 Meneghetti 1989, p. 520. 85 Cf. Villa 2003, p. 669. The ceremony takes place in Jerusalem (pp. 1035–9). The Chevalier first meets the god of love when he comes to his court (pp. 62–4). 86 Finoli 2001, pp. 71–9, 111–12. Cf. Segre 1968, p. 73: ‘lo schema delle domande e risposte di tipo catechistico … ha il solo scopo di porre preblemi e risolverli’, not of instigating a debate about different responses.



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and tribulations.87 She does so for an aging, despondent knight who has acquired wide-ranging experience, but gained little understanding of the meaning of his life and the ordonnance of the world he lives in. Connaissance begins her instruction by recalling her first encounter with the Chevalier.88 ‘Tu estoyes jeunez et frez, vermeil et gracieux’ [you were young and fresh, ruddy and amiable]; now she finds him ‘tout barbuz, fronciz, palez, male couleur, et prezque chanuz’, having ‘usé ta beauté et ton aage en painez et en doulours par la greingneur partie, et au derrain en ez dolent et courouciéz, et mal te tiens contens de ta vie’ (p. 1089: 628, 9–14) [bewhiskered, wrinkled, pale, with bad complexion and almost bald … (having) wasted your good looks and your time in pain and suffering for the most part, and in the end you are aggrieved and vexed and find yourself unhappy with the life you have led], a description that might well remind one of Guillaume’s aging appearance and état d’âme before receiving Toute Belle’s first rondeau. Thomas’s Chevalier appears to be about thirty years old in the second branch (p. 966: 479, 13), then forty in the third branch (p. 1133: 755, 30).89 Reason’s discourse in the Rose (v. 4433–60), a work Thomas knew, provides a model for his awakening to old age and the truth about his lifelong follies: Vieillesse ‘les ramaine a droite voie’ (v. 4459) [brings them back to the right way] after Amour ‘touz les desvoie’ (v. 4312) [leads all of them astray]. As in the Tresor amoureux, self-knowledge is the goal of human life in the Chevalier errant. At the beginning of the second branch, for example, Reason counsels self-knowledge in order to avoid folly (pp. 655–6: v. 8611–16)90 – to no avail, as with his youthful rejection earlier on of Connaissance’s good advice. Further on, the Chevalier proves more receptive when Connaissance explains his foolish life heretofore. Prudence makes possible this new beginning. She ‘est ouvre vertueuse de Voulanté qui ayme bien et escheve mal, en euvre de Intelligence qui scet destinguer entre bien et mal. Et pour [cele] vertu … a homme maniere et a certaineté de faire bonnez oeuvrez et d’eschiver les mauvaisez’ (p. 1120: 719, 1–5) [is the virtuous work of Will who loves what is good and avoids evil by doing the work of Intelligence who knows how to distinguish between good and evil. With this virtue one acquires character and is sure of performing good works and avoiding bad deeds]. Faith finally silences doubts and uncertainties in Thomas de Saluces’s worldview, as it will for Christine de Pizan in the Advision Christine91 and for Alain Chartier in the Livre de l’esperance.92 Even Reason becomes superfluous for Finoli 2001, pp. 82–3, 107–8. Bouchet 1995, pp. 190–1. 89 Froissart too locates an incomplete gradus amoris in his cursus aetatum in his three major dits, concluding as he nears forty (Kelly 1998; Kay 2003, pp. 182–91, and 2008, pp. 29–30; cf. Schwarze 2003, chap. two). 90 See also pp. 1028–9: v. 10161–4, and 1033: 543, 8–10. 91 Kelly 2007, pp. 33–4. 92 Kelly 2008. 87 88

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Thomas. ‘Par foy apperçoit homs verité sanz ce que raison monstre ja par force telles choses, de quoy home a certanté’ (pp. 1105–6: 676, 2–4)93 [by faith one perceives truth without Reason’s imposing such truths, as a result of which one achieves certainty]. Attuned to this theological framework, Connaissance underscores the importance of the theological virtues faith, hope, and charity as well as that of the cardinal virtues prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice, in achieving a good life (pp. 1105–29). Significantly, love is no longer in the picture. Indeed, the uncertainty of love in different contexts, situations, and ages of life makes it a passion to avoid. In effect, the Chevalier errant completes the trajectory begun in the Tresor amoureux. It depicts a long life, much as Thomas’s sources in Arthurian prose romance do,94 whereby love is a passage not to be lingered in. Thomas’s views on love are not far from those of Toute Belle’s detractors. Nowhere do we find Machaut’s good love or the Tresor amoureux’s pure love. Thomas, anticipating Christine, silently ignores them. Although the Chevalier errant’s plot thus recalls that of many a medieval romance, its form and development fit that of the late medieval traitié.95 In this, Thomas’s modus tractandi has much in common with Machaut’s. More specifically, he makes striking use of resources that recall features of Machaut’s dits and art of poetry.96 Indeed, like Machaut’s insertion of the Ovide moralisé’s

93 This recalls the distinction that Alain de Lille makes in the Anticlaudianus between Reason who is active only in the finite geocentric universe and Prudence’s discovery of the certainties of Catholic faith and other timeless verities in God’s realm beyond the world of time and space. 94 Kelly 1994, Suard 1994. 95 Thomas uses only the verbs traitier and dire, as in ‘La premiere branche traictera et dira’ (p. 36: 1, 2–3) for traitié and dit. The ambiguous generic status of the Chevalier errant between romance and dit is a typical development in late medieval literature (Bouchet 1993, pp. 81–2, 96, and Bouchet 1995, pp. 177–9). Trachsler 2000 also notes the work’s ‘statut ontologique hybride’ (pp. 333–4) and its ‘statut génériquement hybride’ (p. 337). The Chevalier errant refers to specific sections in the traitié as dits (pp. 49: v. 243; 71: v. 701; 118: v. 1731–2 [cf. v. 1742: ‘dire voir’]; 254: v. 4812; 513: 127, 18; 575: v. 8256; 611: 173, 19–20; 613: 174, 3–5; 623: 189, 1; 672: 214, 14; 794: v. 9756; 874: 405, 57; 1033: 543, 8; 1058: 573, 7; 1059: 574, 7; 1162: 790, 14–15: 1165–6: v. 10270–2). Its most common designation is livre, as in ‘Ce livre fis et compilay’ (p. 1168: v. 10328; see also pp. 36: 1, 1; 1169: v. 10330; on compilation in late medieval narratives, see Szkilnik 2011). 96 Epistolary exchanges (all in verse) during periods of separation occur while the Chevalier, imprisoned in payenie, is separated from his lady; see pp. 74–6: v. 769–816 (Chevalier to ‘celle rose clamee’); 78–9: v. 844–86 (Lady to Chevalier); 89–91: v. 1088–138 (Chevalier to Lady); 99–101: v. 1308–48 (God of love to his subjects); 112–16: v. 1599–686 (Lady to Chevalier); 136–9: v. 2124–98 (Chevalier to Lady Fortune); and 140–1: v. 2220–32 (Lady Fortune to Chevalier): see also p. 257. Some passages echo Machaut’s aphorisms: ‘Par longue demourée / Pert on bien grant amistée’ (p. 92: v. 1159–60) paraphrases VD Letter 30, p. 514/394: ‘Longue demouree fait changier ami’ (cf. also VD, v. 5828–9/5901–2). ‘Ton cuer, a dire voir, / Est plus dur certainement / Vers moy que pointe de dyament’ (p. 170: v. 2896–8) recalls the refrain in Loange 254/1; in both instances, a woman’s voice is speaking. The resemblance between Amour and Fortune that suggests genealogical connection (p. 724: 264, 17–19) restates the analogy Machaut develops in the Remede complainte. The fable of the



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Polyphème fable in the Voir Dit, several reprises from the Roman de la rose are inserted or closely paraphrased in the Chevalier errant. The most striking examples include the partial reprise of Reason’s description of love – ‘Amours est paiz hayneuse, / Amours est hayne amoureuse’ (p. 659, v. 8671–2 = Rose, v. 4262–3) etc.97 – and his complete, but variant, version of Andreas Capellanus’s definition of love.98 In general, however, Thomas prefers to summarize medieval romance plots as examples. Whether he had access to a well-stocked library while imprisoned or whether he relied, like many storytellers of his time, on a well-stocked memory is less important here than how he uses reprises in the exemplary mode. The passage from materia remota to the book’s materia propinqua is evident in the intertexte that his resumés record. The summaries are far too numerous for full treatment here.99 To illustrate how Thomas uses examples in the Chevalier errant, then, I shall examine the fable of Griselidis (as Thomas spells Griselda’s name).100 Three features of the Griselidis plot are striking in the context of Machaut’s art of poetry: its autographical component, its allegory, and its subtle conjointures, including an addition that links the Saluces family to Caradoc in the Gauvain or First Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval. It offers an interesting illustration of the relationship in dits between historical and fictional examples and the validity of the truth they express together.101 The literal level of the Griselidis plot builds on the standard version of the three parrots (discussed below) teaches the same lesson as the fables of the truth-telling crow and raven in the Voir Dit: keep your own council even if it means hiding the truth (pp. 991: v. 10115–18; 992: 504, 1–8). Connaissance’s interpretation of an enigmatic personification as referring to Genoa uses language reminiscent of Machaut’s: she is an ‘exemple’ that ‘par maniere de fiction’ (p. 1022: rubric 343) ‘refiguroit et donnoit exemple a la cité de Jennez’ (p. 1023: 541, 6–7) [in fictional mode … reconfigured and exemplified the city of Genoa]. On this lady see Bouchet 1993, pp. 82–5. 97 The Chevalier’s mention of Fortune’s dwelling ‘pres de mer sus une haute roche’ (p. 721: 263, 11–12) resembles her habitat in the Rose (v. 5890–1), itself adapted from Alain de Lille’s Anticlaudianus (Lecoy, ed., Rose, vol. 1, p. 284 n. 5891–6088). See also Finoli 2001, pp. 73–7, and, for other reprises, pp. 659: v. 8673–8 = Rose, v. 4265–70; 660–1: v. 8681–722 = Rose, v. 4271–312; 662–3: v. 8743–50 = Rose, v. 4321–8; 663: v. 8763–6 = Rose, v. 4355–8; 663–4: v. 8767–77 = Rose, v. 4393–403. On the Rose’s influence on the Chevalier errant, see also Badel 1980, pp. 315–30. 98 Thomas’s definition is somewhat garbled: ‘Amours, se bien l’ay avisée, / C’est maladie de pensée, / Entre deux personnez en essers / Franchez et de divers pensers / Venanz aux gens par ardour née, / De vision desordonnée, / Pour acoler et pour baisier / Et pour eulz charnelment aaisier’ (p. 663: v. 8753–60 = Rose 4347–54) [Love, if I have correctly understood it, is a sickness of the mind by two confused (see T-L, vol. 3, col. 1302), independent individuals of divergent thought that urges people through deranged vision to embrace, kiss, and relieve themselves carnally]. 99 For a careful analysis of the Chevalier’s plot with extensive interpretive commentary and bibliography, see Trachsler 2000, pp. 325–65. 100 This section appears in only one of the two extant manuscripts of the Chevalier errant (Ward, ed., pp. xlvii–xlviii; Villa 2003, pp. 668, 672; Trachsler 2000, pp. 326–7). 101 Cf. Moos 1988b, pp. 224–31.

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fable found in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Petrarch’s Griselda.102 The lord of Saluces chooses for wife a poor but beautiful peasant girl devoted to caring for her father. She becomes as devoted and submissive a wife as she has been a daughter: ‘“Tu es,” dist elle, “mon seingneur …; doncquez fay de ta chose comme il te plaist, car certainement riens ne te puet plaire que je ne vueille et ne me plaise”’ (p. 839: 379, 24–8) [you are my lord and husband; therefore do with your thing as it pleases you, for it is certain that nothing can please you that fails to please me and conform to my will]. Griselidis is not a Meliador maiden. She manifests no recognizable independence or personal feelings. To serve perfectly is all that she desires in her marriage. She keeps her vow, allowing without protest or emotion her two children to be taken away from her; her marriage to be annulled, she believes, by papal decree; and the return to her father so that her former husband can marry a woman of his own social order. She is even brought back later to prepare the castle, including the nuptial bed, for her husband’s new marriage. At no time does she protest or show any sign of grief. She does indeed become a ‘thing’. Christine de Pizan, of course, does not look upon Griselidis as a ‘thing’, but as an example of women’s fortitude when tested by Fortune (Cité, p. 346; she also names her Griselidis);103 fortitude is one of her attributes in the Chevalier errant as well (p. 854: 390). But Thomas, following Petrarch, goes further. His Griselidis story is an allegory – God tested Abraham ‘comme le fist le marquis [de Saluces] son espouse’ (p. 853: 389, 9)104 [as the marquis did his wife]. God tests all Christians, not to discover, like the marquis, whether they can endure suffering – being omniscient, He knows what each person can and will endure – but to make the faithful realize ‘par les tribulacions continuellez nostre propre fragilité’ (p. 853: 389, 10–15)105 [by the constant tribulations our own weakness]. Thus, if, for Christine, Griselidis exemplifies woman’s fortitude, for Thomas she exemplifies e contrario the moral weakness of Christians: no Christian man or woman would endure for God what the lowly peasant maiden does for her husband (pp. 853–4: 389, 9–21).106 Thomas de Saluces’s Griselidis story also functions as autography. Her husband is Gualtier, marquis de Saluces (as in Boccaccio), a legendary ancestor of Thomas, as is Griselidis. To understand the role of Thomas’s genealogy here, I must first digress briefly in order to uncover new meaning that Thomas brings to his genealogy.107 In Thomas’s narrative, after the Chevalier’s liberation from paienie, he Villa 2003; Bronfman 2004, esp. vol. 1, pp. 377, 379. Villa 2003, pp. 678–80. 104 Likening the literal or autographical marquis to God is analogous to the Tresor’s reading of Jupiter and Io as God and the Virgin Mary. 105 Implicitly, God also tests the Chevalier by the adventures he encounters during his lifelong quest for connaissance. 106 On the relation between the testing of Job and Griselda, see Astell 1994, pp. 103–6. 107 On issues that arise because of genealogy in late medieval French literature, see Cerquiglini-Toulet 1993b, pp. 28–38. 102

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encounters Keu the Seneschal and Agravain l’Orgueilleux. The two address him scornfully, in keeping with their reputation for slander and felony in Arthurian romance (pp. 163–5: v. 2727–88). Although they live up to their fictional reputations, they are not, in Thomas’s narrative, the original Round Table knights. They are ‘simulacres’.108 Naming children after well-known fictional characters seems to have been common; two of Thomas’s illegitimate children were named Lancelot and Hélène.109 The Chevalier’s Keu and Agravain, we are told, ‘a leur perrin semblerent, / Car ilz furent de tel affaire / En leurs dis et en leur viaire’ (pp. 164–5: v. 2768–70)110 [they resembled their namesake (godfather) for they were like him in words and appearance]. Thomas’s use of contemporary ‘simulacres’ of well-known romance characters allows him to introduce Gauvain and Caradoc without further ado into the Saluces genealogical autography. Indeed, the identification of the marquis with Caradoc allows Thomas to explain Griselidis’s husband’s extraordinarily harsh test and treatment of his hapless wife, a test that certainly realizes autography’s characteristic tendency to set its subjects apart. This is where the conjointure in Chrétien de Troyes’s sense – the conjoining of matter and meaning drawn from two separate tales in a new and complete whole111 – occurs. The link begins with Gaultier de Saluces’s father. Gaultier in the Griselidis example is the son of Guillaume de Saluces who, as recompense for service in the King of Russia’s wars, receives the king’s daughter in marriage. While on his way back to his father’s lands, however, Guillaume de Saluces learns that his new wife was already pregnant when they married. Anxious to hide his shame, Guillaume accepts the newborn child and raises him as his own son. His wife later bears him a second son but dies in childbirth. When Guillaume dies later on, his will is found to declare that his son should succeed him as marquis, but it does not identify which son it refers to. After some consultation the truth comes out and the one true son of Guillaume de Saluces succeeds his father. The legitimate son is the same Gaultier who marries Griselidis. His father’s experience explains, Thomas tells us, both Gaultier’s earlier reluctance to marry as well as his choice and harsh testing of his wife’s love and constancy (pp. 1003–12). This brings us to the link with the Caradoc example in the Gauvain Continuation. Thomas knew Chrétien’s Conte du graal; he even extracted reprises from

Trachsler 2000, pp. 360–1. Ward, ed., Chevalier errant, p. xv. 110 The assumption of fictional names was common on festive occasions in the Middle Ages. The Roman de Hem recounts how, for a tournament held in 1277, the participants and attendants, male and female, assumed names drawn from Arthurian romances as part of the game (Cigni, Arthur French, p. 447. See also Pastoureau 1986, pp. 177–81; Pastoureau 1989, pp. 111–24; Avonds 1999, pp. 49–70). 111 Cf. the conjointure of the insult to Guenevere and the sparrow hawk episodes in Erec et Enide. On conjointure in this sense, see Trachsler 2000, p. 14; Kelly, Arthur French, pp. 156–8. The Tresor amoureux example of Adonis and Atalanta is an analogous conjointure, as are a number of Froissart’s Ovidian inventions. 108 109

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it.112 The Caradoc example applies the principle of contraires choses. That is, Thomas contrasts the perfect wife, Guinier, with the bad wife, Gauvain’s sister, who becomes the paramour to the enchanter who fathers Caradoc (she is also the opposite of Griselidis).113 Further on, Connaissance describes the fortitude and virtues of another of Thomas’s ancestors, Richarde, encouraging the Chevalier to model his conduct on hers (pp. 1048–51). Richarde does mirror Griselidis’s fortitude, but without becoming a ‘thing’. As image of the good wife and mother with a mind and will of her own, she resembles Christine de Pizan’s femmes fortes because of her ‘grant vaillance’ (p. 1051: 565, 21) in war and government. These exemplary characters recall a quandary raised by demande 7 in the Tresor amoureux:114 why, of all the children born of the same father and mother does only one child excel while others degenerate? One reason Griselidis’s husband does not want to marry is that one cannot foresee how children will turn out (p. 1163: 790, 48–51). Machaut too broaches this issue in the Alerion and the Remede when he distinguishes the ideal from the less accomplished apprentice, blaming the discrepancy on nurture rather than nature. In the Chevalier errant, the problem emerges in the upbringing of three savage children. ‘Seingneurs,’ one of their masters opines, ‘on dist communement que tels naissent d’un ventre qui n’ont mie une entente’ (p. 494: 115, 16–18; cf. p. 1163: 790, 48–51) [My lords, it is commonly said that those born of one womb never have the same inclination]. The corollary to this issue is: why does Nature allow a child of noble character to become ill-bred? The Chevalier errant explores this issue further in the Alleram example in which a father deals with a rebellious son who tries to depose him and usurp the realm (pp. 291–4: 33–5). The father outwits his errant son, then pardons him after they reconcile, thereby exemplifying an instance of clemency as well as fatherly love in contrast to the son’s injustice and lack of filial piety. Echoing Machaut’s art of poetry beyond shared themes and the use of reprises, the debate mode features prominently in the Chevalier’s peregrina-

112 Chevalier errant, pp. 209–10: v. 3755–74 = Perceval, v. 3857–76. Presumably the same manuscript source included the Gauvain Continuation. For other examples of Thomas’s use of Chrétien’s Perceval, see Bouchet 1993, pp. 89–91, 101–2. 113 Gauvain’s sister is akin to her brother who appears not infrequently as something of a courtly James Bond in Arthurian literature (Busby 1980; Schmolke-Hasselmann 1980; and Arthur French, chap. ten; cf. Bruckner 2009, pp. 137–44). 114 The Chevalier errant touches on two other issues left unresolved in the Tresor amoureux. First, is it preferable to defend one’s possessions or seek to win more by invading one’s neighbors? (TAm, pp. 138–9, v. 1374–94; on this critical issue in Machaut’s Alexandrie, see Delogu 2008, pp. 106–8.) For his part, the Chevalier is astonished when he discovers that powerful lords have such a great ‘appetit’ (Chevalier errant, p. 999: 509, 11) that they are never content with what they have, but are ‘toudis … desirans a desrober et desheriter l’un l’autre’ (p. 998: 509, 6–7) [ever eager to rob and disinherit one another]. Second, the Tresor’s lesson that humans reveal who they are by the company they keep is given a religious application: be proud if you truly prefer the company of devils in Hell to that of God and His angels in Heaven (p. 1069: 582, 10–13).



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tions.115 Some debates are frivolous, especially those that take place during his sojourn at the court of the god and goddess of love, mirroring the frivolity of his own love life. For example, the war between the Jealous Husbands and the largely Adulterous Lovers turns on contraries like marriage versus virtually free but faithful love, and young versus old lovers (pp. 197–205). More specifically, Briseida, or Brexis, is banished from the god of love’s court (pp. 347–56) in a trial in which Paris of Troy and Diomede serve, respectively, as prosecutor and defender. Jason, Briseida’s male counterpart, is also banished for infidelity (pp. 642–3: 201, 26–40). But love is not the only subject or context for debate. Towards the end of the first branch, an initially frivolous debate arises as to which beast is the most ferocious (pp. 482–8). Various animals are named but no definitive decision or general consensus is arrived at until the god of love intervenes and, heeding ‘le conseil des philosophes’ (p. 483: 108, 21) [the counsel of the philosophers], pronounces his ‘declaracion’ or judgment: the most ferocious beast is the lord who tyrannizes his subjects (pp. 487: v. 7540; 488: 109, 1). This unexpected allegorical turn in the debate, not unlike the ‘Christian’ allegory of Griselidis’s marriage, astonishes all with the result that ‘ceulz qui faisoient tel debat n’en parlerent plus, car bien congnoissoient que la sentence estoit bonne’ (p. 488: 109, 3–5) [those who were debating fell silent for they easily recognized that the judgment was good]. The verdict anticipates the broadening of the Chevalier’s moral and social contexts in the Fortune branch in which numerous ‘beastly’ lords appear. As the branch featuring the god of love draws to a close, another debate takes place. Three women of diverse ages claim the love of the same young man (pp. 498–510). The god of love gives the young man to the youngest because the oldest woman, a dame, changed her love before the death of her original lover (p. 500: 120, 5–10); the second, a damoiselle, began a new love after the death of her beloved in combat but before the goddess of love granted this privilege to all women whose lovers perished in the war with the Jealous Husbands (a privilege the god did not approve of but did not object to at the time, out of courtesy to women116). The youngest woman, a pucelle, loves for the first time (pp. 501–2: 121, 1–21) as does the squire whom the three women desire; he, for his part, returns only the maiden’s love (p. 504: 123, 18–20). After the god of love declares in the pucelle’s favor (pp. 508–9: v. 7627–44), the lady and the damsel, although shamed by the verdict, are not disconsolate. They have in fact been resourceful. Each one exclaims, ‘Tost en seray pourveue, car je l’ay ja en pensé’ (p. 510: 125, 13–14) [I will be quickly provided for, for I already have someone in mind]; as such, they are sliding towards Briseida’s infidelity. Bouchet 1995, pp. 189–90. Cf. pp. 468–9: v. 7257–70; 500–1: 120, 10–17; 506–7: v. 7589–602. The narrator glosses this state of affairs as follows: ‘Ainsi advint il touzdis que les seigneurs et autres gens par commun font voulentiers le vouloir leurs belles femmes ou a droit ou a tort’ (p. 470 : 104, 10–13) [Thus it always happened that the lords and others commonly accede to the wishes of their beautiful wives, whether rightly or wrongly]. 115 116

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But the god of love had set the misogynist context for his judgment: the worst disorder in the world, he proclaims, is caused by ‘la femme qui n’a cremour / De faire malez voulantéz / Quant elle est entalentéz’ (p. 508: v. 7620–2) [the woman who does not fear to satisfy her illicit desires whenever she feels like it]. At this point, the god’s misogyny is not far removed from that of the Jealous Husbands he is at war with. The examples in the Chevalier errant, then, juxtapose extremes like Briseida and Griselidis, or between marriage and adultery in the mutually destructive war between jealous husbands and adulterous singles. There seems to be no middle ground like that favored in Machaut’s Navarre. These extreme oppositions open the way to the strict morality that Connaissance identifies with the theological and cardinal virtues of Griselidis’s God and the harsh punishment of malefactors and sinners meted out by Fortune in cooperation with divine justice. After the Chevalier’s amie disappears, he sets out in quest of her and branch two centering on Fortune begins. The recontextualization is analogous to Machaut’s in the Confort d’ami and Connaissance’s in the Tresor amoureux. Thus, in branch two, Fortune supersedes the god of love as a major, allencompassing source of calamity. In Fortune’s realm, the hostilities between the Guelphs who support the Holy Roman Emperor and the Ghibelines who are aligned with the Pope define war as a staple of human history, whatever the causes of the belligerence may be. Numerous examples follow the course of human conflict through eight ages, from Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden to the Antichrist’s appearance at the end of the world (pp. 788–803). The Chevalier’s quest moves well beyond the god of love’s court as he continues his search for ‘l’ordenance de ce monde’. Unlike Machaut’s Fortune, her counterpart in the Chevalier errant works in harmony with divine providence and justice.117 In this vein, the god of love’s identification of the world’s most ferocious beast with the tyrannical overlord receives abundant consideration and exemplification in the second branch. Thus, when fallen rulers and ecclesiastical princes complain of their losses, Fortune insists on her just retribution for their excesses while in power. Afin que sachiez mon vouloir Je vous diray adez le voir. Pou congnoistre et voz bobanz118 Si vous ont mis en telz tormens; Ce ay je fait pour reconffort 117 This Christianized conception of Fortune as an agent of Providence appears earlier in the Roman de Fauvel; Thomas may also have found it in Dante (Hunt 1999; Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 171–2, with additional bibliography). 118 This word describes the Chevalier’s own immoderation in choosing the wrong path at the beginning of his errances (pp. 51: v. 275, 54: v. 344). Thomas frequently returns to bobanz as immoderation that leads to false goods and sin (pp. 156–7: v. 2589–606; 221–2: v. 4029–38; 724–5: 265, 9–26; 748, v. 9441–6; 958: 472, 9–11; 965: 478, 40–5; 1038–9: 547, 49–56; 1132–3: 755, 9–21).



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De toutes gens a qui a tort Avez malmenéz sanz raison, Ytel prendrez vous le guerredon.119  (p. 748: v. 9439–46) [So that you may know my will I shall tell you the truth straightaway. Limited understanding and your vain, immoderate pomp have brought on your torment. I did what I did to comfort all those whom you have, without reason, mistreated. This is the reward you will receive for all that.]

Fortune’s words, like the god of love’s earlier, constitute moments of enlightenment in the Chevalier’s expanding experience, knowledge, and understanding: Fortune is just because she does God’s will by punishing wrongdoing while avenging the downtrodden. Throughout the Chevalier’s life various authority figures evaluate his progress in encyclopedic texts. These reprises and summaries of earlier works comprise, like Ovidian fables, text-specific glossing.120 Like the hermits in the Queste del saint graal, successive authority figures admonish the Chevalier even though he may reject their moralité. In doing so, they mark stages in his growing enlightenment until, in the third branch, Connaissance teaches him the religious morality that he appears to have forgotten but is now ready to accept. Significantly, these authority figures evaluate the Chevalier’s life in language that anticipates his return to Connaissance.121 They include a hermit,122 Reason,123 and a ‘philosophe’;124 occasionally, two of the appellations refer to one person125 and even to false monks who confuse him while in payenie.126 The moral enlightenment these authorities offer the Chevalier is largely aphoristic. Indeed, the knowledge of the ordonnance du monde they impart can be downright simplistic. Ainsi voit on le monde aler A ceulz qui le scevent regarder, Car le bon fait la bonté Et le mauvais, la mauvaisté.  (p. 235: v. 4329–32)

See also pp. 781–3: v. 9550–606. Such encounters are a commonplace motif in quest literature (Smelik 2002). 121 P. 40: v. 52–4; cf. pp. 1019–20: 535, 5–10. 122 Pp. 959: 473, 10–12; 963: 478, 5–9. 123 Pp. 664: 212, 1; 668: 213, 1; 693: 216, 2; 719: 262, 8. 124 Pp. 295: 37, 19–20; 483: 108, 21; 651: 207, 11; 814: 356, 1 (Ward, ed., p. 1220, identifies this ‘philosophe’ as ‘Maistre Orose’, the fourth-century Spanish priest Paulo Orosio); 876: 409, 5; 1021: 536, 18; 1051: 565, 22. 125 Pp. 653: 209, 25–6 + 655: 210, 38 (‘Raison le philosophe’), and 659: 211, 20 (a ‘philosophe qui Raison ot nom’); 993: 505, 5, 7; and a ‘hermite’ and ‘philosophe’ who cites ‘Aristotle’ (p. 1001: 510, 35). 126 Pp. 52–3: v. 299–332. They have their counterpart in the ‘devil monks’ in the Queste del saint graal (pp. 445–56). 119

120

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[That’s how those see the world’s ways who know how to look at it, for the good do what is good and the bad what is bad.]

Elsewhere, again aphoristically, the Chevalier realizes that ‘follie est de mectre son seigneur ne son amy a preuve, se ce n’est a grant besoing’ (p. 551: 145, 14–15) [it is foolish to test one’s lord or one’s friend unless it is absolutely imperative]; young men waste their time seeking early marriage (p. 569: v. 8195–8);127 foolish love and foolish jealousy lead only to disaster (pp. 635–6: 196, 13–18), a virtual moral for the war between the Jealous Husbands and the Adulterous Lovers; ‘en guerre n’a fors que mescheance’ (p. 637: v. 8586) [there is nothing but misfortune in war], a virtual moral for all wars like those exemplified in the Fortune branch; at court, envy reigns supreme (p. 641: 200, 6–11); for him who rises higher than he should, the fall will be greater than he foresees (p. 726: 266, 30–2); God’s grace is universal, but it extends to the poor more than to the rich (p. 833: 376, 4–5); ‘Nemo sine crimine vivit’ (p. 981: 494, 15 [no one lives free of wrong]; and ‘D’armez, de chace et d’amours, pour une joye, cent doulours’ (p. 1059: 574, 4–5) [in arms, hunting, and love, for one joy a hundred pains].128 The Chevalier’s trajectory thus passes from ignorance and misunderstanding (descongnoissance) to the kind of knowledge and understanding (congnoissance) that these aphorisms articulate (pp. 121: v. 1803–8; 140–1: v. 2220–32). They counterpoint his progress towards the self-knowledge that the Tresor amoureux promotes and that Machaut implies as a goal in describing Toute Belle and Socrates. According to Thomas’s Reason, then, one avoids folly by acquiring self-knowledge. ‘Se bien te congnoissoiez / Telle follie laisseroyes’ (p. 656: v. 8615–16) [if you knew yourself well you would abandon such foolishness], an achievement possible only if, according to Lady Fortune, one uses one’s rational faculty (p. 748: v. 9441–6). When the Chevalier returns to Connaissance at the end of his errant life, he enters into the Chamber of Avis. There, after reading an inscription that describes the twelve ages of life, he begins to look back over his own life: ‘je avisoye le dit au brief et que tellement avoye perdu mon temps, et com tantes painez, et que si courte estoit la vie d’un homme’ (p. 1033: 543, 8–10) [I considered the words in the brief and realized that I had wasted my life so much, and with so many pains, and that a man’s life is so short]. Years have passed. He is ready, finally, to learn the moral truths that his religion teaches and that Connaissance sets out for her aging pupil (modus docendi). The Chevalier’s grief for his lost beloved is long gone and forgotten. Connaissance’s lessons on the seven deadly sins, the three theological virtues, and the seven capital

127 Perhaps an implicit correction of the love of the young man and the pucelle at the court of the god of love; in this context, the pucelle, damoiselle, and dame may be seen as the same person at different stages in the same erotic cursus aetatum. 128 See also Chevalier errant, pp. 238–9: v. 4411–24; 552: 147, 29–31; 574: v. 8249–50; 780: 328, 9–12; 886: 418,19–20; and the Proverbs and Sayings, Ward, ed., pp. 1175–6.



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virtues129 show that the aging Chevalier has abandoned the errances narrated in the two branches on love and fortune. He is now progressing along the path that he rejected as a young man when, upon leaving Connaissance, he first set out into the world on his own. Yet, the Chevalier was not totally without virtue; after all, Foy and Esperance were faithful companions along the way.130 They follow, guide, and support him into adult life. Thomas’s use of personifications recalls the evolving figure Esperance in Machaut’s anthology manuscripts. In both authors, the semantic range of the word personified forms the source of semantic metamorphosis – what Richard Trachsler refers to as ‘une certaine indépendence entre l’acteur et le concept qu’il figure’.131 Marking the progress of the Chevalier, then, Foy and Esperance accompany the knight in all three branches of the work, in the last of which they are, we might say, most at home because Connaissance is their mother.132 As with Machaut’s personifications, the character and semantic range of the Chevalier’s three personified companions adapt to the stages in the quest in which they appear, mirroring by semantic metamorphosis the Chevalier’s own social and moral progress. Thus, while the Chevalier is separated from his beloved in Paienie, Foy, Esperance, or Travail serves as courier bearing letters back and forth between him and his lady as well as to Arthur’s court.133 Here, early on in the narrative, they function in a courtly and, more specifically, amorous context that defines them and their roles. Thus, Esperance leads the Chevalier to the god and goddess of love’s court and interacts there with personifications like Plaisir, Douceur, Beauté, and others, as well as with the lovers and husbands.134 Tellingly, the Chevalier’s lady disappears while Foy and Esperance are not with her (cf. p. 621: 186, 10–187, 6). In Fortune’s realm, moreover, these personifications act less often than earlier, suggesting the Chevalier’s quandary. Fortune, that is, offers little of the Pp. 1064–92, 1105–36. The departure of Travail upon the Chevalier’s arrival at the god of love’s citadel and reappearance when the Chevalier sets out for Fortune’s dwelling (pp. 175–6: v. 2994–3024, and 652–3: 209) make this branch in the Chevalier’s quest analogous to the garden Oiseuse opens to Amant in the Roman de la rose, for ‘illec on prent tel deduit / Qui ne fault ne jour ne nuit’ (p. 189: v. 3317–18) [there one enjoys delight that goes on day and night] and ‘La ne vy je nulles gens / Qui ne feïssent esbatemens’ (p. 190: v. 3337–8) [there I saw no one who was not having fun] except for those who repulsed love while alive (pp. 192–3: v. 3385–404). 131 Trachsler 2000, p. 337. 132 Pp. 1012–13: 529, 5–22; 1015–16: 531, 1–16. The personification Foy recalls Machaut and the Roman de la rose in terms of generic syllepsis. That is, Foy, a feminine noun, is a knight (p. 70: v. 685–8); throughout the Chevalier errant, he is addressed as a male figure (pp. 80: v. 893–5; 86: v. 1019, etc.). Thomas’s Esperance, like her counterpart in Machaut, is a female personification; however, she can also, in one place, be addressed as ‘doulz Espoir’ (p. 612: v. 8544), not Dame Espoir. 133 Pp. 73–4: v. 750–7; 86: v. 1019–36; 90: v. 1123–8; 110: v. 1553–68; 119: v. 1749–51; and 128: v. 1942–4. 134 Personifications are indexed in Ward, ed., pp. 1177–239. 129 130

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hope that is sorely needed in the midst of the universal travails and wrongs that plague history from beginning to end. Even the Church is schismatic. But Foy and Esperance do help him know himself and his world by directing him to a ‘philosophe’ named Reason (p. 653: 209, 26) who offers him council on the loss of his amie. The philosopher’s council, lifted by and large as reprises from Reason’s admonitions in the Roman de la rose, produces the same result as in Jean de Meun’s romance: angry rejection by the Chevalier who is not yet willing to abandon love or heed advice on the advantages of connaissance as one ages. ‘Le Chevalier respondi: “Certes pour neant parlez, car aussi ententis suis-je en amours comme devant; et bien sachiez que petite memoire ay de tes diz, et si m’en souvent ainsi comme neant”’ (p. 672: 214, 12–15)135 [The Chevalier answered: ‘What you say is useless for I am as intent on loving as I was before; and rest assured that I recall little of what you say and remember virtually none of it]. He is still clinging to his youthful ideal at a time in life when he should have begun to outgrow it. Thus, in his debate with the philosopher, like Guillaume in the Voir Dit, the Chevalier evinces no interest in the world’s travails; the Voir Dit’s Guillaume too, as we have seen, voices indifference to France’s misfortunes in the Voir Dit because, like the Chevalier, he cannot see his lady. This debate in the Chevalier errant becomes, as in the Jugement Navarre, an exchange of positive and negative examples of women in love. In the end, when the Chevalier angrily breaks off the discussion, he commends Reason ‘a tous les malfelz d’Enfer’ (p. 702: 220, 109–10) [to all the devils in Hell]. More experience in Fortune’s realm is necessary before, as Reason predicts, he will learn to know himself and realize that he has ‘degasté ta jeunece / En ceste doulente leece’ (p. 656, v. 8621–2) [wasted your youth in this dolorous happiness] called love. Drawing on another reprise from the Rose, Reason predicts what finally does happen: ‘Jeunece forvoye ly homs / De toutes bonnez conclusionz, / Viellece enduit congnoissance / Et a Dieu li fait s’accordance’ (p. 664, v. 8777–80) [Youth leads one away from all good ends; Old Age brings knowledge and makes one find accord with God]. Fortune’s realm, then, evinces the Chevalier’s consternation as he engages in debate with his companions Foy, Esperance, and Travail, but, as with his debate with Reason, he gets nowhere (p. 908: 435). Finally, the three companions urge him to visit Connaissance (pp. 1012–13: 529). Since time has passed and the Chevalier has aged still more, he is finally beginning to realize that, as Raison promised, ‘Viellece enduit congnoissance’ (cf. as well pp. 1045: 558; 1051: 565: 21–7). Before he arrives at this realization, during his stop at the castle of a vavassor, the Chevalier secretly observes three parrots learn the hard way not to tell inconvenient truths (pp. 981–93), an episode that serves as an exemplum. A sixty-year-old husband has a lively young wife who is having an affair with a young man who passes the night with her whenever her husband is away. Being old and suspicious, the husband decides to post three talking parrots outside the 135

Similarly, pp. 664: 212, 3–10; 668–9: 213, 2–10; 692: 215, 10–22.



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wife’s chamber with orders to report to him whatever they observe.136 His wife has her lover join her; however, her fervent desire makes her careless and she fails to note the observant parrots. Only afterwards does the danger they represent occur to her. Swearing ‘par saint Alitret’ (!) (p. 987: 498, 23), she interrogates the parrots. The first two admit what they have observed; the wife kills them. The third parrot is older and wiser. He acts as if he knows nothing even after the vavassor returns. The lesson is the same as in the Voir Dit: ‘mains sont honiz par leur trop parler, et en especial chose de quoy ne leur devroit chaloir, ne que a eulz n’affiert’ (p. 992: 504, 6–8) [many are disgraced by talking too much, especially when it should be of no concern to them or is none of their business]. This episode also illustrates anew the conflict between the Jealous Husbands and the Adulterous Lovers while concomitantly showing the Chevalier’s progress towards understanding. Finally, the Chevalier reaches Connaissance’s dwelling where his companions Foy and Esperance join their five sisters, Charité, Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, and Justice, representatives of the Christian morality of sin and salvation that Connaissance will teach, articulating what the Chevalier needs to know to avoid Amour, Fortune, and damnation. It is at this point that Thomas diverges most from Machaut. The Chevalier does not advance towards the good love Machaut idealizes nor does he even encounter any examples of it. Instead, love in Thomas’s work is the adulterous love promoted by his god of love. In other words, although Abstenance, Chasteté, Contenance, and Virginité appear, they do not contribute to a chaste love like Machaut’s. After having shown Foy and Esperance in a variety of contexts – most notably, faith and hope as aspirations of the knight, of the lover, and of Fortune – these personifications now assume their full moral and religious significance by representing the theological virtues (pp. 1105–11: 676–92). The Chevalier has left the Rose’s garden of love and Fortune’s bellicose and strife-ridden world for a moral locus amoenus reminiscent of the religious context of the Queste del saint graal. Echoing the Tresor amoureux, the kind of people, including personifications, one frequents again reveals the moral self in the Chevalier errant. The Chevalier’s encounters gradually make him aware of his moral defects, but it is only with his return to Connaissance that he discovers the way to salvation. This conforms to Connaissance’s description of life: ‘ceste vie tant seullement n’est fors un trespassement’ (p. 1132: 755, 9–10) [this life is nothing more than a passing on]. Like her counterpart in the Tresor amoureux, she wants the Chevalier to pass through Love’s realm, but not to tarry there. It is to be a passage in which he acquires knowledge, not the end of his errances. The same holds for his stay with Fortune. In each branch, then, he gains experience and acquires new knowledge by which he gradually comes to know himself and his world, its history and morality. 136 The Chevalier is still despondent because of the disappearance of his amie (p. 984: 496, 22–5).

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Although the Chevalier progresses by fits and starts towards self-knowledge through wide-ranging experiences and a deepening understanding of the ordonnance of his world – in other words through a connaissance of encyclopedic scope expressed in encyclopedic texts137 – the moral context in the third branch of the Chevalier errant is fundamentally conservative, religious, and stern. The allegory of Griselidis foreshadows a cursus aetatum in which God tests His Christians, and the Chevalier’s life does exemply this lifelong test Erleb­ nismuster. Much as Christine de Pizan in the Duc des vrais amants narrates an, at first, seemingly idyllic, virtuous, yet socially unacceptable love story that is innocent because of the lovers’ sexual abstinence – a good love in Machaut’s sense – her sharp condemnation of that love and its continuation that includes the social and moral decline of the lovers denies the possibility of good love as Machaut describes it in the Voir Dit. The turnabout in the Chevalier errant is just as radical, as what seemed to be desirable features of the Chevalier’s love become immoral and even sinful in the light of Connaissance’s teachings on Christian morality and his own experience. Connaissance’s teachings gloss après la lettre the slaughter on both sides in the war between the Lovers and the Jealous Husbands in which strife leads ultimately to grief, death, and condemnation of the love each side defends. Indeed, the Lovers ‘bien recongnoissent que ce leur vint par leurs folles amours, et les Jaloux par leurs folles jalousiez, et moult s’en claiment doulent. Mais au derrain ce fu pour neant, car ainsi furent ilz tous endurés en leurs folles oppinions come devant’ (p. 636: 196, 14–18)138 [realize that this came about because of their foolish loves and the Jealous because of their foolish jealousies and they give loud voice to their grief because of their folly. But in the end it all came to naught for they remained as hardened in their foolish opinions as before]. At the end of the first branch, Reason condemns errant love. Similarly worldly, in the Fortune branch, Guelphs and Ghibelines wage the constant, wide-ranging war between the Church and the Holy Roman Emperor (pp. 887–9). In the Church itself there is discord, tribulation, and schism, sins that Fortune, serving God, punishes as harshly as she does the great lords who rebel against God’s will (pp. 803–13). Patterned on what her counterpart condemns in Jean de Meun’s romance, another Raison in the Chevalier errant’s midsection finally persuades the Chevalier to abandon his errant adventures.139 The fate of humanity subject to Fortune – a fate that brings down most of the eighteen Worthies (both men and women140) – prepares the way for the strict call to order Connaissance sounds in the third branch of Thomas’s lengthy prosimetrum. All this fits neatly into a Cf. Meneghetti 1989, pp. 517–25. See also pp. 295–6: 37, 12–24; 299: 39, 25–33; 365: 80, 21–3; 623: 189, 7–16; 635: 196, 2–13; 800–1: v. 9889–912; 885: 418, 7–14. 139 Badel 1980, pp. 320–4; Finoli 2001, pp. 73–7. On Thomas’s elimination of moral ambiguity see Huot 1993a, p. 331. 140 Trachsler 1996, pp. 294–313; Finoli 2001, pp. 95–105. 137 138



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four-part cursus aetatum,141 from childhood innocence and youthful love through adulthood’s confrontation with the world and fortune to, finally, the wisdom of maturity after the Chevalier considers his life and the ways of God and man in it. The Chevalier errant is a mélange142 that relies heavily on encyclopedic texts for descriptions, amplifications, digressions, examples, and other amplificatory modes common in the forma tractandi of Machaut’s dits. Nonetheless, despite the Chevalier errant’s extensive use of digression by examples, the modus digressivus brings to its narrative a thematic coherence that is worked out in each of its three branches: the experience of love leads to an understanding of how fortune operates, the result of which is connaissance of moralité. This becomes evident shortly before the Chevalier comes to the dwelling of Connaissance. He makes a brief stop at the hermitage of another philosopher ‘qui moult savoit des choses mondaines et moult ot science en lui’ (p. 993: 505, 5–6) [who knew much about the ways of this world and possessed great knowledge]. The Chevalier poses questions like those at the end of the Tresor amoureux. But these virtual articles of judgment on the ways of the world find answers that prepare the Chevalier for the higher truths that Connaissance reveals shortly thereafter. None of the articles has anything to do with love. 1. Why do the great lords refuse to hear the complaints of ‘villains’, that is, of any ‘homme povre’ or ‘mal habiléz’? (p. 995: 506, 9–13) [poor, badly dressed man] 2. Why do so many lords constantly strive to rob or disinherit one another rather than be content with what they already have? (p. 998: 509, 3–8)143 3. Why are so many highborn men and women the Chevalier sees at Fortune’s court cast down? (p. 999: 509, 22–4) 4. ‘Quelle est la plus diverse chose qui en homme regne’? (p. 1000: 510, 5–6) [what is the weirdest thing that rules over men?] The philosopher answers with a wide-ranging disquisition on the ways of the world. He explains social order by the commonplace image of the human body that the great lords dismember by their arrogance, voracity, and violence. This leads to discourse on the head ‘qui gouverne tout’ (p. 997: 508, 1) by using the five senses aided and abetted by the three intellectual virtues, ‘apensive, retentive et la memoire’ (p. 998: 508, 24). The philosopher illustrates these terms by the lord’s knowledge of good conduct that he should foster among his subjects (apensive), the good works he performs for his subjects (retentive), and his 141 The four-stage sequence is also found in Philippe de Novarre’s Quatre âges de l’homme. The Chevalier errant deploys as well a twelve-stage cursus based on the twelve months of the year (pp. 1027–33: v. 10119–262). On the different numerical stages in medieval tradition, see Burrow 1986. On age as topos, see chap. 3 and Kelly 1994, pp. 56–7. 142 Meneghetti 1989, pp. 517–19; her use of the term mélange – ‘un mélange… razionalmente e, starei per dire, teleologicamente ordinato’ (p. 518) – complements Cerquiglini’s formal sense of montage. Taken together, these terms suggest a poetic ordonnance in traitiés that is both formal and conceptual. 143 Cf. p. 252 n. 114, above.

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awareness of the benefits God has bestowed on him (memoire) (p. 998: 508, 25–30). Failing to govern in this way explains the ongoing, widespread evil in the world that a philosopher, quoting ‘Aristotle’, calls the infinite and unbridled appetite of great lords.144 This is why Fortune – we recall her moral justification for dethroning the high and mighty – casts highborn wrongdoers down from their elevated status. In this way, she serves God’s justice, an implicit rewriting of the erratic Fortune from which the Chevalier finally escapes thanks to Connaissance. Like him, the high and mighty must find and then follow the right way to salvation (apensive), follow it consistently (retentive), ever thankful for the benefits they have received from God and keenly aware of their obligation to imitate divine beneficence (memoire). We are reminded of Machaut’s advice to Charles of Navarre in the Confort d’ami; here as there, failure to heed such admonitions has disastrous, even fatal, consequences when Fortune imposes God’s justice. The final question as to the weirdest characteristic in human beings – it is melancholy – leads the philosopher to discuss the four humors or ‘complexions’ that correspond to the four elements: ‘sang, fleme, collere et mellencolie’(p. 1000: 510, 9–13) [blood, phlegm, cholera, and melancholy]. The melancholy humor dominates among humans. It leads (again according to ‘Aristotle’) to the ‘infinites estrangectéz’ of human history (p. 1001: 510, 36–7).145 Melancholy makes the person ‘engigneur et subtil trop desmesuréement’ (p. 1001: 510, 24–5) [excessively inventive and subtle], thus setting him or her apart from others. This excess prevails among many different people, including those who practice the arts and sciences. The melancholy person ‘fera les chosez toutes et si diversez que cuer d’omme ne le saroit aviser, on fera tantes fumées que un singe y seroit pour neant; et tant en artiffices comme en diz et fais; et a la foys en sera forcennéz et feras des oeuvres que telz gens seullent faire et si diversez, et toutes leur semblent bonnes et bellez et bien faites’ (p. 1001: 510, 27–33) [will fashion so many strange things that one cannot think of them, or so many fantastic things146 that a monkey couldn’t compete with them, including artful constructions, words, and deeds. And at the same time he will go mad, fashioning works like those that such people habitually contrive that are so strange; yet all seem to them to be good, beautiful, and well fashioned]. The Chevalier errant’s examples offer abundant illustration of such ‘works’. Thomas de Saluces’s instruction on melancholy as the predominant humor among humans (p.1001: 510, 22–4) could be taken as an implicit critique of the arts, sciences, and other activities current at the university of Paris, which Thomas may have had some contact with while in Paris. In any case, his summa144 This is the lesson the god of love foreshadows when he identifies the great lord as the most ferocious beast (see above, p. 253). 145 On late medieval literature as ‘littérature … de la mélancolie’ (Cerquiglini-Toulet 1993b, p. 11), see as well Armstrong and Kay 2011, pp. 127–33. 146 ‘Vapors’ in the old sense of wild or insane ideas or imagination (OED, s.v. ‘vapour’, §3a–d; cf. RobertH, vol. 1, p. 852).



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tion opens briefly a small window into the influence of Charles V’s translation movement and its contributions to vernacular audiences. Therefore, we turn now to Evrart de Conty and his place in that movement. His writings constitute a new phase in the ongoing evolution of the Machaldian dit at the turn of the fifteenth century.

Debate and Learning: Evrart de Conty’s Echecs amoureux and Echecs moralisés As we have seen, ‘Tous voirs ne sont pas biaus a dire’ is the moral to the Voir Dit’s examples of the truth-telling crow and raven. The assertion problematizes truth by contributing to the ambiguity and sense of uncertainty and even contingency that hovers over interpretations of Machaut’s dits. This is no doubt reflected in the prominence of divergent opinions that emerge in late medieval French poetry.147 Thus, as we have seen, the Tresor amoureux opens the dit to questions about love, life, and arms, but does not resolve the problems it raises. Voir dire, or telling the truth, surfaces anew in the parrot example in the Chevalier errant: silence is golden and can even be life-saving; faith alone provides answers that may seem absolute and unimpeachable, but also harsh for a society already unbalanced and confused because of schism and constant war. Interestingly, the issue of truth versus fiction arises at a time when French writers and readers were eager to acquire and transmit knowledge in their own language. In doing so, they turned the arts of poetry and love to the treatment, literally and allegorically, of quadrivial and philosophical subjects. Charles V’s translation movement contributed significantly to this development. Illustrating the influence of the translation movement, Charles V commissioned Evrart de Conty to translate the Problemata attributed to Aristotle.148 As professor at the University of Paris as well as Charles V’s physician, he further illustrates links between the university and the court.149 Evrart’s composite works were composed in the modus docendi, or pedagogical mode, that Machaut exemplifies in his own dits. But Evrart is an even more ambitious teacher. Thus, to his treatment of open questions, he brings vernacular antecedents together with the Latin translatio studii tradition. With his Echecs amoureux and its commentary, the Echecs moralisés, poetic invention attains the level of proficiency represented in the Latin tradition by the in quadrivio promoti. Although his predecessors made some efforts in this direction, by and large the emphasis in the Machaut ‘school’ was on moral and social issues like those illustrated in the Confort d’ami, the Tresor amoureux, and the Chevalier errant. Like these minus provecti who reach the second stage in Alain de Lille’s hierarchy of readers, apprentice 147 Cerquiglini-Toulet 2010; Armstrong and Kay 2011, esp. chap. six. For background, see Miller 2012. 148 Guichard-Tesson 1989. 149 Guichard-Tesson and Roy, ed., Echecs mor, pp. liv–lvi; Guichard-Tesson 2006.

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poets like Toute Belle read and write not only on love but also on moralité on their way to mastery of the art of poetry. In order, however, to allow Evrart’s pupil studying and perhaps imitating the Echecs amoureux to understand the dit fully and unambiguously, the Echecs moralisés provides knowledge not only of the trivium and the quadrivium, but of more advanced arts and sciences with encyclopedic commentation. Indeed, this commentary is the most thoroughly encyclopedic work I discuss in this book. Clearly, Evrart de Conty evinces links between the university founded on the traditional translatio studii in education and the art of poetry and prose on the one hand and, on the other hand, the courts of Charles V and others who fostered the transmission of Latin learning into the vernacular language while patronizing poets like Machaut and Evrart. As a result, other factors must be taken into account.150 Evrart’s implied readers have some education. They are expected, like Toute Belle, to consider Latin works for which no French translation, adaptation, or earlier commentary was available. This testifies to the bilingual knowledge of Evrart’s pupil. Evidence of this knowledge includes the marginal Latin glosses to the Echecs amoureux, its commentary’s references to Latin works like Jean de Hauville’s Architrenius and Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Mercury and Philology and its commentaries, all not available in French translation.151 Later poets like Christine de Pizan152 and Alain Chartier exemplify this competence in reading Latin as well; later still, Charles d’Orléans reveals a firm command of Latin and the Latin art of poetry in his poem Canticum amoris.153 Evrart’s Echecs amoureux, currently being edited by Gianmario Raimondi, has been appearing in installments. We must therefore rely for the time being on a number of partial editions of the lengthy poem,154 along with Ernst Sieper’s careful plot summary that contains numerous quotations from the Dresden manuscript.155 The Echecs moralisés survives in six manuscripts and one fragment;156 no manuscript contains both works.157 Fortunately, it has been edited Lusignan 1986, 1989; Galderisi 2011. Evrart also refers to them in marginal glosses that his pupil is expected to understand (see Echecs am2, the glosses to v. 4190, pp. 245–6, and v. 5393, p. 248; cf. as well Echecs am1 (I), p. 236 n. 3381-G). Gervase of Melkley recommends Jean de Hauville’s Architrenius for the pupil learning the art of poetry (Kelly 1991, p. 58). 152 Kelly 2007, p. 17 n. 41. 153 Ouy 1959; Kelly 1978, pp. 219–20. Charles wrote the poem during his imprisonment in England after he learned of his second wife’s death. 154 For partial editions prior to Raimondi’s ongoing project, see Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (I), pp. 69–70, to which add Echecs am1 (II). We can also profit from recent scholarship on Evrart’s œuvre; it will be identified when appropriate in the notes. 155 Two incomplete manuscripts of the Echecs amoureux survive: Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, OC.66 (= D), and Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana FR. APP. XXIII (= V). On these manuscripts, see Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (I), pp. 90–102. D, damaged during World War II and later by water damage, is still legible; Raimondi consults it for his edition based on the V (Raimondi, ed., (I), pp. 69, 91). 156 Guichard-Tesson and Roy, ed., Echecs mor, pp. xiii–xxii. 157 However, the Echecs moralisés is found together with Legrand’s Archiloge Sophie 150 151



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in its entirety by Françoise Guichard-Tesson and Bruno Roy.158 The editions of the poem available now are sufficient for my purposes here. Evrart adopts and adapts an art of love and art of poetry similar to Machaut’s, and, although we do not yet have a complete edition of the poem, we can perceive in what has been published already, in its commentary, and in Sieper’s analysis, Evrart’s contribution to the post-Machaut dit. Evrart’s works represent the educational program that he outlines, especially for well-to-do and/or wellborn boys (Echecs amE and Echecs amM; see also Sieper 1898, pp. 92–3). As suggested by Alain de Lille’s quote in the epigraph to chapter four, the earliest instruction begins with language instruction, then passes to morality, the stage that the Chevalier finally reaches late in life in the Chevalier errant. Formal education provides further instruction not only in the trivial and quadrivial arts, but also (presumably on the university level) in philosophy, theology, law, and medicine. Music is especially important because its harmonies explain the operations of all that is contained in the macrocosm and microcosm.159 Such instruction in the Echecs amoureux is elucidated by its Latin glosses and, more systematically – indeed, almost encyclopedically – in the Echecs moralisés, which provides the foundation for and commentary on encyclopedic texts in Evrart’s verse dit. Importantly here, Serge Lusignan identifies a number of ways by which translators introduced new concepts into French: neologisms, binomial statements,160 periphrasis, glossing, and lexicons that unify and define terminology.161 These techniques are also common, having been borrowed from contemporary vernacular literature. The goal was to make the new learning not only available but also attractive reading for secular audiences. In the late fourteenth century, this meant reinventing a love story. Like Machaut’s dits and the other works discussed in this chapter, Evrart de Conty’s writings are examples of how this was done. Indeed, achieving this goal was, one might say, the project of Evrart’s life as represented by the Echecs amoureux, his translation of the Problemata attributed to Aristotle,162 and the Echecs moralisés. Surprisingly, the commentary terminates abruptly ‘pour certaine [unexplained] cause’ (352v27) at the point the Lover meets Pallas and Juno without treating the dit’s denouein BNF fr. 143 and BNF fr. 1508 (Beltran, ed., Archiloge, pp. 16–18; Guichard-Tesson, ed., Echecs mor, pp. xiii–xiv). 158 On Evrart de Conty as author of both works, see Guichard-Tesson 1983; Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (I), pp. 218–19 n. 1851-G; and Guichard-Tesson 2007, pp. 257–8. 159 Evrart’s knowledge of music is theoretical and old-fashioned rather than practical and current; see Abert, ed., Echecs amM, pp. 917–19, and passim in the notes (pp. 919–25; correct n. 649 to 689 and 1285 to 1185). I return to this subject in chap. 7. 160 On binomial statements in medieval and early modern French, see Buridant 1980; Colombo Timelli 2011, pp. 13–22, notes that such ‘occurences … permettent de reconnaître le champ sémantique concerné’ (p. 21). This technique is analogous to the two or more names that Machaut and, more frequently, his Latin-language predecessors used for personifications. 161 Lusignan 1986, pp. 152–3, 166–7. See as well now TransMed, vol. 1. 162 On this work now being edited by Guichard-Tesson, see the articles in Problemata.

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ment: ‘Face qui vault le remenant’ (352v34) [whoever wants can treat the rest]. Indeed, not much more may have been needed.163 Pallas’s and Juno’s lessons that the commentary leaves out are treated alongside Diana and other gods and goddesses in Evrart’s commentary on the judgment of Paris (Echecs mor, pp. 261–86).164 Whereas the Chevalier errant derives examples and quotations by and large from vernacular literature, as stated above, Evrart’s two Echecs draw on both vernacular and Latin resources. The verse Echecs is rubricated in French and, in the Venice manuscript, glossed in Latin. Its descriptions and digressions are more focused on explaining the love plot than the more learned and elaborate Echecs moralisés. Evrart’s prose moralizations expand and deepen the context and scope of the dit’s love story beyond any of his predecessors in order to include, in the vernacular, traditional Latin learning that the translation movement was bringing to the French language. Although the format is different (letter in verse with separate prose commentary), the scope of the two works is analogous to that in the Ovide moralisé. In this way the commentary provides interpretive material as encyclopedic texts for the dit’s literal narrative. Like Machaut in the Dit dou vergier, Evrart went back to the Roman de la rose’s conventional love story for materia remota that he recast in the materia propinqua of the Echecs amoureux. Thus, the dit’s protagonist awakens on a bright springtime morning and sets out towards what become several encounters that confront him with choices on the life he is leading, including diverse recommendations on the life he should lead. Each encounter locates him implicitly as a viator in bivio. Nature,165 Venus, and Diana variously promote or impede his progress towards the Garden of Deduit. Undeterred, he enters the Garden where he meets Amour as well as the maiden he falls in love with during a chess match which he loses to her. The god of love encourages him to persevere, as he will surely defeat her eventually. Thereafter, while still in the Garden, but in separate interior garden spaces or enclosures,166 the new lover meets Pallas and Juno who encourage him to reject the vita voluptuosa that Venus and the god of love promote in favor of either the contemplative life (Pallas) or the active life (Juno). We cannot know what follows or what Evrart may have intended, because the two surviving manuscripts of the Echecs amoureux break off before completing this episode. Like Jean de Meun’s continuation of the Rose, the Echecs amoureux makes extensive additions to the Rose’s materia remota167 by drawing on clerical 163 Badel 1980, pp. 291–2 and 314; cf. Echecs mor (30v21–35) on limiting glossing to what is essential for the work being glossed. An analogous abrupt ending occurs in Radulphus de Longo Campo’s commentary on the Anticlaudianus (Kelly 1999, p. 22 n. 47). 164 Note Pallas’s emphasis there on ‘contemplacion’ (103v8) and Juno’s on ‘la vie pratique et active’ (108v45), the choices they propose for a good religious or secular life when the lover meets them in the dit’s last part. 165 On Evrart’s new version of the Rose’s Nature, see Legaré 2011. 166 Legaré 2011, pp. 222–3. 167 See Badel 1980, chap. six, on Evrart’s ‘réécriture du Roman de la rose’ (p. 282) in the



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learning for explanations of the subjects he treats. The context is just as moral as that in the Chevalier errant, but it is less absolute, offering amplified views on the directions in life available to its young protagonist along with encyclopedic texts as arguments for and against the choices he is offered. In this way, the young lover considers diverse moral universes open to him as he progresses into a Garden of Deduit reconfigured in the new poem and extensively commented on in prose. He surveys this locus amoenus, and then looks beyond it to consider the contemplative and active lives Pallas and Juno encourage him to adopt. The Echecs amoureux thus emulates the tradition inaugurated by Jean de Meun in his continuation of Guillaume de Lorris’s incomplete Rose. Both the Echecs amoureux and its commentary recycle the commonplace homo viator in bivio in search of self-knowledge, a noble undertaking (Echecs am1 (I), v. 647–60, 1970–80, 2310–11) replete with digressive material and encyclopedic texts. Like the Rose, the Alexandrie, the Tresor amoureux, and the Chevalier errant, the narrative begins at the moment the protagonist enters the age of accountability (‘annos discretionis’, as a gloss to v. 1841 describes it). The first crossroads occurs when the young man encounters Nature (v. 707), who advises him to follow the via racionis rather than the via sensualitatis (Echecs am1 (I), v. 675–890). The Lover ignores her advice, instead voicing approval of Paris’s choice of Venus in the judgment of Paris (v. 1841–83; cf. Echecs mor, part three). To show her appreciation, Venus promises him a beloved more beautiful than Helen before she sends him on his way to meet the young beauty in the Garden of Deduit, the locus amoenus in his via sensualitatis. Diana briefly detains the Lover on his way there, but fails to turn him aside from the voluptuous life Venus promotes. Once inside the Garden of Deduit, he falls in love with his partner in the chess match that gives the dit its title, after which he listens to Amour’s lessons on the love life adapted from Ovid. After the god of love takes his leave, the new lover meets Pallas and Juno, who, as mentioned earlier, urge him to choose the contemplative or the active life. Here the lover confronts another fork in the road. His choice, like that of Paris, is now among three loves: Venus’s vita voluptuosa, Juno’s vita activa, and Pallas’s vita contemplativa. Pallas advises him to choose the contemplative life devoted entirely to God. Failing that, Juno promotes the active life to be led in conformity with moral and social obligations as Erlebnismuster. Neither explicitly correlates her advice with Diana’s, although Pallas’s contemplative life comes closest to that goddess’s monastic life. Both goddesses subordinate love to larger moral and social demands, much as Guillaume does for Charles of Navarre in the Confort d’ami and as Connaissance does in both the Tresor amoureux and the Chevalier errant. But the manuscripts leave us in doubt as Echecs amoureux; cf. also Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (I), pp. 80–5; Gally 2003 and 2005, 3e partie; González Doreste and Braet 2008; and the notes to Raimondi’s edition on Evrart’s rewriting of the two-part Roman de la rose. The most novel narrative addition to the Rose is, of course, the introduction of the chess match between the Amant figure and the woman he falls in love with (J. Adams 2006, pp. 67–75).

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to the Lover’s choice, the narrative being incomplete in both of them and in Evrart’s incomplete commentary on the dit.168 Importantly here, the Echecs amoureux distinguishes between good and bad love much as Machaut does in the Remede and the Confort d’ami. Diana, the dea castitatis (Echecs am1 (I), p. 163 gloss), describes good love as ‘natural love’ that seeks fulfillment in ‘l’euvre qui s’enssieut’ [the act] (Echecs mor, 199r34), although this factum is not necessary. Some, like Guillaume and Toute Belle, ‘ont telle souffisance ou delit … qu’ilz ont de l’un l’autre veir, qu’ilz ne demandent plus, ainz veulent en ce point honnourablement vivre sanz plus oultre requerre, se n’est le baisier et l’acoler par avanture’ (Echecs mor, 199r36–9) [have such sufficiency or delight in seeing one another that they ask for nothing more; rather they wish to live honorably in this way without asking for more than, perchance, to kiss and embrace]. This is the new kind of lovemaking that Machaut depicts in the Voir Dit’s Lendit episode. The goddess of chastity laments her decline since the days of King Arthur, when love was chaste.169 But since Jupiter deposed his father Saturn, Mon povoir est mis en rescat, Car chasteté, justice et fois, Et lëaulté, a celle fois, Aveuc Saturne s’en fuïrent170 Et tout mal en leur lieu saillirent. (v. 2622–6) [my power is in decline(?), for chastity, justice, faith, and loyalty took flight then together with Saturn and all evils emerged and took their place.]

Nowadays, Diana laments, ‘nulz ne quiert mais que delit’ (Echecs am1 (I), v. 2699) [everybody seeks only delight]. Venus as goddess of lust is the source of the evils and misfortunes that befall those who let her guide them into the Garden of Deduit. Evrart’s Diana is a mythographic figure similar to Reason in both the Rose

Minnis 1992, pp. 177–80. See Kelly 1978, pp. 14–15; Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (I), pp. 227–8 n. 2640ff. This interpretation of ‘Arthurian love’ is read into Wace’s version of Arthurian love in the Roman de Brut (v. 10493–520), presumably an interpretation of the time when ‘dames meillur esteient / E plus chastement en viveient’ (v. 10519–20) [ladies were better and lived more chastely]. Evrart might also have known the source of Wace’s adaptation, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s reference to women’s chastity (Faral 1929, vol. 3, p. 246). Diana retains the cautionary ‘plus chastement’ as lovers male and female ‘qui faisoient ma voulenté / en partie’ (Echecs am1 (I), v. 2652–3). The Tresor amoureux depicts in similar terms ‘les dames de jadis’ at Arthur’s court (pp. 114–15: XXXVII; 123: v. 833; 122–3: v. 822–58). These new interpretations of Arthurian love conform to Machaut’s chaste love (cf. Badel 1980, p. 269; Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (I), pp. 227–8 n. 2640ss). 170 Jean de Meun also equates the end of the Golden Age with the castration of Saturn and the birth of Venus (Kelly 1995, pp. 85–9). 168 169



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and the Chevalier errant.171 ‘Dyane et sa gent mainent laiens honeste vie et raisonable, en laquelle on n’a cure de fol delit ne de fole plaisance, ainz y veult on tout regler par raison. Et pour ce sont laiens chastité et virginité, sobrietés et actrampance, et les autres vertus grandement honnourees qui tiennent compaignie a la deesse’ (Echecs mor, 141v22–6) [Diana and her followers lead therein an upright, reasonable life, one in which they eschew foolish delight and foolish pleasure; rather they want to regulate everything using reason. That’s why Chastity and Virginity dwell there along with Sobriety and Temperance as well as the other highly esteemed virtues that accompany the goddess]. This clearly resembles Connaissance’s realm in the Chevalier errant. Like Thomas’s Connaissance, Evrart’s Diana promotes a contemplative, virtually monastic life that is even sterner than the chastity of Machaut’s good love. It is not for those who, as the Alerion puts it, wish to ‘vivre seculerement’. Although Diana, along with Juno and Pallas, promotes a good love that is opposed to Venus’s amor voluptuosus, Pallas and Juno put the topic in a larger context. Like Machaut, these goddesses promote a love in which, as Michèle Gally puts it, ‘découvrir la femme – et l’amour – ne sera pas la conquérir’,172 as in a chess match. Indeed, the god of love, using the chess game as metaphor, glosses the poem’s gradus amoris as a war of conquest that the lover will win (Echecs am2, v. 3024–9, 3092, 4640–1, 4851–2, 5174), avenging in this way his loss in their first match (v. 5526–34). Pallas and Juno locate good love in marriage; both reject Venus except when she serves the ends of Nature and an honorable public life in matrimony (Sieper 1898, pp. 79–80, 87, 91–2; Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (I), p. 80 n. 14). But as the young protagonist tells Diana, Par mo foy, qui me donroit or toute le pröeche Hector et tout le sens et tous l’avis que orent Salomons et Davis, et, avoec che tout le tresor du roy Nabugodonosor  (v. 3415–20) [in faith, if someone were to give me Hector’s prowess and all Solomon’s and David’s intelligence and understanding, and together with that King Nebuchadnezzar’s wealth]

he would refuse them as surely as he refuses Diana’s offer of life in what he deems to be her ‘habitacion de hermite / qui aimme vivre solitaire vie / … / si contemplativement’173 (v. 3430–1, 3434) [the dwelling of a hermit who loves the solitary life passed in contemplation]. Delectation is the role God assigns 171 Sieper 1898, p. 149; Badel 1980, p. 286; cf. Guichard-Tesson 1984, pp. 244–8. Juno and especially Pallas in the Echecs amoureux also function as avatars of the Rose’s Reason (Gally 2005, pp. 135–43). 172 Gally 2005, p. 143. 173 Possible allusion to Pallas’s contemplative life.

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to Venus (Echecs am1 (I), v. 1981–2018; see also Echecs mor, pp. 246–9);174 Amour accepts Venus’s view that delectation is the goal of lovemaking. However, unlike his mother, he also insists on constancy (Echecs am2, v. 2454–66, 3943– 66, 4586–94) – but not on procreation (v. 2477–511). The verse and prose Echecs further imitate the Ovide moralisé’s allegorizations that Machaut also knew, used, and recommended to Toute Belle. But its allegorizations are treated separately, either by brief allusion in Latin marginalia to the verse dit or, more explicitly and extensively, in the Echecs moralisés. The Ovide moralisé’s allegorical modes in the prose commentary introduce historical and scholarly allegories as well as the traditional four-part allegorical scheme based on literal, allegorical, tropological, and/or anagogical readings.175 Toute Belle might also have recognized them in the Prose Lancelot-Graal, especially if she read the Queste del saint graal carefully, as well as the moralizations of Ovid and Fulgentius that Guillaume recommends to her. She would certainly consider how each author reconfigures Ovid’s fables in order to exemplify a specific meaning. As noted above, the Echecs moralisés draws on these various approaches to literal fictions. It even cites untranslated Latin examples from a reader’s potential intertextes. In so doing, Evrart allows for choice among readings without denying the potential applicability of all of them in a moral hierarchy set out in the modus divisivus. Subtlety is underscored anew in reading ‘Les fabuleuses narracions des poetes, quant a toutes leurs clauses’, because they ne sont pas ramenables a tous propos, maiz aucunes a un sens et aucunes a un autre, pour l’equivocacion des nons des dieux qui en pluseurs significacions sont pris, come dit est. Et pour ce dit Remigius que Marcianus, qui traicta en son livre des Nopces de Mercure et de Philologie176 – lequel Mercure est une des .vij. planetes et s’est aussi nientmains aucunesfoiz pris pour parole – dit moult de choses de parole soubz le non de Mercure, aprés lesquelles il sault

174 But she is as diversified in her application of delectacion as her son is (Raimondi, ed., Echecs am1 (I), pp. 219–20 nn. 198–255). Deduit and Amour, alias Jocus and Cupido respectively, are sons of Venus who have a place in the Garden; her third son, Hymenaeus, does not appear but would presumably have found a place in the vita activa (Echecs am1 (I), v. 2059–186; cf. Echecs mor, 198r36–41). Deduit is allied with Amour because he provides the pleasures that in secular life lead to love, Amour’s province, and intercourse, Venus’s domain (Echecs am1, v. 2109–362; Echecs mor, 139v46–140–r2). 175 Demats 1973, Possamaï-Pérez 2006, and the articles in Ovide and TransOv. For a general survey, see Strubel 2002. Similarly, the Prologue to the Echecs moralisés evokes different fields the game of chess may be likened to besides love, notably, government, battle, and planetary movements (see J. Adams 2006, chap. two). Evrart is especially careful to avoid the confusion he finds in Martianus Capella and Remigius (J. Adams 2006, pp. 68–9). This in turn provides for mutually illuminating encyclopedic texts like those inserted in the Voir Dit on government and war. 176 Both this book and Remigius’s commentary are referenced in the Echecs mor, p. 776 s.v. ‘Marcien’ and pp. 779 s.v. ‘Remigius’ as well as 774 s.v. ‘Expositeur de Marcien’; there are even more extensive references to Macrobius’s untranslated works, p. 776 s.v. ‘Macrobe’.



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aussi come soudainnement et se prent a parler de la planete dessusdite sur ce mesmez non, pour laquelle chose les bien soubtilz mesmez, sy come il dit, sont souvent deceu et perturbé. (Echecs mor, 32r5–14) [not all episodes in the fabulous tales told by the poets can be brought to bear on all subjects; some treat one meaning and others a different one, because the gods’ names, being literally the same, are given several different interpretations, as has been said. For this reason Remigius says that Martianus Capella, who related his Marriage of Mercury and Philology (Mercury is one of the seven planets and is also sometimes interpreted as Eloquence) says a lot about eloquence under the name Mercury. After that he abruptly springs, as it were, over to discuss the aforementioned planet under the same proper name; for this reason even the most subtle minds, as he says, are frequently taken in and befuddled.]

Evrart then develops his own subtle allegories on Mercury’s metamorphoses. For example, in the context of gender, the god is bisexual: ‘Mercures estoit de telle nature qu’il se muoit quant il vouloit de nature de home en nature de fame, et de nature aussi de fame en homme, et sy faisoit des choses blanches noires, et des noires blanches aussi’ (Echecs mor, 99v26–9) [Mercury’s nature was such that he changed at will from a man’s gender to a woman’s gender, as well as from a woman’s gender to a man’s; he changed white into black and black into white as well]. The same holds, as argued above, for Guillaume’s moral bisexuality in the confessor’s critique of his maniere de fame. Toute Belle would have found a similar transformation in the Voir Dit’s color change of the crow from white to black that describes not a natural but a fictional metamorphosis with moral and social significance. Again, like Evrart’s Mercury, Guillaume paints white as black and black as white in partures referred to in the Remede de Fortune (see p. 86). But the irrational protagonist can get it wrong just as some of Machaut’s Guillaumes do. As we have seen, in the Jugement Navarre, Guillaume objects to the stork example because he in no way wishes to suggest literally devouring or otherwise putting to death an unfaithful mate. He fails to understand how examples function metaphorically. Similarly, when in the Echecs amoureux Diana uses the examples of Jason, Icarus, and Pheton to illustrate the perils of immoderation, the protagonist reads them only literally: he has no intention of setting sail in quest of the Golden Fleece, of flying with man-made wings, or of riding Apollo’s chariot into the heavens. Moreover, like the Rose’s Guillaume, interpreting integumenta simply does not interest him; he wants to go to the Garden of Deduit despite Diana’s warnings about the great perils that await him there and that her Ovidian fables exemplify (Echecs am1 (I), v. 3525–67). The Echecs amoureux shows what the bestial or irrational mind does with what Reason, here as Diana, teaches. In the spirit of Riffaterre’s intertexte, readers might well recall once more the Rose’s example of Amour shoveling out one ear what Reason preaches into the other ear. Gally notes perceptively that ‘le Livre des Echecs moralisés repasse par les

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lieux et les images du [Roman de la rose] pour ouvrir à des interprétations multiples – morales, scientifiques, métaphysiques – dans lesquelles le sens érotique premier se dissout’.177 The reader will learn from the digressive material in such encyclopedic texts how to evaluate the love story and its moral subplot. In doing so, he or she becomes fully aware of the larger world in which love and its personification can and do signify different kinds of love that are diversely contextualized and evaluated. No reader can seriously object to this larger context without revealing by his or her own irrationality the ‘bestiality’ of the Rose’s Amant, the Voir Dit’s Guillaume, the Joli Buisson de jonece’s Froissart, and, last but not least, the lover in Evrart’s Echecs amoureux. The goal of achieving certainty is the same as in the Chevalier errant, but enhanced by broader knowledge and a more subtle view of the world’s diversity and its unifying God. Truth is becoming ever more learned in its secular conceptualization. But, ironically, the advances in secular knowledge are also less certain and, therefore, open to debate.

Debatable Learning The three dits examined in this chapter exemplify the conceptualization of knowledge that Helen Swift and Friedrich Wolfzettel identify in dits written in Machaut’s wake. Swift and Wolfzettel show as well the emergence of French verse as a medium that raises open questions, but also begins to provide answers based on religious and/or scholastic authorities in the medieval Latin tradition of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. But certainty remains elusive. Therefore, authors continue to cultivate the debate mode. Following the Roman de la rose, the Ovide moralisé, the translations and adaptations of Boethius, and other works, Machaut made his own contributions to these developments and to the art that gave expression to it. Our three authors continued in the same mode, using their intertextual reminiscences of Machaut’s arts and writings much as apprentices would have. The modus digressivus is another prominent mode in these dits. It opens the conventional gradus amoris to new moral and social contexts, contexts that define, evaluate, and problematize different kinds of love in light of and in relation to diversified criteria. Adapting traditional love plots and modes by glossing, commentary, topical invention, encyclopedic texts, the rewriting of antecedent narratives, and the order and modes of the formal cause – notably exemplification, digression, debate, and allegory – our authors conjoin new subject matters and traditional love topics in a mélange and montage like that Machaut fashions in the Confort d’ami. This dit locates love in the broader moral context of Machaut’s reading of Boethius’s Consolation, while adapting it to the more secular issues raised by the imprisonment of Charles of Navarre. 177

Gally 2003, p. 254.



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The Fontaine amoureuse, something of a continuation of the Confort, does not exclude the larger social and moral environment, anticipating in that way issues that arise in the Voir Dit and the Prise d’Alexandrie. The Prologue to the Echecs moralisés provides a broad introduction to just this kind of adaptation of the conventional love intertexte. Thus, in his materia remota culled from Guillaume de Lorris’s Rose, Evrart as l’aucteur avec l’amoureuse matiere entremella et adjousta pluseurs choses estranges qui profitent grandement a traictier des meurs et au gouvernement de nostre vie humaine, affin que ceulx qui y regardent, avec la recreacion et le delit qu’ilz y pourront prendre, aucun profit aussi en puissent raporter. (Echecs mor, 1r20–4) [the author interspersed in and added to his amorous source material a number of extraneous topics that are very useful in treating mores and managing our human life so that his readers can take some profit along with the entertainment and pleasure they may derive from it.]

In short, Evrart rewrote the Roman de la rose because he wanted his readers to ‘tendre a vertu et a bonne oeuvre, et de fouir tout mal et toute fole oyseuse’ (1r30–1) [to aim at virtue and good works while fleeing all evil and all foolish idleness]. No Garden of Deduit for these readers. Despite their diversity, Machaut’s œuvre and the three dits discussed in this chapter show that Horace’s delectare et prodesse principle is still alive and well at the end of the fourteenth century. Yet the world’s disorder reveals moral and social problems that will continue to loom large in the writings of Christine de Pizan and Alain Chartier and beyond. The only love admissible becomes chaste love or conjugal affection. But the former is rejected by most authors, while the latter receives little attention except from Christine de Pizan – and her conjugal bliss did not last long. The prologue to the Echecs moralisés shows that love remains a popular topic in medieval literature, even if it is introduced only to be rejected, as Froissart178 and Christine de Pizan179 do along with Chartier’s Belle Dame sans mercy. Not so Machaut. For him, love, when properly understood and practiced as a good love, becomes exemplary of ideal moral and social norms in his time. It does so by submitting to the same rational ordonnance that should govern all human activity and that is ultimately responsible to and judged by God. Neglecting that universal context leads only to error, a lesson Fortune hammers home in the Chevalier errant by the lives of those she overthrows because of the moral and social wrongs they cause. By realizing a life in harmony with divine order as the Confort d’ami’s Charles of Navarre is advised to do, all will be well. This is also the lesson of the three dits discussed in this chapter. But if the individual 178 Schwarze 2003, esp. pp. 90–8, 123–40. Froissart’s œuvre treats the balance between armes and amour (Schwarze 2003, p. 9) discussed and debated in the anonymous Tresor amoureux. 179 Wolfzettel 1996, pp. 203–10; Kelly 2007, chap. four.

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ignores that lesson in favor of ‘bobanz qui attraient luxure et avarice’ (Chevalier errant, p. 965: 478, 43) [extravagance that attracts lust and avarice], Fortune will impose herself; or, as the Jugement Navarre puts it regarding Mesure, ‘S’elle s’i met, tu és peris; / Se tu l’i mès, tu és garis’ (JN, v. 3565–6) [if she imposes herself, you have lost; if you include her, you are saved]. Mesure here serves a higher order, as Fortune does in the Chevalier errant; mortals should harmonize their actions and sentiments accordingly. Machaut’s epigones attempt to exemplify this by means of mesure in morality and art. Mesure has a wide semantic range. It is an essential feature in music, an art and science attuned in medieval thought to moral integrity and universal harmony. This is also the case in French poetry and its versification based on cesura and syllabic numbers. Evrart points out that what Deschamps terms musique naturele is measured poetry because ‘en rime et en mectre est la parole assise et mesuree par musical mesure, c’est-à-dire par nombres ressamblables a ceulx dont les consonances musicaulx despendent, en laquel musical consonance se delite moult l’ame humaine naturelement’ (Echecs mor, 1r42–5) [in rhythmic180 and metrical verse, words are arranged and measured using musical measures, that is to say, by numbers similar to those on which musical harmonies depend; the human soul naturally takes great pleasure in that musical harmony]. Harmonization brings the art of music to the fore, an aesthetic emphasis that, conceptualized in medieval terms, embraces the art of poetry and its enjoyment. We have noted this conjointure of verse and melody in Toute Belle’s experience of Machaut’s poetry. Evrart fits this aesthetic experience into the learning he propagates in which musical proportions, like Judson Allen’s clock, keep good time. We see in the next chapter how these measures also keep good time in love, life, nature, and poetry.

180 I read rime in context as rhythm. On this sense of rime as rhythmic verse in late medieval French, see Kelly 1991, p. 169, esp. n. 375; Hüe 2000, pp. 31–2.

7

Melodie Tant ert bele … Que dou vëoir estoit grant melodie.1 De l’abay mesmes des chiens se esmerveille il et y prent grant plaisance.2

Jacqueline Cerquiglini poses an intriguing indirect question: ‘l’on peut, à bon droit, se demander quels sont les harmoniques du Voir Dit’.3 The statement alludes, of course, to the musical context of Machaut’s invention, essential according to Toute Belle if one wants to enjoy Guillaume’s poetry fully. But it also recalls a tradition in which the poet adopts an art of love while playing with modulations on the rhetorical tradition of rewriting. This is evident in Toute Belle’s apprenticeship during which she imitates and even challenges Guillaume’s lyrics. Moreover, in the social milieu of late medieval French literature such give and take is not only part of apprenticeship. It belongs as well to the social milieu in which poets write. They write to one another, conversing, debating, and challenging. Guillaume’s exchange with Thomas Paien, later joined by Froissart and Chaucer, is typical of this sort of activity. The Voir Dit and, indeed, most of what we call courtly literature is, citing Cerquiglini again, ‘une forme polémique’4 in an epoch in which it becomes difficult to identify truth and even dangerous to express it.5 Her reference to the ‘harmoniques du Voir Dit’ fuses musical terminology and the rhetorical mode;6 it also suggests the elements of an aesthetic experience that locates Machaut’s musical and poetic compositions in a harmonious universe wherein all is disposed according to measure, number, and weight (Biblia, Sapientia 11:21).7 1 T-L, vol. 5, col. 1363, lines 15–16. ‘She was so beautiful … that to see her was a great melody.’ 2 Echecs mor, 77r16–17. ‘He marvels and takes great pleasure in the very baying of the hounds.’ 3 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, p. 154; see also Cerquiglini-Toulet 1995b and 2002a; Leach 2012; Albritton 2012. 4 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, p. 155. 5 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1980, pp. 158–68; Armstrong and Kay 2011. 6 Cf. Curtius 1954, pp. 87–8. 7 Cf. De Bruyne 1998, vol. 2, pp. 379, 404; this edition includes a monograph covering the period 1300–1450 not found in the 1946 edition (see vol. 1, p. xix); there are numerous

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The Medieval Experience of Beauty Very early on in their relationship Toute Belle justifies her and her contemporaries’ esteem for Machaut’s/Guillaume’s poetry. This is, as Letter 5 puts it, because of the aesthetic pleasure that his poetry gives her. Your ‘chansons’, she exclaims, ‘en l’ame de moi … sont toutes si bonnes, et me plaisent tant, et aussi tout quanque vous m’escrivez, car je ne preng confort ni esbatement fors en veoir et es lire; et preng si grant plaisance que je en laisse souvent autres besongnes’ (VD, p. 138a/86) [songs feel so good deep down inside me and please me so much, as does everything you write to me, for I derive no comfort or pleasure except in seeing and reading them. Indeed, I take such great pleasure that I often leave other tasks undone]. But this ‘honorable esbatement’ is not sufficient. Toute Belle wants not only to read, but also to sing Machaut’s poems. ‘Si vous pri, mon tresdoulz cuer, qu’il vous plaise de les moi envoier notées’ (p. 138b/86) [And I beseech you, my very sweet beloved, to be so good as to send them to me with musical notation]. One rarely finds such enthusiasm among modern readers of Machaut’s poetry. What are we missing? In the light of Chaucer’s caveat when judging literature from bygone times, the emotional impact of Machaut’s poetry that Toute Belle reports demands our careful consideration. Can we recover or even understand her enthusiasm today? In a significant footnote in her recent study of Machaut’s poetry and music, Leach broaches the reception of his music and that of other medieval composers. ‘Musicologists have generally eschewed discussions of the emotional content of medieval music, probably because its musical “language” lacks an unbroken tradition, and matters of emotional meaning are difficult to reconstruct with any degree of certainty.’8 The difficulty is not confined to musicologists; we philologists encounter similar obstacles when we confront Machaut’s poetic language. The problem is compounded, for poetry and music, by the Meliador maiden paradigm that suggests that emotional responses by medieval audiences were not unified but diverse and might even be conflicted. Indeed, the prevalence of the debate mode confirms such diversity. Perhaps, in the light of these considerations, we may be able, as Leach goes on to suggest, ‘to claim that [this poetry] is emotional without being able to pin down the details of the emotional language, since the affective nature of music is a commonplace in music theory and in literary mention of music throughout the period’. Toute Belle’s Letter 5 is evidence of this emotional impact. Thus, beginning with Machaut’s paradigm of verbal rhetoric expressing sorrow or grief that contrasts with song or instrumental music conducive to joy, I have come to the conclusion, based on evidence in romances and dits containing inserted lyrics,9 that medieval audiences’ experience of beauty was and useful cross-references in this supplement to corresponding subject matter in the original volume. 8 Leach 2011, p. 164 n. 65. 9 See Kelly 1978, Appendix, for examples of the reception and appreciation of French



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wide-ranging, from the melancholy brooding of lyrics without music at one extreme to the joyous, often communal pleasure, notably in dance, that music fostered. Leach notes that this evidence must be revised in the light of musical scholarship since the publication of my monograph in 1978.10 Nonetheless, we need not set aside the evidence adduced in medieval sources for the wide range of responses to medieval poetry and music they suggest, from purely personal, even private reading or singing to performance only of instrumental scores. Toute Belle dances to music but also withdraws alone to read and sing the poems Guillaume sends her. The aesthetics of medieval poetry and music is difficult to define or describe, in part because it is also diversified.11 Still, Chaucer’s caveat regarding literature from a bygone epoch requires us to try to understand it not only on its own terms, but also through its intended emotional impact. Evrart de Conty’s Echecs moralisés offers insight into the traditional theoretical relation between poetry and music in Machaut’s time.12 Different kinds of versification, he reports, fit specific subjects. Rhymes and line length that are pronounced quickly and lightly are common ‘en matieres joyeuses et en chanssons d’amour legieres et volages qui courent par le monde, come sont vyrelais, balades et rondeaulx, qui telle mesure aussi desirent et demandent’ (Echecs mor, 67v36–8) [in joyful subject matter and light and flighty songs that are common everywhere, like virelais, ballades, and rondeaux that want and require such versification]. On the other hand, marvelous and notable deeds require longer lines and different musical measures; so do, in another register, some love songs and songs to or for the Virgin Mary. Music must fit appropriate subject matter and, as it were, be in sync with verse length, stanza disposition, and rhymes.13 This adequately explains Toute Belle’s claim that poetry is not enough – she needs music too. Evrart states that ‘les chans de musique ont diverses vertus et diverses natures, selon aussi qu’ilz sont de divers tons et de diverses tailles’ (76v5–7) [musical songs have diverse virtues and natures in accordance with different pitches and different measures]. He offers four illustrations: 1. The Dorian mode, ‘d’une mesure simple, meure, actrempee et tardive, qui de sa nature encline les escoutans a vertu et a bien, a bonnes meurs et honesté’ (76v11–13) [with its simple, mature, tempered, slow measure, that naturally inclines its audiences to what is good, moral conduct, and uprightness]. lyric poetry that document the diverse ways medieval audiences responded to poetry and music – fictional audiences, to be sure, the validity of whose experience of poetry and music we seek to understand and perhaps even enjoy as ‘honorable esbatement’. Even in the Middle Ages the sweetest songs may relate the greatest sorrow and grief as a kind of bittersweet aesthetic (Kelly 1993). 10 Leach 2011, pp. 68–9. 11 Olson 1984. 12 Cf. Roy 1999a, pp. 29–32. 13 Cf. Earp 2012 and Albritton 2012 on the relation between declamation and expression in Machaut’s music and poetry.

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2. The Frigian mode that, ‘pour son fremissement et aspreté hastive, encline a hardiesce, a ire et a vengance, et as faiz de bataille poursievir et amer’ (76v16–18) [by its tremolo and swift high notes inspires courage, anger, and vengeance, as well as towards pursuit and love of combat]. 3. The Lydian mode, that ‘pour sa mesure mole et souef, encline les cuers a joye et a delit et a lubricité’ (76v22–3) [by its wanton, soft measure inclines hearts to joy, delight, and lubricity]. 4. The mixed Lydian mode ‘qui encline a pitié et a compassion les cuers des escoutans’ (76v26–7) [that inclines the hearts of its audiences to pity and compassion]. The modes complement specific kinds of subject matter and suggest aesthetic and moral responses to them. Accordingly, for Evrart de Conty, music and eloquence, including poetry, ‘sont deux choses ensamble bien seans, come Tulles tesmoigne, et qui aussi sont de grant efficace’ (76r34–5) [are both well suited to one another, as Cicero testifies, and are also very effective]. He goes on to discuss other features of French versification in relation to musical proportions, in particular the use of the mute e, elision, syllabification, line length, and prose texts. Emphasizing the conjointure of music and verse, Evrart explains that Orpheus was a great musician not only as a singer and instrumentalist, but also because of his eloquence (76r30–3). Evrart was a theoretician, not a composer. That is, like those medieval professors of medicine who taught from Galen but were not practitioners, he did not write music. Useful therefore is Johannes de Grocheio’s De musica, a treatise on both the art and its practice in his time. He includes the theory handed down from Aristotle and Boethius to Evrart on the four modes described above. But he offers even more extensive instruction on the traditional modes than Evrart does (Musica, p. 154: 10–23). Music is worthy of study, Johannes proclaims in his prologue, because it can correct and improve morals ‘si modo debito usi sint’ (Musica, p. 110: 12–13) [if they use the right mode]. What interests him in particular is Parisian practice around 1300,14 the approximate date of Machaut’s birth. Parisian music, de Grocheio tells us, addresses the soul and, accordingly, influences moral and social conduct. Moreover, the cantus gestualis or chanson de geste has different effects depending on the social order of the audience (Musica, p. 130: 26–35). For example, the account of the travails of bygone heroes and saints should sustain laborers who, he believes, will bear their pains more readily and willingly after hearing the greater suffering of their chivalric or saintly forbears recounted in these chansons. On the other hand, the cantus coronatus or simplex conductus, a genre represented in poetic contests or puys, is written for kings and magnates because it inspires courage and fortitude as well as magnanimity and largess, virtues that are conducive to good government. Its subject matter includes amicitia and caritas – that is, noble love and

14

Rohloff, ed., Musica, pp. 11–17; Page 1993b, p. 17. Cf. Dufourcet Hakim 2002.

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friendship (Musica, p. 130: 36–45).15 Importantly here, this music does not lead to the wrong kind of love. The cantus coronatus or simplex conductus, then, would be suitable when singing of the good love Machaut promotes in the Remede and his later dits and lyrics. By contrast, the hoquet is especially pleasing to the ‘choleric’ and the young who delight in its movement and fast clip (p. 146: 2–3). It should, however, like the cantus versualis, not lead to idleness (otium, or the Rose’s Oiseuse) that is morally and socially unproductive (p. 132: 107, 19–29).16 Poetry has, in other words, both a spoken component and, more broadly, a musical component, as the Echecs moralisés points out and Toute Belle illustrates: ‘Doulz parlers le coer reconforte’ because ‘Tant est plaisans sa melodie’ (Echecs am2, v. 5291, 5294) [sweet speech comforts the heart (because) its melody is so pleasing]. Deschamps’s third kind of music alongside vocal and instrumental music – musique mondaine, or the music of the spheres – refers to the universal harmony that God created and that both kinds of ‘human’ music should imitate.17 Evrart allegorizes Hymeneus, Venus’s good son, in this way: ‘Sanz faille, Hymeneus est aucunesfoiz pris pour le universele concorde ou l’universele musique qui est entre les choses de nature trouvee, pour ce que elles sont toutes par musique ordenees, c’est a dire par les proporcions dont les consonances musicaulx se despendent’ (Echecs mor, 198r15–19) [Indeed, Hymeneus is sometimes interpreted as universal harmony or universal music that obtains among natural things because they are all disposed according to music, that is, by proportions, the numbers and measures on which musical harmony depends]. Were this not so all would revert to primordial chaos (cf. VD, v. 5844–59/5917–32). Evrart goes on to show the place of the love Hymeneus represents in this scheme, an ordonnance in the human microcosm based on three kinds of delight: orgasm represented by Cupido, play and foreplay represented by Jocus, and conjugal affection represented by Hymeneus in marriages in which the spouses are ‘par l’ordenance de la loy licitement conjointes’ [united according to religious dispensation] and, therefore, are in harmony with universal order. Conjugal delight includes those acts fostered by Cupido and Jocus, but the pleasure procured by Hymeneus is greater, Evrart believes, because conjugal love is not infected by sadness and guilt (Echecs mor, 198r30–41). Since Guillaume and Toute Belle do not marry, they fit into universal music as exemplified by Jocus but not Cupido. The principle is the same as that which the Rose enunciates in its simian metaphor of the artist who imitates nature:18 ‘garde conment Nature euvre, / car mout voudroit fere autele euvre, / et la contrefet conme singes’ (Rose, v. 15999–6001) [consider how Nature works, for Page 1993b, pp. 22–3. Rohloff, ed., Musica, pp. 31, 34; Page 1993b, pp. 26–7; Leach 2007, pp. 207–8. 17 Kelly 1991, pp. 151–2; Gally 2000; Hüe 2000. Cf. also De Bruyne 1998, vol. 1, pp. 490–3, vol. 2, p. 393; Clark 2012, p. 185. The three kinds of music are systematically set out and explained in great detail in the Echecs moralisés, pp. 135–208. 18 Stakel 1991, pp. 114–16. 15 16

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he or she would like to fashion the same work, counterfeiting it as a monkey would]. This is contrefaire in its positive sense. According to Evrart, Nature’s love serves procreation. However, Machaut’s good love presents an original adaptation of this natural scheme that escapes sin by sublimation and chastity. The poet, like the ‘Meungian monkey’,19 should also imitate the music of the spheres using mathematical proportions or mesures like those in the musical modes and French verse, as well as morally appropriate subject matter. Thus, good love should conform to the same ordering principle of harmony found in the musical modes. These are love’s ‘harmoniques’.

Music and the Apprentice Poet Before delving further into the music of the spheres, we must be clear about the musical education of poets who, like Toute Belle, Deschamps, Froissart, Christine de Pizan, and Machaut’s other epigones, could not or did not write music. They may well have studied music as part of their education, allowing them to read musical scores; perhaps they even sang or played an instrument.20 Deschamps’s Art de dictier suggests such ability. Although his treatise is founded on the standard scholastic curriculum, the trivium and the quadrivium, the examples of each art address a practical, ‘mechanical’ audience rather than a learned one.21 That is, Deschamps addresses those non-clerical figures like Toute Belle who wish to write vernacular lyrics – notably, ‘chancons, balades, virelais et rondeaulx’ (Art de dictier, lines 1–2). Yet music is one of the quadrivial arts. Indeed, Deschamps’s discussion of music is longer than that for any of the other arts. It includes technical language on musique artificiele that the lay reader and apprentice is expected to understand.22 Car par ses vj notes, qui sont appellees us, re, my, fa, sol, la, l’en puet aprandre a chanter, acorder, doubler, quintoier, tiercoier, tenir, deschanter, par figure de notes, par clefs et par lignes, le plus rude homme du monde, ou au moins tant faire que, suppose ore qu’il n’eust pas la voix habile pour chanter ou bien acorder, scaroit il et pourroit congnoistre les accors ou discors avecques l’art d’icelle science. (Art dictier, lines 103–10)

19 Stakel 1991, p. 115. Christine de Pizan refers to the artist as ‘la singece ou le singe de nature, car ainsi que la singece ensuit grant plenté des manieres de l’omme, suit art grant plenté des œuvres de nature’ (Policie, p. 107) [the female or male monkey aping nature, for just as the female monkey imitates many of the ways of the human being, so art does many of nature’s works]. 20 See the observations on this topic in Plumley 2004 and Page 2006. 21 Cf. De Bruyne 1998, vol. 2, pp. 411–12. 22 Deschamps’s audience ‘seems relatively knowledgeable’ (Armstrong and Kay 2011, p. 138). The Echecs moralisés delves even further into the technical art of music and assumes an even more knowledgeable reader.



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[For through its six notes, which are called ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, one can teach the most uneducated23 man in the world – by means of the shape of the notes, by clefs, and by lines – how to sing, make harmony, sing in octaves, fifths, thirds, sing the treble part, and descant. Or, supposing that he did not have a suitable voice for singing or harmonizing well, at least one could teach him enough so that he would know and would be able to recognize the harmonies and discords using all the art of this science. (trans. Sinnreich-Levi, lines 103–10)]

This passage assumes an apprentice like Toute Belle who has learned not only how to write poetry before sending her first rondeau to Guillaume, but also how to sing using musical notation and to appreciate musical composition. Machaut’s epigones also depict their alter egos as singing and being other­ wise knowledgeable about music. Froissart, for example, in the Joli Buisson de jonece claims to have a good singing voice: ‘Dame, di je, par saint Franchois, / Nous n’irons plus avant, anchois / Arai chanté un virelay’ (v. 1134–6)24 [My lady, I said, by Saint Francis, we won’t go any further before I have sung a virelai]. He also sings together with others (including personifications).25 Although having a good voice and singing do not require a formal knowledge of music,26 they do not preclude it either. Two pieces of evidence are significant in Froissart’s case. In the Prison amoureuse, the Froissart narrator reads and writes musical notation. When a virelai is sung that makes a deep impression on him, ‘Bien le retins, mieuls le notai, / Encor ens ou coer le note ai’ (Prison, v. 427–8) [I remembered it well; better yet, I wrote it down. I still remember its notation]. Further on, he receives a letter that contains a virelai ‘sans note’ (v. 918), although the letter’s author says he heard it sung recently (Prison, Letter III, lines 82–3). The virelai pleases the poet so much that ‘le cantai a plains eslais / Sans viser mesure ne note’ (v. 964–5) [I sang it loud and clear without regard for measure or notation]. And he explains how he did so in what constitutes a second piece of evidence regarding Froissart’s musical knowledge and singing. Je meïsmes a fait le note Apriés un chant qui de jadis Fu chantés: Je sui moult hardis;27 Sus celle fourme se commence Li virelais …28 (Prison, v. 966–70)

23 Italics mine in order to fit the passage more closely to the sense of rudis discussed in chapter 3. 24 See also Paradis, v. 1419; Joli Buisson, v. 1160; and, in general, Plumley 2004, pp. 7–8; Sultan 2009, pp. 307–20. 25 Paradis, v. 848, 901–2, 1448–50; Espinette, v. 1105–6. 26 Page 2006, pp. 32–3. Cf. Dragonetti 1961. 27 The virelai has not been identified. I wish to thank Lawrence Earp and Yolanda Plumley for their assistance on this matter. 28 Cf. Kügle 2003, pp. 269–70.

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[I myself made the notation using a song that had been sung some time before: ‘I am very courageous’. The virelai begins using that formal structure …]

This interesting passage shows how a given melody or song, even for as complex a fixed form as the virelai, could be used for a new poem if the poetic and musical structure and mode of the two poems are compatible. Such ‘borrowing’ was even easier for ballades and rondeaux when regular forms became common.29 Poets like Froissart would surely have learned to sing and read musical notation as part of their early education. But they may well have found themselves lacking the natural talent necessary (as in Machaut’s Prologue) to compose pleasing music, Nature not having bestowed on them the sens they needed to practice that art as Machaut did. But if they could write and read notes they might, like Froissart in the Prison amoureuse, graft a known melody onto a new poem. This proves intriguing, since Machaut’s œuvre suggests that he wrote far more poems than he did the music for them, and that composition of the poem preceded musical composition. For example, Guillaume tells Toute Belle that ‘je vous envoie les .II. balades que vous avés veues autre fois, qui furent faites pour vous par escript;30 si vous suppli humblement que vous les vueilliés savoir, car je y ai fait les chans a quatre, et les ai a pluiseurs fois oÿs et me plaisent moult bien’ (VD, p. 594f/456) [I’m sending you the two ballades you have already seen which were transcribed for you. I humbly ask you to learn them, for I composed their music for four voices and I have heard them sung several times and they please me very much]. Given this knowledge of music among apprentices like Toute Belle and reputable poets like Froissart, we may now delve further into the pleasure they derive from reading and singing Machaut’s poetry.

Dorveille At the beginning of the Fontaine amoureuse Guillaume, unable to sleep, describes a night spent tossing and turning. Il n’a pas lonc temps que j’estoie En un lit ou pas ne dormoie Einsois faisoie la dorveille Com cils qui dort et encor veille, Car j’aloie de dor en dor.31 (Fontaine, v. 61–5) On the relation between musical form and poetic form, see Wilkins 1969. Cf. Toute Belle: ‘vous prie que … vous veuilliés faire le chant des chansons que vous m’avez envoiées’ (VD, p. 140e/86) [please compose the music for the songs that you sent me]. 31 For another example of dorveille in the sense of a troubled sleep, see Alexandrie, v. 3186–95/3185–94. Cf. Roques 1982, p. 163. 29 30



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[Not long ago I lay in bed without sleeping. Rather I was in an intermediate stage (la dorveille) like one who sleeps but is still awake, for I passed from one snooze to the next.]

This dorveille occurs because of his melancholy thoughts. Then, just as he was about to slip into sound sleep, Guillaume overheard a voice complaining. When he realized what was happening, he decided to turn the lament into verse in a lengthy, carefully crafted complainte. The melancholy poem ‘commença piteusement’ [began woefully] but evolved into a source of joyous composition: ‘je l’escri joieusement’ (Fontaine, v. 233–4) [I wrote it joyfully]. That is, the voice’s melancholy words become the template not only for the composition of the Fontaine amoureuse’s complainte, but for the entire dit that begins in woe but ends in joy. The complaining nobleman, a Jean de Berry figure, is preparing to set sail for England as hostage for his father. But the description is recognizably Machaldian. ‘Armez s’en va de toutes armes / Contre Desir, souspirs et larmes. / Einsi parti’ (v. 2845–7) [Fully armed against Desire, sighs, and tears he leaves. That’s how he departed]. Toute Belle would find this instance of dorveille in the copy of the Morpheus Guillaume sends her. Another passage, this time in the Remede de Fortune, further enlightens us on the fundamentally aesthetic experience the Fontaine amoreuse depicts as dorveille. When, in order to comfort Guillaume, Esperance sings the Remede’s chant royal we discover the lineaments of the dorveille motif. Lors d’une voys clere et serie, Douce, sainne, en tel melodie Commença son chant delez mi, C’un petitet m’i endormi; Mes ne fu pas si fermement Que n’entendisse proprement Qu’ainssi commença par revel Jolïement son chant nouvel.  (Remede, v. 1977–84) [Then with a clear, serene voice, sweet and whole, she began the song alongside me with such melody that I dozed somewhat; but my sleep was not so sound that I failed to hear her properly for she began her new song joyfully and prettily.]

This dorveille depicts an aesthetic experience in which a listener is entranced by both the poetry and its melody. In these examples from the Fontaine and the Remede, total absorption in the pleasure produced by the musical poem metamorphoses into aesthetic and moral satisfaction. Guillaume’s senses are experiencing the ‘honorable esbatement’ that good poetry and song can inspire. What he hears is melodious; his experience is a melodie. This is what Toute Belle seeks in Machaut’s poetry when voice and song conjoin in lovely harmony.

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Oral and Visual Melodie Machaut uses the word melodie to refer to extraordinary, exhilarating experiences. According to a passage towards the end of the Remede, the melodious effect derives from what the narrator has never heard or even seen before. Onques mais telle melodie Ne fu veüe në oÿe, Car chascuns d’eaus, selonc l’acort De son instrument, sans decort, Viole, guiterne, cytolle … (Remede, v. 3979–83/3977–81; my emphasis) [Never before was such melody seen or heard, for each one of them, in accord with the pitch32 of his instrument, plays without dissonance his vielle, guitar, cittern ...]

The Remede de Fortune describes here a virtually synaesthetic experience – ‘Ne fu veüe në oÿe’ – as the catalogue of instruments offers a verbal melody consonant with the harmony each instrument suggests in the reader’s mind.33 The music leads to ‘esbatement’ (Remede, v. 4000/3998), including dance, song, and games (v. 3997–8/3995–6). Machaut’s reference to ‘visual’ melodie and its derivatives is noteworthy. In a passage from the Alerion, melodie expresses a charm or enchantment that the entranced poet explains as a sense of harmony and musical proportions like that an observer experiences when gazing on a lovely bird. ‘Desormais est temps que je die / La noblesse et la melodie / De l’esprevier que tant amay’ (Alerion, v. 433–5) [now is the time to relate the nobility and the melodie34 of the sparrow hawk I loved so much]. He is referring to the object of his gaze, not of his hearing. The description is, therefore, analogous to that referred to in this chapter’s epigraph in which a woman’s beauty evokes an aesthetic response likened to melody and, indeed, named melodie both there and in the Alerion, an experience corresponding to the pleasure produced by any object of beauty. Even in the nineteenth century Keats evokes the sweet, but unheard melodies he perceives while contemplating the Grecian urn and its ‘ditties of no tone’. Of course, Keats’s aesthetic includes no moral uplift akin to Machaut’s ‘honorable esbatement’. To be sure, appearances can deceive and they do so in the Alerion. The sparrow hawk whose visual melody Guillaume admires in the foregoing passage Cf. Wimsatt and Kibler, ed., Remede, p. 390. Cf. also Remede, v. 3962–77/3960–75, 3984–8/3982–6. 34 Godefroy translates the word in this sense as ‘agrément, charme’ (vol. 5, p. 225); T-L translates it as ‘Lust, Wonne’ (vol. 5, col. 1363). Godefroy translates ‘melodieus’ as ‘beau, tant pour la vue que pour l’ouïe’ (vol. 5, p. 225). This sense goes back to Augustine; see ThLL, vol. 8, col. 624: 47–50 and 53–4, and, for melos, cols. 626: 74–627:11. 32 33



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proves unfaithful. The object of his gaze, that is, becomes dishonorable and, thus, morally dissonant. The poet must await the alerion to perceive a melodie that rings true as an expression not only of physical appearance but also of nobility and moral constancy.35 The alerion’s noble, aviary shape charms its entranced lover just as the ‘grant melodie’ (Alerion, v. 1983) of its soaring flight lifts him to the lady’s height ‘Non d’estat, mais de melodie’ (Alerion, v. 2603) [not in status, but in what constitutes her exquisite charm]. Thus, Machaut’s amplification on the noble bird’s beauty emphasizes the virtues that set it apart from the gyrfalcon and the sparrow hawk. Notably, the poet describes his visual experience in terms of a musical harmony that produces in Guillaume a kind of rapture. As in love itself, the poet exclaims, ‘Douce Pensee’, a constant in Machaut’s conception of good love,   est une chose Qui est en cuer d’amant enclose, Engendree par Souvenir – D’ailleurs ne puet elle venir – Si douce et si melodieuse, Si plaisant et si amoureuse, Qu’il est po de choses plus sades A cuers qui d’amours sont malades. (Confort, v. 2133–40; my emphasis) [Sweet Thought is something that, enclosed in a lover’s heart, is engendered by Memory – it can have no other source – that is so sweet and charming (melodieus), so pleasant and amorous that there are few things as delightful for lovesick hearts.]

The experience of such ‘musique morale’36 extends throughout nature in which ‘les proporcions musicaux … ont lieu et sont trouvees non mie seulement es sons et es consonancies …, maiz en toutes les choses notables de nature’ (Echecs mor, 60v33–5) [musical proportions occur and are found not only in sounds and harmonies, but in all remarkable things in nature]. In an example that again links sight and sound, Evrart describes weaving in which the aesthetic effect of its harmony or ‘consonancie’ is melodious like that of music. Nous veons que un drap de pluseurs laines bien meslees ensemble par proporcion bonne est plus plaisans assez a la veue que quant il est d’une simple maniere en toutes ses parties et d’une couleur seule, ou de pluseurs couleurs 35 On this sense of proportion between form and content, see De Bruyne 1998, vol. 2, pp. 453–4. 36 De Bruyne 1998, vol. 2, p. 436, explains ‘musique morale’ as ‘la création de l’harmonie dans les actes de la vie: c’est en projetant la juste proportion que la raison y produit la beauté. Qui fait le mal, prouve qu’il ne connaît pas la musique.’ Cf. J. Adams 2006, chap. two. These words suggest the place of Machaut’s good love in the ‘harmoniques’ of the Voir Dit and, implicitly, the harmonious relation between art of love and art of poetry in the poet’s œuvre.

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mal proporcionnees et mal seans ensemble. Briefment, ainsy est il generalment de tous les sens humains, pour ce que nature se delite en tel diversité bien ordenee. (Echecs mor, 53v11–17) [We see that cloth containing several kinds of wool interwoven proportionately is rather more pleasing to sight than when it is of one and the same kind in all its parts and of a single color, or of several colors ill proportioned and arranged. In short, this holds generally for all the human senses because nature delights in such well-arrayed diversity.]

The aesthetic effect is rational. In Machaut it derives as much from the lover’s gaze as from thought on and memory of the beloved or, indeed, of any beautiful object. The harmonious disposition of his, her, or its physical parts, and the virtues that their beauty betokens in the imagination, produces a ‘melodious’ response because it goes beyond the surface subtly to reveal for consideration the social and moral virtues that the beloved embodies. The more noble and elevated the object of the observer’s gaze, the more melodious will be the experience, as in the Alerion’s description of the heights of the alerion’s melodie. The charming features that the lover becomes aware of, then, derive from what he sees, hears, and understands rationally. Such love is not bestial because Reason exercises its moderating function, effacing vices and defects much as she does in the Jugement Behaigne. Adont mis je mes yeus en ouevre Pour vëoir comment Nature ouevre, Et aussi fis je mes oÿes Pour escouter les melodies, Et pris tout mon entendement Pour bien congnoistre clerement Les biens que j’ooye et vëoie. (Alerion, v. 4447–53; my emphasis) [Then I applied my vision to observing how Nature works, and I did the same with my hearing by listening to her melodies, and applied all my understanding to perceiving clearly the virtues that I heard and saw.]

The synaesthetic sense of melodie – it is both heard and seen – antedates Machaut. In one poem, the narrator describes ‘ma dame qui tant ait cleir lou vis / Ke dou vëoir est melodie et raige’37 [my lady whose face is so radiant that to see it is both harmonious enchantment and mad desire]. In Guillaume de Lorris’s Rose, the ‘rage’ to pluck roses overwhelms the lover when he first catches sight of the rosebush in Deduit’s garden.38 Reason is absent because the melodie is also rage. Indeed, Jean de Meun returns implicitly to his source’s

37 38

T-L, vol. 5, col. 1363, lines 13–14. Kelly 1972, pp. 65–6.



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rage to pluck roses when Amant evokes the numerous and diversified copulations he has enjoyed throughout his love life (Rose, v. 21370–552). These ‘bestial’ manifestations of irrational love correspond to Evrart’s Cupido and his concept of bestiality in love as ‘voulenté bestial et perverse qui ainsy se asservit qu’ilz mectent au derriere et oublient raison qui deust estre dame de leur gouvernement’ (Echecs mor, 46v25–7) [bestial, perverse will that enslaves such that they set aside and forget reason that should be mistress of their conduct]. Only the moderating influence of amour, but not of reason, fixes Guillaume’s desire in the Rose on the single rosebud that he longs to pluck. Another early example of moral melodie as aesthetic experience is found in Huon de Meri’s Tournoi Antéchrist: ‘Le vin, qui tant est pleins de vie, / Que c’estoit une melodie / De boivre apres tel pein tel vin’ (Tournoi, v. 3259–61)39 [the wine that is so full with life that it was bliss to drink such wine after such bread]. These lines refer not to the pleasures of Machaut’s tavernes, but metaphorically to the ineffable joys of the Eucharist.40 Like the Ovide moralisé’s integuments, the passage elevates the materia remota of poetic tavernes to the expression of mystical experience.41 The distinction can be subtle. In the Histoire des seigneurs de Gavre, for example, ‘tant et de sy doulz instrumens y avoit que grant melodye estoit de les oÿr; tel joye et tel deduit y avoit que aultre paradis n’euissiés volu querre’ (Gavre, p. 137: 13–15) [there were such sweet-sounding instruments that it was a ‘melody’ to hear them; there was such joy and delight in it that you would not have wanted to seek any other paradise]. Melodie here obviously refers to the effect of the music, not the instrumental music itself that produces the charm. There is therefore a subtle correspondence between sense perceptions and the emotional response to them. Melodie may connote the source of the emotion or the emotion itself, or both. It is a word like Latin carmen, the etymon of charme. In Machaut, a ‘melodious experience’ derives from harmony and produces the pleasure, or ‘honorable esbatement’, that even sad songs may evoke.

Universal Melodie from the Spheres to Birdsong and Dogsong Guillaume de Lorris’s Garden of Deduit rings with birdsong.42 Aviary music leads in turn to song and dance for the garden’s inhabitants. There are also comparisons with angelic music, a link that may have prepared e contrario for Jean

39 On this and other examples of synaesthetic experiences, see Fritz 2011, pp. 333–46; on music’s ‘spiritualization’, see pp. 346–52. Cf. as well Stiennon 1995, pp. 24–6. 40 This synaesthetic experience is analogous to that of select knights when the grail appears in the Queste del saint graal, which includes olfactory and gustatory sensations (Queste, pp. 112, 634; cf. Kelly 2011, pp. 39–40). 41 Cf. Kelly 2006b. 42 Kelly 1978, pp. 75–7; Nouvet 1991.

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de Meun’s irreverent, inverted comparison of sexual and heavenly paradises. In Guillaume’s ‘paradis terrestre’ that ‘tant estoit … delitables, / qu’i sembloit estre esperitables’ (Rose, v. 634–6) [earthly paradise [that] was so delightful that it seemed to be spiritual], birds sing both like ‘angre esperitel’ (v. 662) and, ominously, like sirens of the sea (v. 670), a juxtaposition that suggests the scope of melodie from angelic harmonies to fatal calls from enticing sirens, or from the ‘melodie’ or heavenly bliss of the Tournoi’s wine to the violent rage (‘grant deshet’) in Machaut’s taverns and Villon’s brothels (Testament, v. 1601). The morally ambiguous comparison of angels and sirens harmonizes with the ambiguous state of Amant’s awakening sexual desire. The Rose’s birdsong becomes vocal and instrumental music (v. 729–74) such that ‘De lor chant, n’estoit mie gas, / la douçor et la melodie / me mist el cuer grant reverdie’ (v. 704–6) [the sweetness and melody in their song – it’s no joke – filled my heart with blissful music]. By Deschamps’s time, reverdie can also connote a strong, distinctly sexual pleasure that cures a specific ‘maladie’: ‘Vien a mon con faire une renverdie’, exclaims a woman’s voice in one rondeau43 [come play fresh, springlike music on my cunt]. About a century after Guillaume de Lorris set aside his incomplete Rose, the Prise amoureuse by Jehan Acart de Hesdin (1332) likens ‘melodie’ not only to birdsong, but even to the baying of hunting dogs – ‘dogsong’ as a kind of ‘melodie’.44 Mes ains si douce melodie Ne fu, n’a si dous sons eüs. Certez, David ne Orpheüs, Se tout lor instrument ci estre Pooient, dont furent grant mestre, Seroit tous lor acorz descorz, Et s’eüssent l’acort des cors Qui furent mestre de musique.  (Prise, v. 802–9)45 [But there never was such sweet melody or sound. Surely, if David or Orpheus could be present with all the instruments of which they were superb masters, all their harmony would be discordant, even if they had the approval of all those46 who were master musicians.]

43 In Œuvres Deschamps, vol. 4, p. 129. For other examples that relate sexual onslaught with the violence of combat, see DLMF, p. 765. 44 See also Prise, v. 719, 743–5, 1405–8; similarly, in Gace de la Buigne’s Roman des deduis, on which see Leach 2007, pp. 180–2, 209–21, 311–12, et passim. 45 The Echecs moralisés refers to the fatal attraction of dogsong for the stag (77r16–20). In this sense animals ‘naturally’ make music and respond to its ‘melody’, including, Evrart claims, even those melodies verbal and musical composed by Machaut (Echecs mor, pp. 193–6 and pp. liii–liv; on his attribution to Machaut of a virelai allegedly sung by a bird, see Badel 1986). 46 On the translation of cors see Hoepffner, ed., Prise, p. 69 n. 808.

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Strictly speaking, dogsong is not music because, being inhuman, dogs lack the rational faculty that, in the Middle Ages, was deemed necessary to make music; the same holds true for birdsong.47 But they and their voices are natural.48 For this dit’s narrator, the dogs’ baying rings out as a harmonious, measured part of God’s creation. Their ‘audience’ responds to their sounds as they would to instrumental music composed by humans in accord with the soundless proportions of musique mondaine. Thus, we discover the letter of a fictional text that describes human feelings at the start of a hunt because humans can appreciate dogsong, strictly speaking a fiction, when it is in harmony with nature and the pleasures of the hunt. That is how Evrart de Conty explains the Prise amoureuse’s depiction of hunting. ‘Pour ce se delite on … en la Prise amoureuse et en pluseurs autres traictiés d’amours, pour la fainte maniere de parler soubtille et raisonable soubz laquelle est enclose une sentence plaisant et delitable, et moult souvent une moralité qui est de grant profit’ (Echecs mor, 10r23–8) [For this reason one enjoys the Prise amoureuse and many other treatises on love, because their fictional mode is subtle and reasonable; beneath it is contained a pleasing, delightful meaning and, quite often, a moral lesson of great profit]. Melodie, then, can include a moral component that is part of the aesthetic pleasure audiences feel while listening to musique morale. Machaut himself evokes the pleasures of hunting in the Jugement Navarre in which rabbits scamper about ‘de bel arroy’ (v. 524) [in fine array], scampering that harmonizes with the fresh air and ‘des oisillons les chans / Qui estoient melodïeus’ (v. 526–7) [the melodious songs of little birds]. An allegorical reading of the passage from the Prise amoureuse uncovers nature’s musical harmony wherein measure and proportion counterpoint the harmony of renown and praise, beauty and goodness, reason and youth – exterior and interior qualities that depict the virtuous beauty that a puella senex shows forth.49 The Prise amoureuse brings all these elements together in its dogsong. Like the stag that halts in flight to listen to hounds’ baying, the lover too is entranced by dogsong. But he is also rational. That is, he perceives the harmonious relation between his lady’s physical beauty and her virtues as a melodie that gives him pleasure – ‘honorable esbatement’ – just as does nature’s proportions in the baying of hounds. Thus, after hearing Renown praise the lady’s virtues, Loz50 en abay, qui l’ooit, S’aloit doucement acordant Sanz descordance, en recordant Comment Raisons est acordée A Nature en li et cordée, Si qu’entre l’ame et le gent cors

47 48 49 50

Leach 2007, pp. 40–3. Cf. De Bruyne 1998, vol. 2, pp. 436–7. On the puella senex, see Curtius 1954, pp. 112–15. Fame also inspired Toute Belle’s love for Guillaume sight unseen.

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Demenoit vertueulz acors, Et disoit, non pas a bas ton: ‘Ha ! Dius ! pour coi ne se haste on D’aquerre l’amour de celi Qui par sa biauté embeli A le monde et enluminé? Car aussi qu’en l’air affiné L’estoile, quant luist nete et clere, Ennoblist tout l’air et le pere, Samble il de cesti ensement Que ce soit de l’adjornement L’estoile; que, quant pert pleniere, Lez autrez perdent lor lumiere.’  (Prise, v. 743–61) [But Renown, baying like a dog to one who heard it, set about gently harmonizing without dissonance, recalling how Reason is in accord with and attuned to Nature. In this way virtuous harmony prevails between the soul and its noble body. He cried out: ‘Oh God! Why does no one hasten to acquire the love of her whose beauty has embellished and illumined the world? For just as in the rarefied air the star shining pure and bright ennobles and adorns the atmosphere, so it seems that she too shines like the morning star because of which the other stars fade when it first appears in all its splendor.’]

This lady outshines all other beauties, her ethereal light not unlike the unheard music of the spheres.51 Why, the narrator asks, would a heart not be entranced by such beauty and the virtues it shows forth? So too, Machaut describes harmony as ringing with all that is good and true in Toute Belle’s physical and moral person: ‘C’est droitement la tresmontainne / Qui cuers au port de Joye mainne’ (VD, v. 125–6)52 [she is the polar star that guides all hearts to Joy’s haven]. Like Toute Belle, the Prise amoureuse’s beloved will have ‘Fermeté en petit aäge’ [steadfastness at a young age] in accord with ‘Larguece en femenin corage’ [largess in a feminine heart] because these virtues counterpoint ‘Science et Jonece esprouvee’ (Prise, v. 816–18) [learning and tested youth]. The puella senex of the Prise amoureuse recalls the charm intended by traditional descriptions of feminine beauty that, when complete, reveal the harmony of body and raiment with mind and soul as features of both the unheard music of God’s universe that the Echecs moralisés describes and the ideal montage and harmonious measure that poetic rhetoric reveals in idealized, even stereotypical descriptions. These too contribute to the Voir Dit’s ‘harmoniques’. In the Alerion too, there is a hunting melodie to the art of falconry – ‘Dou gibier la grant melodie, / Et de l’affaitier la maistrie’ (Alerion, v. 1983–4) [the

51 On the relation between light and sound in beauty, see De Bruyne 1998, vol. 2, pp. 429–47. 52 Similarly, VD, v. 1214–18/1277–81, 6175–202/6248–75.

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great melody of the game and training for mastery] that Machaut likens to the art of poetry and the products of that art. In the art of love too the lady, like the lover contemplating the alerion, rises, as we have seen, ‘non d’estat, mais de melodie’. The harmony in her soaring flight matches the description of an object’s montage in both senses of the word – that is, the proportions characteristic of ideal beauty in the ‘exterior’ person’s shape and dress that harmonize with that person’s mind and heart and his, her, or its measured actions and motions; these in turn lift him, her, or it above all others of its kind, a unique excellence evoking roundabout a joy that is both aesthetic and moral. Like Toute Belle, the alerion travels about freely and honorably. In such a hunt there is no capture, just as in Machaut’s good love there is no sexual climax. In his case, the melodie of their love can be appositely described, like the Rose’s birdsong, as angelic and, thus, free from the allure of siren song. To understand dogsong further, it helps to return to that essential component of Machaut’s art of poetry, his art of good love. Good love requires rational control lest, without reason, lovers become beasts in medieval parlance. Of course, lovers may love well without knowledge of Machaut’s art of love. These lovers would be analogous to singers who sing well without knowing or understanding the art of music. Such lovers might, for example, achieve love in marriage. But Machaut, unlike Evrart de Conty, shows little interest in conjugal love. His love remains chaste without totally eschewing physical pleasure, as in the Voir Dit’s bed scenes. This pleasure is ‘honorable esbatement’ because it harmonizes with universal music. It did for Machaut, at least in literature, and, even more explicitly in life, for Evrart de Conty, for whom ‘est assez ymaginable que ceste proporcion et ceste amoureuse concorde se depende d’aucunes des proporcions notables dont les consonancies de musique descendent’ (Echecs mor, 220r34–6) [one can easily imagine that that proportion and that harmony in love derives from some of the remarkable proportions from which musical harmonies derive]. Ultimately both authors see chaste love as being in harmony with the music of the spheres.

Synaesthetic Melodie The medieval conception of music permits melodie to describe non-musical phenomena. If, according to the Echecs moralisés, music is harmony based on measure and proportion, then analogous proportions that appear in other phenomena charm because they are melodious. Their melodies, like the music of the spheres, or musica mundana,53 are an unheard melody that conforms to musical proportions that one can rationally comprehend and aesthetically enjoy while considering them in heavenly movements, human actions, the harmony of

53

This is the Neoplatonic idea of ornatus mundi (Spinosa 2008).

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the four elements and the four humors, and even in the pleasing ‘noise’ made by beasts. These melodies heard, seen, and otherwise experienced extend throughout the universe. We discern them as well in the simian arts of poets when they imitate nature (Echecs mor, pp. 158–208) – a nature that includes the music of the spheres. Indeed, the synaesthetic effect54 is evident in Evrart de Conty’s comparison, discussed above, of musical proportions with color proportions in skillfully woven wool. Although, as Leach has shown, birds and, a fortiori, dogs cannot make music like humans because they lack reason, as part of the universal harmony fashioned in accordance with God’s archetypal design for creation, birdsong and dogsong do echo musica mundana and the universal ordonnance of God’s creation. This explains the pleasure of those who hear such song. Or so it seems to Evrart de Conty as well as to Machaut if we consider the phenomena in which they perceive melodie. Musique est trouvee en toutes les notables choses de nature,55 pour ce que les musicaulx nombres font ainsy acorder les divers sons ensemble et plaisaument presenter a l’oye, sy come il est sceu par vraye experience, come dit est. Et pour ce aussi vouloient conclurre, de toutes autres choses qui sont en nature ou on voit pluseurs choses diverses et contraires entreacorder et demourer aussi paisiblement ensemble, qu’i convenoit que ce fut ainsy fait par les musicaux nombres dessusdiz, combien que on n’en peust avoir experience ne science certaine. Maiz come qu’il en voit, il n’est mie au moins doubte que musique se moustre clerement en pluseurs autres choses que les sons ne le chant de musique ne sont. (Echecs mor, 69v14–23) [Music is found in all remarkable things in nature. This is because musical proportions become diverse sounds that produce harmony when brought together to please the sense of hearing, validated by actual experience, as shown above. For this reason they came to the conclusion that, of all other things that constitute nature in which one perceives many diverse and opposing things harmonize and abide together peacefully, it follows that this must have been possible because of the aforementioned musical proportions, albeit one could not experience them directly or gain certain knowledge of them. But, however that may be, there is at least no doubt that music is clearly evident in many things other than the sounds and song in music.]

The other sense impressions that harmonize with the experience of music suggest synaesthesia. In the Voir Dit, Machaut’s Guillaume invents the synaesthetic experience not only in the harmonies of verse and music he writes, but even in the sense of taste. ‘Je vous envoie … Le grant desir que j’ai de vous veoir, ou j’ai fait un

54 55

Cf. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, in Poétiques, pp. 576–7. Cf. De Bruyne 1998, vol. 2, pp. 437–8.



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chant a vostre commandement; et est a la guise d’un rés d’Alemaigne;56 et, par Dieu, long temps ha que je ne fis si bonne chose a mon gré, et sont les tenures aussi doulces comme papins dessalés’ (VD, pp. 186–8c/124)57 [I am sending you ‘Le grant desir que j’ai de vous veoir’ for which I wrote the music at your command. It is composed in the style of a rés d’Alemaigne. And, by God, I haven’t written anything so much to my liking in a long time. The tenors are as sweet as ‘unsalted porridge’58]. Taste is one of the five senses; together with words and notes, such ‘food’ contributes to and harmonizes with the poem’s synaesthetic melodie. Musical ‘comfort food’ like Machaut’s comforts Toute Belle. The Echecs moralisés depicts the ‘universalité de la musique’59 in nature and ‘en toutes ses oeuvres notables et bien faites’ (75r12) [in all its significant, well-fashioned works]. Et a la verité, c’est chose assez ymaginable et presumpcion grande que ces proporcions soient semblablement en couleurs delitables, en odeurs, en saveurs et en toutes telles choses, et que entre les extremités ensamble entremellees soit ceste musical mesure dessusdite, en la maniere que les sons agus et graves qui font consonancie delitable a oyr sont ensamble meslé musicalment, come il a esté dit. Et pour ce aussi dit l’acteur du livre rimé … que art qui enssuit nature devroit ses choses faire par telles proporcions, se elle s’en avisoit, et sy fait elle espoir en pluseurs de ses oeuvres qui se moustrent bien faites et plaisans a veoir, ja soit ce qu’il soit ainsy fait sanz avis, par avanture, quant au regard de ceste musical mesure; et comment qu’il en voit, il n’est pas doulte que moult de choses artificieles en seroient plus beles et mielx faites. (Echecs mor, 75r12–25) [And indeed, it is easily imagined and an important assumption that these proportions are also found in delightful colors, odors, savors, and all such things; it follows that between extremes blended together one finds the aforementioned musical measure, just as high- and low-pitched sounds that make for delightful harmony are blended musically, as noted above. And for this reason the poem’s author says that art that follows nature should fashion works that use such proportions, if it occurred to the artist, and does perhaps do so in a

56 On this expression for song emanating from Germany but of uncertain meaning, see Leech-Wilkinson 1993a, pp. 50–3; Bain 2003; Plouzeau 2003, p. 195. The Echecs amoureux refers to it as ‘res d’Alemaigne / de mainte guyse moult estraigne’ (Echecs am1 (II), v. 4295–6. 2, v. 633–4 [the res d’Alemaigne, in many ways very strange]; see ed. Raimondi, p. 114 nn. 4295–6). 57 On ‘sweetness’, cf. Carruthers 2006. 58 Palmer’s translation of papins dessalés in Leech-Wilkinson’s edition of the Voir Dit; Roques 1982, p. 168, translates the expression as ‘bouilli pour les enfants’ and Imbs as ‘boulli sous sel pour le enfants’. 59 Guichard-Tesson and Roy, ed., Echecs mor, p. 173; cf. De Bruyne 1998, vol. 2, p. 447, on the ‘symphonie de l’ordre’ in which ‘la lumière … réalise toute la plénitude de l’harmonie’; the passage from the Prise amoureuse quoted above harmonizes light and sound imagery.

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number of his or her works that are well fashioned and pleasant to see, even though this was not done consciously but by chance insofar as this musical harmony is concerned. However that may be, there is no doubt that many works of art would be more beautiful and better if fashioned in this way.]

Thus, Evrart de Conty finds natural proportions in the disposition of the human body (131v38–43), including the four elements, the four humors, and the union of body and soul; instrumental and vocal music; in the three kinds of delectacion: sexual intercourse, foreplay, and marriage (fols. 198r15–41, 255r4–7); in vision (fols. 58v42–59r6); in the union of man and woman by marriage (214r42–v3); in domestic, artisanal, and political unions (220v5–15); in the shape and color of precious stones, especially the green emerald so pleasing to the eye60 as well as in the spectrum or disposition of colors in the rainbow (232r42–6 and v2–4); and, finally, in declarations of love (262v8–16). Machaut finds them as well in birdsong, dogsong, and the soaring flight of noble birds. In love too, there is visual melody. Machaut achieves it in a description of Toute Belle by using precious stones to depict an array of her virtues and beneficence (VD, v. 119–30). Her good love, as Machaut avers, is also part of the universal harmony evoked by the Echecs moralisés because ‘l’ame humaine se delite naturelment es musicaux consonancies, et par consequant encore est la delectacion dessusdite d’amours en ce plus efficaux et de plus grant vertu, pour ce que elle est aussi plus naturele’ (Echecs mor, 255r5–7) [the human soul takes delight naturally in musical harmonies and, therefore, the aforementioned delight found in love leads more effectively to greater virtue because it is also more in conformity with nature]. This is especially so when honorable lovers ‘veulent’, like Toute Belle and Guillaume, ‘chastement vivre’ (Echecs mor, 255r28) [want to lead a chaste life]. Lovers may become poets who harmoniously sing their love. In an image that could have been inspired by the allegory in Machaut’s Dit de la harpe, Evrart’s lover ‘doit aussi chanter melodieusement en ly acordant a la harpe, c’est a dire qu’il doit servir et user de paroles amiables et doulces, et qu’il se doit tousdiz au plus prez qu’il pourra bonnement conformer as meurs et as condicions de celle dont il desire la grace’ (Echecs mor, 262v8–11) [must sing melodiously, harmonizing with the harp, that is to say, he must serve and speak lovingly and sweetly, and conform his conduct as closely as possible to the conduct and status of her whose grace he desires]. The Dit de la harpe is an instance of this kind of love poem. When Guillaume fails to measure up to this standard in the Voir Dit, he loses his lady’s ‘grace’;61 he recovers it by realigning his love with her good love. 60 In an obviously positive sense of green, Toute Belle is likened to ‘l’esmeraude qui resjoie / Tous tristez cuers et met en joie’ (VD, v. 127–8) [the emerald that restores happiness and joy in all sad hearts]. 61 Divine grace too is a source among others of the synaesthetic grail experience in the Queste, 19:1–20:25, 322:33–48, 329:13–16.



MELODIE

295

In these ways, universal harmony applies to all artistic ‘creations’ that are not counterfeit. Rather they are likened to Nature’s recreations of God’s creation.62 All of this fits melodie as a synaesthetic experience the sweetness of which harmonizes the arts, including those that Toute Belle practices so gracefully. En ce royaume ha une dame, Que Dieus gart en corps et en ame, Gente, juene, jolie et jointe, Longue, droite, faitice et cointe, Sage de cuer et de maniere, Treshumblë et de simple chiere, Belle, bonne et la mieulz chantans Que fust nee depuis .C. ans, Mais elle danse oltre mesure; Et s’est si douce creature Que toutes autres vaint et passe En sens, en douçour et en grace.  (VD, v. 107–18) [In this realm there is a lady – may God keep her in body and soul – who is noble and young, gay and well shaped, tall and upright, pretty and elegant, of prudent disposition and comportment, of very honest and forthright appearance, beautiful, good, and possessed of the best singing voice alive over the past hundred years. But she dances extraordinarily well too. She is so sweet a creature that she vanquishes and surpasses all other women in mind, sweetness, and grace.]

Thus, dance and, more generally, motion itself (cf. the alerion’s flight) can contribute to synaesthetic effect and harmony in a work of art. One might say that Toute Belle’s dancing is analogous to the alerion’s soaring flight because both actions connote a woman’s physical and moral virtues. To achieve such melody in verse, the poet fashions well-ordered poetry and song, a montage that is the goal of the poet’s sens.63 But there is more to such shaping than pure form. As we observed above in contrasting the melodie of sparrow hawk and alerion in Machaut’s Alerion, Guillaume discovers a defect in the former because her inner self is ‘flighty’ and, therefore, not in harmony with her exterior beauty. The dissonance reveals a moralité that leads her into unworthy social or moral unions. In a sense she dances to the Lydian mode. She is a fausse semblance because there is no harmony between her physical biens and her inner biens. This dissonance is apparent as well in a number of Machaut’s Guillaumes. Only the majestic eagle and, ultimately, the soaring alerion realize the harmonious blend of features and qualities that makes for the

62 Kelly 1992, pp. 38–40. The Echecs moralisés develops the analogy in a discussion of Nature’s beauty (10v39–12v6). 63 Cerquiglini-Toulet 1985, pp. 51–89.

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enduring charm or ‘melodie’ of the beloved. In this Erlebnismuster, even Toute Belle’s and Guillaume’s melodies might be heard in Heaven. Like contemporary Occitan poets, Machaut’s apprentice must strive to emulate such moral melody by writing about good love.

Afterword Et lors je me traï arriere Devers dames et damoyselles Qui enquierent de mes nouvelles Et me firent pluseurs partures D’amours et de ses aventures. Certes et je leur respondoie Moult loing de ce que je sentoie, Car tousdis leur fis dou blanc noir. (Remede, v. 3878–85)1

Machaut’s recognized masterpiece, the Voir Dit, relates the progress of an exemplary apprentice poet, Toute Belle, in the acquisition of her master’s art of poetry and prose and his new art of love as it emerged from dit to dit. From this evidence, I have set out the content and scope of Machaut’s dual arts of love and poetry and shown how Toute Belle acquired and practiced these arts. This led to consideration of the poet’s juxtaposition of truth and fiction in the Voir Dit. Rightly so in its medieval context: titles were expected to shed light on the work they introduce.2 And indeed, beginning with the resurrection of the Voir Dit in Paulin Paris’s first modern edition (or version), what Machaut meant by voir dire has preoccupied scholars. In the epigraph to this chapter Guillaume claims in jeu-parti mode to mouth ideas far removed from what he really thinks and feels, implicitly posing the problem of speaking the truth in Machaut’s diverse lyric and narrative montages and mélanges. Moreover, to speak truthfully about any subject matter, even in social play like that in the Remede quote, could be perilous. To be sure, twelfth-century writers like Marie de France and Benoît de Sainte-Maure enthusiastically evoke in their prologues the commonplace duty to transmit what one has learned. Yet in the thirteenth century caution became the byword. The anonymous author of Claris et Laris refuses to write about contemporary events; the Prose Tristan refers to a warning that the romance

1 ‘And then I withdrew towards ladies and damsels who asked about me while proposing several debate topics about love and its adventures. And, for sure, the answers I gave were far from what I was feeling for I always made what was white seem to be black.’ 2 Minnis 2010, pp. 19–20.

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not treat religious truths in secular narratives,3 anticipating the same warning in the anonymous Tresor amoureux and, implicitly, in other works too. Indeed, as we have seen, there lurks in Machaut’s dits and those of his epigones a real threat for those who speak inconvenient truths: exposure and dire punishment like that instanced by the Voir Dit’s crow and raven and by the parrots in the Chevalier errant; by truth-telling about a patron, as in the Prise d’Alexandrie (albeit after the patron’s death); and by the fate of those who speak out about the Schism in the Tresor amoureux. Those who report their opinions as plain truth can lose their standing and may be put to death. It therefore behooves the poet to consider carefully what he or she will tell about debatable subjects, as we see in the Jugement Navarre (perhaps, as noted above, because of the Queen of France’s objection to the Behaigne verdict). If one intends to treat a controversial subject, cautious prevarication is advisable. That is, the poet should treat truth as the anonymous author of the Tresor amoureux counsels: say only as much as is acceptable to the men and women he writes his poetry for, mindful all the while of the implied audience’s moral, social, and religious convictions. In Machaut’s art of poetry, fiction becomes an acceptable, widely used mode for debating controversial subjects. Truth-telling in fiction may be partial and may, indeed, cover up truth. What is Guillaume, the Machaut figure in the Remede, up to when he hides the truth about love from the curious ladies and damsels who gather about him? As lover, of course, he may well be hiding his own love in order to preserve his lady’s honor. In the Voir Dit, the fate of women accused of or caught in amorous liaisons could be public shame. This holds even if the love is totally innocent, as Toute Belle discovers after she makes known her chaste love for Guillaume. But, as poet, he is also writing integumental allegory. To make white appear as black fiction is, in effect, doing what Machaut refers to in the second epigraph that introduces my book: ‘Il me plut moult bien a sentir / Le vray de ce que vous mentistes’ (JN, v. 720–1); he tells a falsehood or fiction in order to relate its hidden truth using the modes of the forma tractandi. Thus, at one point in the Voir Dit, Guillaume is advised against traveling lest he expose himself to the marauding, murderous Compagnes ravaging the French countryside. This threat is literally true for anyone traveling about during the Hundred Years War. It is as ominous a threat as the plague from which Guillaume sequesters himself in the Jugement Navarre. Yet the Voir Dit’s Guillaume does ride out. En route he is captured, not, however, by the marauding hordes he likens to Polypheme, but by the personification Esperance. The poet’s fiction coalesces with this new figure, a personification, in a ‘whitewashed’ context, that of the chaste love founded on good hope that Guillaume’s surrender to violent desire has betrayed. This is because the good love Toute Belle exemplifies and promotes is blackened by Guillaume’s desire, a truth developed by Esperance in order to justify her seizure and chastisement of the poet because, 3

Kelly 1992, p. 121; on romance verité, see chap. 6.

AFTERWORD 299

anticipating his Polypheme reprise, his love has become violent. The apprentice can note in this encounter how her master poet likens contemporary chaotic violence and devastating desire, contrasting dark desire with a pure love that eludes emotional turbulence thanks to good hope; just so, according to a roi qui ne ment (unlike the poet), the kingdom can escape the ravages of war by good government. For Machaut, the moral pleasure of such integumental reading may also be aesthetically satisfying if the reader and apprentice poet recognize and experience good love and good government when they are in harmony with good order. The ideal truths that reality blackens in Machaut can be cleansed anew by social and moral restoration of right emotion and right action. The resulting moral melodie is perceptible not only in the Voir Dit but in most of his later dits and in many of his lyrics. This conclusion may well irritate modern readers. But the modern scholar will, as Chaucer advises, study what Machaut taught and exemplified in his poetry – what, literally, il dit – and what his apprentices could learn from his words about his poetic art of love and the poetic art of truth-telling when il dit voir by blending more or less fictional and factual matter, as in autography, no matter how ‘wonder nyce and straunge / Us thinketh hem’ today. To be sure, as Jane Taylor notes, ‘modern readers may find such achievements rather tiresome’, especially when considering ‘to us otherwise incomprehensibly medieval bursts of rather banal rondeaux and ballades’4 in manuscript anthologies. But she also suggests that if we ‘read associatively’ anthology manuscripts as medieval readers did, we may well come to appreciate their ‘dense and complex networks … conclusively and cumulatively, rather than with our myopic attention to the discrete poem, in order to celebrate their exuberant variety in the exploration of the topical’.5 Is this not what the Remede ladies in the epigraph wanted when they proposed ‘pluseurs partures / D’amours’ to Guillaume? At first he lied. Then he wrote a dit that revealed poetically the truth lurking in his fictions.

4 5

Taylor 2008, pp. 156, 160. Taylor 2007, p. 6.

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[Cicero] Ad C. Herennium. De ratione dicendi (Rhetorica ad ­Herennium). Ed. and trans. Harry Caplan. Loeb Classical Library, 403. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, London: Heinemann, 1968 Advision Christine de Pizan. Le Livre de l’advision Cristine. Ed. Christine Reno and Liliane Dulac. ECh, 4. Paris: Champion, 2001 Alerion Guillaume de Machaut. Le Dit de l’alerion. In Œuvres. Vol. 2, pp. 239–403 Alexandrie Guillaume de Machaut. La Prise d’Alexandrie ou Chronique du roi Pierre Ier de Lusignan. Ed. M. L. de Mas Latrie. Publications de la Société de l’Orient latin: Série historique, 1. Geneva: Fick, 1877 Guillaume de Machaut. La Prise d’Alixandre (The Taking of Alexandria). Ed. and trans. R. Barton Palmer. New York, London: Routledge, 2002 ‘Edition critique de la Prise d’Alexandrie de Guillaume de Machaut.’ Ed. and trans. Sophie Hardy. Diss. Orléans, 2011 Anticlaudianus Alain de Lille. Anticlaudianus. Ed. R. Bossuat. Textes philosophiques du moyen âge, 1. Paris: Vrin, 1955 Alan of Lille. Anticlaudianus or the Good and Perfect Man. Trans. James J. Sheridan. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973 Appendice Guillaume de Machaut. ‘Appendice.’ In Poésies. Pp. 635–53 Archiloge Jacques Legrand. Archiloge Sophie–Livre de bonnes meurs. Ed. Evencio Beltran. BibXVe, 49. Paris: Champion, 1986. Pp. 25–261 Ars versificaria Gervase of Melkley. Ars poetica. Ed. Hans-Jürgen Gräbener. Forschungen zur romanischen Philologie, 17. Münster: Aschendorff, 1965 Ars Matthew of Vendôme. Ars versificatoria. In Mathei Vindocinensis   versificatoria opera, vol. 3. Ed. Franco Munari. Storia e letteratura, 171. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1988 Art dictier Eustache Deschamps. L’Art de dictier. Ed. and trans. Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi. Medieval Texts and Studies, 13. East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1994

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Wolfzettel, Friedrich 1983. ‘Die mittelalerliche Lyrik Nordfrankreichs.’ In Lyrik des Mittelalters: Probleme und Interpretationen. Ed. Heinz Bergner. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Reclam. Vol. 1, pp. 391–578 —— 1994. ‘Guillaume de Machaut: Dichter und Welt im Zeichen der Dame Rhétorique.’ Wolfram-Studien, 13, 42–57 —— 1996. ‘La Fortune, le moi et l’œuvre: remarques sur la fonction poétologique de Fortune au moyen âge tardif.’ In Opus. Pp. 197–210 —— 2006. ‘La Poésie comme cadeau ou le goût de la lectrice vers la fin du Moyen Age, suivi de Quelques réflexions sur la lyrique française du Moyen Age tardif: une poésie en contexte.’ In Goût. Pp. 135–56 Woods, Marjorie Curry 1986. ‘Poetic Digression and the Interpretation of Medieval Literary Texts.’ In Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani: Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, St Andrews 24 August to 1 September 1982. Ed. I. D. McFarlane. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 38. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies. Pp. 617–26 —— 2009. ‘Rhetoric, Gender, and the Literary Arts: Classical Speeches in the Schoolroom.’ NML, 11, 113–32 —— 2010. Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the ‘Poetria nova’ across Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Text and Context. Columbus: Ohio State University Press Yates, Frances A. 1966. The Art of Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Yri, Kirsten 2012. ‘Performing Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame: From Modernist Allegiances to the Postmodern Hinterland.’ In CGM. Pp. 333–59 Zeeman, Nicolette 1988. ‘The Lover-Poet and Love as the Most Pleasing “Matere” in Medieval French Love Poetry.’ MLR, 83, 820–42 —— 2002. ‘The Idol of the Text.’ In Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England: Textuality and the Visual Image. Ed. Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson, and Nicolette Zeeman. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 43–62 —— 2009. ‘In the Schoolroom with the ‘Vulgate’ Commentary on Metamorphoses I.’ NML, 11, 1–18 Zink, Michel 1976. La Prédication en langue romane avant 1300. NBMA, 4. Paris: Champion —— 1985. La Subjectivité littéraire: autour du siècle de saint Louis. Ecriture. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France —— 1988. ‘Le Roman.’ In GRLMA-VIII. Pp. 197–218 —— 1991. ‘The Time of the Plague and the Order of Writing: Jean le Bel, Froissart, Machaut.’ In Contexts. Pp. 269–80 —— 1994. ‘Un Paradoxe courtois: le chant et la plainte.’ In Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, 27 July–1 August 1992. Ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox. Cambridge: Brewer. Pp. 69–83 —— 1998. Froissart et le temps. Moyen Age. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France —— 2006. Nature et poésie au Moyen Age. [Paris]: Fayard Ziolkowski, Jan M. 1985. Alan of Lille’s Grammar of Sex: The Meaning of Grammar to a Twelfth-Century Intellectual. Speculum Anniversary Monographs, 10. Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America —— 1996. ‘Theories of Obscurity in the Latin Tradition.’ Mediaevalia, 19, 101–70



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INDEX

Abbreviation (apeticier, po, subtraction) 134, 150–2, 153, 156, 157, 161, 162, 166 Abelard: Treatise on rhetoric  134–5 Abstinence (see also Sublimation)  in good love 131; in late medieval narratives 40 n.53; Pre-conjugal 40; Sexual 260; voulue and contrainte 135 Academies, Occitan, at Toulouse and Barcelona 8–9 Adams, Jenny  267 n.167, 270 n.175, 285 n.36 Adams, Tracy  134 n.154, 176 n.102 Ad Herennium 197 Adynata 138 Aesthetic experience: of medieval readers xi, 278, 283; and pleasure 276, 282, 289; Rational effect of 286 Affection, Conjugal. See Love Affliction, Personal  224 n.16 Age (ages): of accountability  267; in history, Eight 254; Four-part 260–1, Twelve 256, 261 n.141 Alain de Lille: Anticlaudianus  97, 102 n.18, 109–10, 248 n.93, 249 n.97, 263; Contra Hœreticos 138, 149–50; De planctu Naturae (Plaint) 53–4; mentioned 7, 140, 151, 265 Alberic of Montecassino  108 n.40 Alexandria, Siege of  216–17 Allegorizations in Machaut, Ovide moralisé and verse and prose Echecs 270 Allegory: in Alerion  41; Allegorical 270; Anagogical 122, 270; Bestiary 101; in Chevalier errant 250, 253; and context 174; in Dit de la harpe 294; Four-part 270; Gender 146, 179–87; Good 10; of Griselidis tale 260; Historical 270; of integumanz 228, 298; and literal level 270; of love and poetry 1, 68; of male violence 159; Meanings 136, 148; Misogyny as 147; Mixed 136; as mode 134, 227; Moral 185; in Ovide moralisé

186, 270; in Prose Lancelot-Graal 270; of sin and deception 92; Subtle 186, 271; of tresor and key 87; Tropological 270 Allen, Judson Boyce  127, 130, 131, 132, 139, 140, 149, 150, 153, 166, 170 n.82, 224 n.16, 274 Altmann, Barbara K.  84 n.110 Ambiguity: in Fontaine amoureuse 125 n.103; in Machaut’s dits 215; in the Roman de la rose 228, 229; Venus’s 54; in the Voir Dit 80, 125 n.103, 263 Amende in Jugement Navarre 194, 198, 199, 201; in Voir Dit 60, 204 Amour (amor). See Love Amplification (addition, croistre, trop) 130, 134, 150–2, 153, 156, 157, 166, 193, 194, 261 Anagram 166 Analogy: France and self-government 122; Galatea and Guillaume 169 n.78 Andraud, Paul Henri Auguste  15 n.54 Andreas Capellanus: De amore  30, 49 n.98, 62, 80 n.97; definition of love 29, 62, 64 n.42, 65 n.46, 89, 131, 132 n.144, 249 Anger: in music  178; as sin 163 Anomaly of Guillaume’s and Toute Belle’s love 177 Anthology manuscript (recueil)  12, 45 n.72, 47, 50, 80, 133, 165–6, 200, 214, 257, 294 Antifrasis  84, 86 Antigraphe. See Secretary Apart (a part)  132 n.145, 175 n.97, 176, 212–13, 251 Aphorism in the Chevalier errant 248 n.96, 255–6 Appearance, Effect of  284–5 Appetite of great lords  262 Apprenticeship: in the art of poetry and prose  2–6, 16, 92–3, 97; code of

334 INDEX conduct 101–5; in falconry 101; in general 164–7; knowledge of music 282; in love and poetry 65–8; and music 280–2; among nobility 2, 110; Toute Belle’s x, 1–4, 98, 99, 105, 275 Archetypal design  292 Argument: for and against choices  267; Rational 150, 156; Rhetorical 222 Argumentum (arguemen): as debate  237; as verisimilar fictional example 98, 106, 153, 225, 227 Aristotle (Aristote): in Echecs moralisés 12; Nichomachean Ethics, Oresme’s translation of 98, 191; author of Problemata 263, 265; mentioned, 24 n.7, 262, 278 Armstrong, Adrian  171 n.83, 191 n.17, 214, 222, 226 n.23, 232 n.45, 280 n.22 Ars praecidandi 106 Art: Advanced  264; of argumentation 222; of falconry 10, 290; of Letter writing 5 n.23, 114; of love 1, 7, 9–10, 40, 48, 62, 65, 92–3, 297; Machaut’s 265; of poetry in French tradition 1, 3, 6–10, 62, 65, 92–3, 105–7, 133, 199; of poetry in Latin tradition 6–7, 108–10, 225; of poetry in Occitan tradition 8–10; de recyclage 113 n.62, 166; Requirements for practice of 203–5; of Second Rhetoric 8–10, 134, 136; Simian 292; Voir Dit as art of poetry 10 Article of faith  244 Articles of judgment (punctum, points; see also formula, Questions for Decision): in the Behaigne  201–3; in the Chevalier errant 261; in the Navarre 196–201, 202; in the Prise d’Alexandrie 216–17; in the Tresor amoureux 237–8, 243, 244; in Voir Dit 204–5, 206 Artillery 216 Assimilation (likening): in color allegory 174; of Dané and Virgin Mary 186; in examples 149–53, 167; of Fortune and Amour 147, 207; of Guillaume and donna mobile 147, 150–1; of Guillaume and Polypheme 169, 171; of images 167; of Io to Virgin Mary 242, 250 n.104; of Jupiter to God 242, 250 n.104; of marquis de Saluces to God 250 n.104; of Polypheme and Compagnes 170; of Toute Belle and Fortune 150–1, 207, 213; of Toute Belle and Virgin Mary, 10 n.40; in Voir Dit 148 Astell, Ann W.  250 n.106

At de Mons  9 Attributes (denominacions): Choice of 162; and personification 239; and world hierarchy 240–1 Attwood, Catherine  4 n.21 Aucassin et Nicolette 56 Auctor 150 Audience (see also Reader): and commonplace scripts  158 n.52; Convictions of 198; for dogsong 189; Extradiegetic 228 n.27; Implied 120; and interpretation 47, 48, 54, 55, 80, 89, 141, 164–5; judgment 136–7, 165, 195, 236; knowledge 98, 166, 186, 188; Lay 280; of letré 242; Mentalité juridique of 190; and social order 278; solutions 55, 164; speculation 161 n.56; Vernacular 263 Augustine  284 n.34 Author and narrator  164 Authority (auctoritates; see also Endoxon): Abuse of  216; Biblical 163; Contradictory 165; Deference to 166 n.71; Evil 192 n.24; Husband’s 89; as matiere 134; of noblemen 192; Religious 242, 272; as sententiae 150, 192; Toute Belle’s and Guillaume’s 152 Autobiography (see also Autography, Biography): as example  178; and fiction 174; Machaut’s 106; a variety of autography 175 Autography (see also Autobiography, Biography): in Chevalier errant 244, 250, 251; and fiction ix, 178; in Machaut’s art of poetry 174–9, 224, 299; Subtle 178 Avis (aviser) 152 Avonds, P.  251 n.110 Awakening: in Echecs amoureux 266; in Roman de la rose 288; in Tresor amoureux 243 Badel, Pierre-Yves  88, 188 n.6, 189, 222, 226 n.23, 227, 231 n.42, 232, 233, 249 n.97, 260, 266, 269 Baránski, Zygmunt G.  131 n.140 Barbiera, Luca  162 n.58 Basso, Hélène  46 n.81 Beauty: in decline  234; Feminine 73; of light and sound 290; Toute Belle’s 81 n.100; Virtuous 289 Bed episodes: in Christine’s Ducs des vrais amants  77 n.82; in Voir Dit 65 n.45, 74–9, 123, 185, 291

INDEX 335

Belittling in debate  155 Beneürté. See Felicity Benoît de Sainte-Maure  297 Bernard of Chartres: Commentary on Timaeus  108, 109, 179 n.108 Bernardus Silvestris: Commentary on Martianus Capella  108, 109; Cosmographia, 6, 110 n.48 Bernart de Ventadorn  21, 22–3 Bertolucci Pizzorusso, Valeria  41 n.54 Bestiality: in crime of passion  156; in dits 272; as gluttony 84 n.114; as lust 84–5; and rational faculty 84, 180 Bestiary figures: alerion  41–2, 49, 88, 132, 133, 196, 210, 285, 291, 295; ass 86, 193, 206; birds of prey (raptors) 4, 68, 86, 129, 132–3, 145, 189; calendre 41; cat 145; chantepleure 41; cow 242; crow (corbeau) 86, 125, 167–8, 216, 218, 249 n.96, 263, 271, 298; eagle 41, 69 n.60, 199 n.39, 295; falcon 41 n.57, 87, 91, 210; Fauvin 49; gyrfalcon 41, 68, 133, 148 n.25, 195, 196, 200, 210, 215, 285; lady birds 66; lark in flight 21–3, 148; lion 11, 39, 41, 159; owl 168; monkey (singe) 262, 279–80; most ferocious beast 253, 262 n.144; parrots 172, 249 n.96, 258–9, 298; raven (corneille) 125, 167–8, 249 n.96, 263, 298; sparrow hawk 41, 68, 133, 148 n.25, 195, 196, 200, 207, 210, 211, 263, 284, 285, 295; stag and dogsong 288, 289; stork 33 n.38, 36, 154, 155, 156, 158–9, 160, 168, 170, 181, 182, 183, 184, 204, 210, 271; swine 179–80; tormenting beasts and monsters 39, 41; tormenting insects (mouches) 39 n.50; turtledove 33 n.38, 36, 68, 154, 156, 158, 160, 167, 183, 184, 211, 214; white stag 39 n.50 Bétemps, Isabelle  ix n.1, 4, 76 n.82, 84 n.110, 113 n.60, 207, 231 n.40 Bible: as authority  134; Chronicles 163 n.62; ‘Prayer of Manassah’ 163 n.62; Sapientia 275; Song of Songs (Canticum) 24 n.7; as source 175 n.94 Bien penser, bien dire, bien faire 42–3 Binomial statements  265 Biography (see also Autobiography, Autography): as matter  54; and autography 175, 177 n.105 Birdsong  13, 287–8, 289, 291, 292 Bisexuality: Guillaume’s  271; Mercury’s 271

Blackening in poetry  86, 167–8, 271, 298–9 Bobanz 274 Boccaccio: Decameron  160, 250 Boethius: his Chansonettes 241; Christianization of 188 n.4; Consolation of Philosophy, 24 n.7, 45, 60 n.28, 109 n.44, 134, 148 n.26, 179, 188, 189, 224, 272; on false goods 24, 45, 49, 78, 82, 132, 209, 241; French translations and adaptations of 188, 224, 272; mentioned 23–4, 27, 44, 49, 66, 82, 110, 146, 200, 222, 225, 278 Bonaventure  223 n.10 Bonne d’Armagnac  54 n.12 Bonne de Luxembourg  199 n.43, 226 n.24, 298 Bonneürté. See Felicity Bonté (goodness)  70–3 Boogaart, Jacques  48 n.63 Borgne: Fortune  148; and impotence 65; Polypheme 169 Borrowing of music. See Citation Boucher, Caroline  97 Bouchet, Florence  245 n.81, 247, 248 n.95, 252 n.112, 253 Boucicaut: Livre des fais Bouciquaut 172 n.85 Bourgain, Pascale  14–15, 17, 158 n.52, 177, 203 Braet, Herman  222 n.8 Bragantini-Maillard, Nathalie  47 n.88, 63 n.39 Branch (figure, rubric): in Archiloge Sophie 140, 145; in Chevalier errant 245; in Echecs amoureux 266 Brandsma, Frank  228 n.27, 246 n.83 Bremond, Claude  106 Brothels 288 Brown-Grant, Rosalind  122 Brownlee, Kevin  xi n.3, 77–8, 80, 128, 129 Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn  226 n.24 Brunetto Latini. See Latini, Brunetto Buridant, Claude  265 n.160 Burrow, J. A.  261 n.141 Busby, Keith  245, 252 n.113 Busy-body lover. See Womanizer Butterfield, Ardis  8, 44, 105 Calin, William  32, 68, 84 n.110, 87 n.122 Cantillation  145 n.21 Cantus: coronatus  278, 279; gestualis

336 INDEX (chanson de geste) 278; simplex conductus 278, 279; versualis 279 Caplan, Harry  197 Carnival 74–5 Carruthers, Mary  293 n.57 Carte de Tendre  63–4, 68, 88, 129, 148; its Mers dangereuses 64, 88; its Terres inconnues 64, 88, 196 Cause: Aristotelian  127; and effect 158; Efficient 127; Final 127; First 157; Formal (duplex causa formalis; see also Forma tractatus and Forma tractandi) 127, 130, 272; Material 127 Cayley, Emma J.  31 n.29, 189 n.6, 192 n.24 Cent Nouvelles nouvelles  74 n.79 Cerquiglini, Jacqueline  ix, 65 n.45, 117, 126–7, 130, 173, 179, 182 n.115, 190, 215 n.88, 222, 232 n.45, 250 n.107, 261 n.142, 275, 295 Certainty (certaineté)  247–8, 272 Chamber of Avis  256 Chaos 279 Chapelle au dyable  169 n.80 Charity (theological virtue)  132, 163 Charivari  54, 86 Charles d’Orléans: Canticum amoris 264; knowledge of Latin 264; Retenue d’amours 243 n.76; Songe en complainte 230, 243 n.76; mentioned 31, 32, 54 n.12, 105 n.25, 120 Charles de Hongrie  49 n.98 Charles I of Luxembourg. Holy Roman Emperor  214–15, 217 Charles V, King (Duke of Normandy)  97–8, 179, 189, 263, 264 Charles, King of Navarre  33, 43–5, 50, 54, 102, 163, 177, 178, 189, 191, 192, 194, 196 n.32, 198, 204, 207 n.63, 262, 263, 267, 272, 273 Chartier, Alain: Belle dame sans mercy 11, 190 n.11; knowledge of Latin 264; Livre de l’esperance 151 n.39, 247; Livre des quatre dames 190 n.11; mentioned 7, 17, 32 n.32, 62, 88 n.126, 92, 163, 231, 273 Chastity  163, 269, 280 Chaucer, Geoffrey: Canterbury Tales 88, 231, 280; Legend of Good Women 39 n.49; ‘Merchant’s Tale’ 32 n.31, 88; Troilus and Criseyde 13–14, 21, 91; mentioned 15, 32 n.32, 49, 113 n.62, 184, 275, 276, 277, 299 Chess match in the Echecs amoureux 266, 267, 269

Chevalier du papegau  87 n.121 Chichmarif, V.  47 Choice motif  229–31, 266, 268, 270 Chose (thing), Griselidis as  250, 252 Chrétien de Troyes: Cligés 225; Erec et Enide 251 n.111; Lancelot (Chevalier de la charrette) 85, 226 n.24; Perceval (Conte du graal) 249, 251–2; Yvain 85 n.115; mentioned ix, 15, 126, 130, 225 n.18, 232, 246 n.83, 251 Christine de Pizan; knowledge of Latin 264; and Machaut’s judgment poems 84 n.110; questions endoxon 192 n.24; in Rose debate 79 n.92, 80, 165; and Toute Belle 110; as turtledove 158; as widow 68; mentioned 16, 17, 32 n.32, 62, 64 n.42, 85, 86, 88, 92, 115 n.67, 121, 124, 127, 140 n.7, 147, 151 n.37, 153, 163, 182, 186, 206 n.59, 231, 248, 273, 280 Advision Cristine  84, 168, 186–7, 191, 192 n.21 Cent ballades d’amant et de dame 190 n.11 Chemin de long estude  127, 192 n.21 Cité des dames  4, 203–4 Dit de la pastoure  40 n.51 Livre des trois vertus  34, 79 Livre du duc des vrais amants  77 n.82, 79, 190 n.11, 199 n.40, 260 Mutacion de Fortune  147, 180 Chronology, Machaut’s  18, 28, 46, 128 Church, Schismatic  258, 260 Cicero: De amicitia  260; mentioned 143 n.7, 170 n.82, 278 Cigni, Fabrizio  251 n.110 Cire. See Wax Citation (auto-citation, borrowing, redite, reprise)  4, 7–8, 30, 45 n.72, 46 nn.72 and 81, 63, 79–80, 150 n.33, 169 n.78, 201 n.49, 223 n.11, 224, 235, 245, 249, 251–3, 255, 258, 282, 299 Cizek, Alexandru N.  223 nn.9–10 Claris et Laris  226, 238, 243, 297 Clemency 252 Cleriadus et Meliadice  40 n.53 Clock and clockman (orlogier)  149, 150, 151, 166, 274 Cloud (of unknowing), Venus’s  11, 56, 62, 64, 74, 75–8, 79–81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 115, 125 n.103, 129, 149, 195, 229 Coitus. See Sexual intercourse Colin de Cayeux  120 Colombo Timelli, Maria  36 n.41, 90 n.132, 265 n.160

INDEX 337

Color: allegory  171–4; azure and green 121; blue (azure) 172; change 271; green (verdure) 172–3, 174, 185, 186, 207, 294 n.60; Persian blue (pers) 172; red 172; white 173; yellow 173 Combat and music  278 Comédie du moi  3 n.11 Comfort (confort): and consolation  225; d’amie or d’ami 52, 53, 54, 66, 67, 189, 195, 225; Beloved’s 52, 66–8, 91–2, 123; Esperance’s, 43–4; food 293; God’s, 43–4; from music 67, 276, 279; for patrons 68 Commentary 272 Commere. See Womanizer Common places (topoi): Invention of persons, actions, features that can be assimilated to persons and actions, and related factors  89, 134, 143; in Brunetto Latini 134–5; in Jacques Legrand 134 n.151 of common places for persons: name 129, 134, nature 134, 145, 154 n.46, 200, sexual gender (sexus) 134, 135, 147, 154 n.46, 158, 179–87, 200, country of origin 134, 154 n.46, native language 134 n.153, city of origin 134, lineage 134, age 134, 135, 154 n.46, 166–7, 179, 206, 261 n.141, physical health 134, disposition 134, upbringing and education 134, fortune (fortuna, fortune) 134, 143, 179, habitus (status in life) 134, 166, 179, emotions 134, study or object of study 134, station in life 134; thought 134, customary activities 134, manner of speech 134, luck (casus, cheoite) 134, 143, amitié, qualité, quantité and renom 154 n.46 for actions: summary  135, cause 135, before, during, and after 135, place 135, time 135, manner 135, ability to act 135 for assimilation: greater or lesser  135, similar (similitudo) 8, 135, contrary (contrarietas) 135, 177 n.24, general 135; idemptitas 177 n.104, special 177 n.104, end result 135 related factors: name of action  135, applicable law, custom, or judgment 135, frequency 135, features 135, results 135, value or worth 135

Commonplace (script; see also Erlebnismuster): Ages of life (cursus aetatum)  9, 12, 127, 216, 230, 232, 233, 234, 243, 244, 247 n.89, 256 n.127, 260; Amor vincit omnia 41, 202 n.51; Body politic 261–2; continuatio amoris 46, 61, 62–5, 68, 82, 101, 113, 124, 129, 167, 169, 190, 192, 204, 209; Donna mobile 201, 211; Fortune 143; gradus amoris 9, 27, 29, 31, 36, 40, 45, 46, 50, 55–6, 61, 62, 63, 76, 77–8, 82, 85, 100–1, 123, 127, 129, 190, 195, 224, 230, 243, 247 n.89, 269, 272; gradus languoris 61; gradus poetriae 102, 105; of Guillaume’s and Toute Belle’s love 177; image of human body for selfgovernment 261–2; ‘je ris en pleurs’ 41 n.54; locus amoenus (leius joieux; see also Insula amoena) 39, 63, 83, 259, 267; of men and women 167, 184; norms 178; Romance 54; unstable man 211; vertu afflebie 62; woman 147 Compassion and music  278 Competition: Poetic  112–16, 130; in traditional pedagogy 98, 113–14 Compilation  248 n.95 Composition of poem before music  282 Comte d’Artois 62 Conceptualization: Allegorical  227; of knowledge 272; Secular 272 Conclusion. See Dénouement Confession, Toute Belle’s  211 Conjointure  ix, 87, 149, 251, 274, 278 Connaissance (experience; see also under Quest)  216, 218, 234, 244, 256, 258, 260 Consideration (consirer; see also Reconsideration)  118–19, 140–2, 145, 152, 154, 164, 216, 218, 286 Consolation. See Comfort Constable, Giles  149 Constancy  70, 270 Contemplacion  266 n.164 Context: Broader  222–3, 232, 233, 235, 242, 243, 244, 253, 269, 272; Lyric, in narrative 47; Moral and religious 188, 242, 246, 259, 260, 267; Reading in 183, 184, 186–7; Secular and religious 44, 56 Contextualization: and intellectual context 222–3; of narrative 225–6 Contingency  240, 263 Continuations of Voir Dit 80

338 INDEX Contraires choses (contraries, extremes) x, 18, 37, 39, 48, 52, 84, 107, 141, 166, 167 n.72, 170, 228, 253, 254 Contrefaire (contrafacere)  1, 8, 110 n.51, 174, 252, 280 Controversy, Limits to  166 n.71 Copeland, Rita  223 n.9 Counter-example  142, 152, 158, 160, 161 Counterfeit  x, 295 Countess of Salisbury  215 n.94 Courage and music  278 Courcelle, Pierre  188 n.4 Coursing hares. See Hunt Courtesy in debate  155, 198 Courtoisie  35–6, 90 n.132 Couwenberg, Lia  109 n.44 Crane, Susan  134 n.154 Creation, God’s  102 n.18, 295 Creature (creature) 181 Crime of passion  155–6, 217 Criteria: for examples  154–66, 165; for love 272 Croizy-Naquet, Catherine  45 Crossroads. See Homo viator in bivio Crusaders (pseudo-Crusaders)  214–15, 217 Curriculum: Graded  108–10; Standard scholastic 280 Curtius, Ernst Robert  289 Dance: of gyrfalcon  295; and music 277; Toute Belle’s 277, 295 Dangier  37, 70, 82, 88, 90, 91, 148 Dante (see also Epistula Can Grande): Divina Commedia  80, 127, 131, 254 n.110; Florentine origin of 134 n.153; mentioned 80 De arte (see also Ex arte) 136 Death and love  32, 62, 69, 80–2, 194, 201 Debate (debat, descort, desputoison): on Belle dame sans mercy  11, 190 n.11; in Chevalier errant 253; and dialogue 188–90; Fictional 227; Fiction in 298; Frivolous 164, 253; in judgment dits 11, 130, 193–4, 203–5, 217; Love 164; and mentalité juridique 190, 215; in the mind 195, 213; in Prise d’Alexandrie 214, 215; protocol in the Behaigne 193; protocol in the Navarre 194–5; protocol in the Voir Dit 195–6; Quodlibital 196 n.32; on Roman de la rose 227; in Tresor amoureux 233, 237, 242–3; in Vergier 189–90; in vernacular poetry 98; in Voir Dit 64–5, 174, 205

Debauchery 242 De Boer, C.  125 De Bruyne, Edgar  285 nn.35–6, 290 n.81, 293 n.59 Declamation: in medieval pedagogy  113; as musique naturele 133 Declaracion. See Gloss and Judgment Decorum 85 Definition of an idea or its personification  239 DeJean, Joan  63 n.39 Delectacion (delit, orgasm): in human love 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 36, 37, 54 n.10, 63, 69, 78, 82, 84, 120, 131–2, 140, 200 n.45, 202, 268–70, 279; in love for God 44; in reading Echecs amoureux 273 Delectare et prodesse. See Please and instruct Deliberation  126, 154, 196–7, 214, 216–17, 218, 241 Delight: in music  278; Three kinds of 279 Delit. See Delectacion Delogu, Daisy  189, 215 nn.87–89, 216 n.97, 252 n.114 De Looze, Laurence  64 n.40, 87 n.122, 175 Demandes d’amour  189 n.6, 239 Demats, Paule  179–80, 184, 270 Demonstracion  221, 222 Denouement: of Echecs amoureux 265–6; of Tresor amoureux 236, 237; of Voir Dit 116 Désamour  61, 124, 211 Deschamps, Eustache: Art de dictier 6, 7, 16, 98, 106, 116, 119–20, 133, 225, 280–1; Machaut’s apprentice 6, 66 n.49, 101 n.17; on music 279; mentioned x, 78, 84 n.110, 231, 232, 241, 274, 288 Description and plot  266 Desire (desir)  24–5, 29, 30, 37, 38, 43–4, 47, 49–50, 51–2, 55, 57–8, 60, 67, 74, 85, 89, 101, 131, 140, 144, 146, 149, 169, 170–1, 179, 209, 236, 298–9 Desmesure  199, 200 Detractors, Toute Belle’s  84–5 De Vetula  188 n.3 Devisement  as points to adjudicate 197 Deviser 152 Dialogue and debate  188–91, 235, 239; Epistolary 189, 205, 224 Dictamen  108 n.40 Digression (digressio; see also Modus digressivus): in Echecs amoureux 266;

INDEX 339

as encyclopedic text 232, 272; in Fontaine amoureuse 125 n.102; in Tresor amoureux 242; utilis and inutilis 135–6; in Voir Dit 122, 136, 137 Disfigurement  150 Disorder, World’s  273 Dispositio (disposition): in composition 103; Mathematical 128 n.124 Disruption, Social  241 Dissimulation: Prudent  242–3; as social imperative 243 Dissonance, Aesthetic and moral  295 Dit (lyrical narrative poetry): Debate and dialogue in  189 n.6; forme polémique 190; Historical 218; Irresolution in 88; Narrative in 45–7, 63, 99, 129, 177–8, 189, 205, 214, 229, 230, 244, 246–7, 261; Prise d’Alexandrie as 177 n.105, 214; Scholarship on 232; Subtle 131; Super-Dit 12 n.49; as traitié 126, 248 n.95; mentioned 9 Dit du faucon  101 n.16 Diversity: of children  238, 252; Human 239, 240, 244; of interpretations 229, 276; Lyric 46–7; as subject matter 119; World’s 272 Doctrine  51, 52, 65, 104 Documentation in Machaut’s dits  176 Dogsong  13, 288–90, 292 Donatus 109 Dörrich, Corinna  176 Dorveille (see also Dream vision)  233 n.52, 282–3 Doss-Quinby, Eglal  105 Douceur. See Sweetness Dous penser (douce pensée)  16, 22–3, 26, 37, 45, 55, 100, 119, 120, 131, 152, 162 Dream (songe, insomnium, visio; see also dorveille): and mensonge 121, 125, 207; as model 121, 123, 124; Nebuchadnezzar’s 144; as nightmare 121 n.90, 123; Obscure 124; Sexual climax in 121 n.9; Subtle 121 n.90, 124–7; in Tresor amoureux 233; True and false 121–4, 207; Uncertainty of 121; vision 97, 233, 235; in Voir Dit 76–7 n.82, 121–7, 192; Waking phase of 207; Wet 121 n.90; Wish-fulfillment 123 Driel, Joost van  175 n.97 Drobinsky, Julia  76 n.82, 128 n.123 Drouart la Vache: D’amours 30 Dubitabilia (open questions): defined 191–3; in Echecs amoureux and its

commentary 263; in French verse 272; and good love 191; Jeu-parti model 226–7; in Roman de la rose 227; and sexual genders 194; in Voir Dit 195, 204, 244 Ducos, Joëlle  140 n.7 Dufournet, Jean  3 n.11 Duke of Bar  189 Duplicity, Guillaume’s  210, 211 Durbuy  167, 177 Durmart le Galois  226 n.23 Earp, Lawrence  24 n.7, 28, 37 n.44, 199 nn.39 and 43, 201, 214 nn.82 and 85; 226 n.24, 281 n.27 Echoes of Machaut: in Chevalier errant  248–9 n.96, 252–3; in Tresor amoureux 235–7 Education: Music in  282; Pierre de Lusignan’s 216 Edward III, King  215 n.94 Effacement of wrong by Reason  167, 202–3, 236 Ehrhart, Margaret J.  3, 13, 55 Eloquence and music  278 Emulation as rivalry (see also Imitation)  8 n.35, 113–16, 179, 224, 232 Encyclopedia 227 Encyclopedic: commentation  224; intention 227; texts 222, 223, 226, 227, 228, 232, 241, 244, 255, 260, 261, 265, 266, 267, 272 Enders, Jody  64 Endoxon  192–3, 194–5, 199 n.38, 203, 205, 215, 217, 235 Engin (ingenium)  117–18, 150 English literature and Machaut  84 n.110 Englués 206 Entente 84 Envoiseüre 70 Envy: against love  41 n.55; in Chevalier errant 256; in Dit dou lyon 41, 241; Faith and hope triumph over 163; in Tresor amoureux 241 Epigones, Machaut’s  280 Epistre. See Letter Epistula Can Grande  127, 131, 133, 136 Equality. See Unité Erlebnismuster (script; see also Commonplace)  9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 44, 46, 54, 61, 63, 79, 85, 87, 88, 100, 101, 118, 124, 127, 128, 130, 137, 162, 176, 177, 178, 179, 185, 188, 189, 203, 204, 209, 224, 230, 242, 260, 267, 295

340 INDEX Errances. See Quest Esbatement honnourable  70, 74–5, 276, 283–4, 287, 289, 291 Esperence. See Hope Esprueve de fines amours (Test of True Love) 39 Essentialism  158, 159, 160 Estableté. See Stability Etymology, Medieval  167 Eucharist  287 Evrart de Conty: Echecs amoureux 4 n.19, 7–8, 12, 17, 27, 38 n.47, 53 n.10, 57 nn.20–1, 63, 127, 222 n.8, 228, 229, 263–70, 287, 293 n.56 Echecs moralisés  6 n.26, 12, 17, 27, 30, 41 n.55, 44, 51, 53 n.10, 63, 75, 77, 83 n.107, 84, 89, 92–3, 99–100, 102 n.18, 109 n.43, 119 n.81, 127, 140 n.7, 221, 228, 232, 263–74, 277–8, 279, 280, 285–6, 288 n.45, 289, 291–4, 295 n.62 Problemata  263, 265 Ex arte (see also De arte) 136 Example: Ambiguous  169; Biblical 123, 163; as certain knowledge 163; Contextualization of 222; in debate context 164–7, 194; as evidence 154; Fictional 162; as glosses 166; Historical 162 n.59, 163, 214, 241; Literal 222; Metaphorical 271; Ovidian 123, 129, 139, 227, 241; Poetic 162; as proof 11; Rewriting 106–7, 139, 162, 163, 166, 168, 226, 242, 245; Romance as 249; in sermons 106; Subtle 241; Uncertainty of 123; Untranslated Latin 270; Versions of 153 Exemplar (exemplaire)  74, 118, 139 Exemplary and fictional figures (see also Guillaume de Machaut and Toute Belle): Abraham  250; Abusive husband 87; Adam 244 n.16, 254; Adonis 112, 138, 241–2, 251 n.111; Adulterous lovers 245, 253, 254, 255, 259, 260; Aeneas (Enee) 109 n.44, 111, 138, 162, 164; Agamemnon 39 n.48; Agnesot 40 n.51; Agravain 251; Alcyone 64 n.41, 82, 141 n.8; Alitret, Saint 259; Alleram 252; Amant (Lover) in Rose 60 n.28, 63, 121 n.90, 122, 184, 257, 272, 287, 288; Amie of the Chevalier errant 245, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259 n.136; Angels 252 n.114, 288; Anonymous lady 53–5; Antichrist 254; Ariadne (Adriane) 33 n.38, 157, 162; Arthur, King 87 n.121, 268; Artus

de Bretaigne 112 n.55; Atalanta 241–2, 251 n.111; Authority figures in Chevalier arrant 255; Beatrice 80; Beauty and the beast 135; Behaigne beloved and lady 154, 159, 161, 167, 193, 200, 201, 202, 206; Behaigne nobleman 154, 159, 161, 164 n.64, 167, 184, 193, 202; Belle Dame sans mercy 62, 78, 88 n.126, 92, 273; Belle Heaumière 120; Belshazzar 163; Biblis 111, 138; Boethius 189, 224 n.16; the Bonneüreus 159, 166; Briseidis (Brexis) 253–4; Cadmus 111, 138; Camel de Camois 31; Caradoc 249, 251–2; Cephalus 112, 138; Ceyx 64 n.41, 82, 141 n.8; Chaste ladies 38 n.42; Châteleine de Vergi 162, 164; Chess board maiden 266–7; Chevalier errant 229, 244–63, 265; Children 238, 252; Christ 186; Cleopatra 151 n.37; Cleric from Provence (Orléans cleric) 33 n.38, 155 n.48, 156, 161–2, 164, 166, 167, 180; Clytemnestra 39 n.48; Compagnes (Marauders), 40 n.51, 135, 169 n.80, 170, 298; Companions Ulysses’s 179–80; Confessor (priest), Toute Belle’s 65, 69, 85, 107–8, 146–9, 150, 168, 174, 180, 184, 185–6, 192, 195, 205, 211, 213, 271; Coronis 167, 168, 170; Criseida (Criseyde) 85, 91; Dame de Fayel 62; Dame des Belles Cousines 246; dame, demoiselle, and pucelle in Chevalier errant 253, 256 n.127; Damsel whose lover dies in a tournament 33 n.38, 157, 164 n.64; Dané 185, 186; Daniel 163; Darius 163; Daughter of King of Russia 251; David 224 n.16, 269, 288; Deianira 163; Detractors and defenders, Toute Belle’s 133, 148, 168–9, 170, 174, 205, 206–9, 210 n.72, 212, 214, 215, 248; Devil monks 255 n.126; Devils 169 n.80, 252 n.114; Diana (dea castitatis) 38 n.47, 229 n.34, 266, 267–9, 271; Dido 33 n.38, 109 n.44, 111–12, 138, 162, 163, 164, 167 n.72, 175 n.94; Diomede 253; Donna mobile 147–9, 151, 167, 171, 172, 174, 207, 211; Duc des vrais amants and his lady 77 n.82; Echecs lover 266–70; Egistus 39 n.48; Elderly man in Lyon 38; Emenidys 112 n.55; Enchanter in Gauvain Continuation 252; Enide 62; the Envious 41; Erec 62; Eurithouron 168; Eurydice 163; Eve 254; Everyman and Everywoman

INDEX 341

213; Falconer 87, 89, 90, 189; False monks 255; Florence 112 n.55; Fontaine lady 195; Francesca 80, 82; Frere aisié (playacting lovers) 38, 40, 63 n.36, 85, 87, 148 n.25, 199 n.40, 214; Galaad 185; Galatea 11 n.43, 65 n.46, 140, 168–71; Gauvain 251; Gauvain’s sister 252; Good-natured boy 104–5; Griselidis (Griselda) 224 n.16, 249–50, 253, 254, 260; Grosse Margot 120; Gualtier, marquis de Saluces 250, 251; Guenevere 85, 164, 251 n.111; Guillaume 3, 31; Guillaume de Saluces 251; Guinier 252; Hébé 216; Hector 269; Helen of Troy (Helaine) 53, 111, 163, 267; Heloise 16, 135; Hercules 139, 163; Hermit 255, 269; Hermondine 31, 32; Hero 33 n.38, 140–1, 155 n.48, 157, 163; Husband of Dame de Fayel 62; Icarus 271; Io 57 n.20, 236, 242; Irascible boy 104–5; Iseut 164; James Bond 252 n.113; January-May lovers x, 88, 135, 169; Janus 148; Jason 36, 37, 92, 111, 138, 157, 163, 253, 271; Jealous husband 155–6, 210, 216 n.95, 245, 253, 254, 255, 259, 260; Jean de Saintré 31 n.29, 246; Jeune veuf 32; Jeune veuve 32, 82, 158, 200; Job 224 n.16, 250 n.106; Jude the Obscure 241; Julius Caeser139; Juno 139, 229 n.34, 265–7, 269; Jupiter 57 n.20, 236, 242, 268; Keu 251; King of Hungary 65 n.46; King of Russia 251; Knight slain in a tournament 164; Lancelot 85, 139, 157, 228 n.29; Laudine 62; Leander 33 n.38, 37, 140–1, 157, 163, 179; Learned martyrs 243; Liénor 56; Lisabetta and Lorenzo 160; Lover of Châteleine de Vergi 162, 164; Lover, Galatea’s 170; Lover who cuts off his finger 155 n.48, 160, 164; Maistre Orose 255 n.124; Manassah 163; Man condemned to gallows 163; Margot 40 n.51; Marote 40; Marthe 56; Mathilde de la Mole and Julien Sorel 160; Medea (Medee) 33 n.38, 92, 111, 138, 157, 163, 184; Medes and Persians 163; Meliador 31; Meliador maiden 31, 47–8, 142, 149, 155, 156 n.51, 164, 179, 186, 230, 238, 240, 250, 276; Mercury 242, 270–1; Minerva 216; Morpheus 140, 235, 241; Nebuchadnezzer 144, 269; Nicolette 56; Noble friend 170, 205; Nurturing goddesses 216; Old judges 192 n.24, 193; Old men 69;

Orpheus 163, 235, 241, 278, 288; Ovide 78; Pallas 125, 139, 167–8, 229 n.34, 232, 265–7, 269; Paolo 80, 82; Paris of Troy 53, 111, 139, 163, 253, 266; Partonopeu de Blois 31 n.29; Peleus 54; People 205; Perceval (Perchevaus) 185; Perceval’s sister 185; Phebus (Apollo) 125, 167, 168, 170, 185, 186, 271; Phedre 162; Pheton 242, 271; Philosophes in Chevalier errant 253, 255, 258, 261–2; Polypheme (Cyclops) 8 n.32, 11, 40 n.51, 135, 140, 168–71, 224, 235, 245, 249, 298, 299; the Poor 40 n.52, 256; Priape 40 n.51, 54, 86; Provençal lady and bride 33 n.38, 37, 49, 161, 162, 166, 167 n.72, 180, 181; puella senex 289, 290; Pygmalion 138; Pyrame 37, 163; the Rich 256; Richarde 252; Robin 40; Roi qui ne ment 65, 122, 192, 205, 299; Rose 87, 122 n.92, 184; Rusé 3; Saluces family 249–52; Satan (the devil) 81 n.100, 117 n.72; Saturn 268; Savage children 252; Scapegoat 193; Secretary, Guillaume’s 170, 189; Semiramis 56, 57, 77 n.84, 112, 138; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego 163; Sirens 288, 291; Socrates 186, 241, 256; Sœurs aisiées 39, 63 n.36, 148 n.25, 199 n.40; Solomon 224 n.16, 269; Susanne 25, 44 n.66, 69, 163, 193; Sebille (Sybille) de Monthault 92, 206 n.59, 231; Theseus 36, 37, 157, 162; Thetis 54; Thisbe 33 n.38, 37, 163; Tresor narrator 233–7, 239–40, 241, 243; Tresor squire 235, 236, 237, 239–40, 241, 243, 253, 256 n.127; Tristan 139, 157, 164; Troilus (Troyle) 85, 91; Tyrannical lord 253; Ulysses 138, 179; Venus 11, 53–4, 56, 62, 64, 74, 83, 85, 86, 111, 129, 138, 139, 149, 195, 229, 235 n.56, 241–2, 266, 267, 268, 269–70, 279; Villeins 39–40; Villon’s mother 120; Virgin Mary 9–10, 48–9, 68, 70, 80, 81 n.100, 82 n.106, 186; Vulcan 167–8; Wife of jealous husband 155–6, 258; Women in love 258; Worthies 260; Ysaÿe 56 n.18; Yvain 62 Experience: as connaissance  234; and enlightenment 255; Reinterpretation of 230; Ritualized 177 Fable: Fictional  138; Literal 184; Love 123; Mythographic 225; Ovidian 5, 271 Factum. See Sexual intercourse

342 INDEX Faculty: Imagination (imaginatio, ymaginacion)  98, 117–18, 152–3, 162, 208, 286; Mental 98; Reason 84, 122, 150–1, 153, 236, 256, 269, 287, 289, 291; Senses 117, 153, 261, 283, 292–3 Faith: Christian  244; of knight 259; Theological virtue 132, 163; mentioned 44, 53, 222, 230, 247–8, 263 Faiz as poem  286 False good  209 Fasseur, Valérie  2 n.6, 66, 97, 115 Faux semblant 174 Felicity (beneürté, bonneürté)  24, 25–6, 35, 37, 38, 42–4, 166 n.71, 199, 209 Femme forte 252 Ferrand, Françoise  35 n.40 Fictio personae  154 n.45 Fiction (see also Truth): Auctentique 142; Narrative logic of 177; Subtle 124, 139, 241 Figure (see also Branch)  118, 140, 143, 154, 155, 156 Fine amour  32, 82 Finoli, Anna Maria  246, 247, 249 n.97, 260 Flower (flour): Loss of  29 n.22; of the world 72 Fol  4, 110 Foreplay (see also Delight), Affectionate 75, 279 Forma (modus) tractandi (see also Cause) 11, 127, 130–7, 225–6, 237, 241, 248, 261, 298 Forma tractatus (see also Cause)  127–30, 197, 236, 245 Formula (see also Articles of judgment)  127, 197, 198, 214, 218 Fortitude (vigueur): and music  278–9; as virtue 60, 248, 250, 252 Fortune (fortune, casus)  24, 37, 38, 143–9, 199, 261 Fournier, Michael  109 n.44 France and its misfortunes  122, 137, 164, 169 n.80, 258 Franchise: defined  200; of worthy ladies 216 French: as literary language  225; terminology 265 Friendship: Male (amicitia; see also Love, Ennobling)  170–1, 183–4, 206, 214, 215; and music 278–9 Fritz, Jean-Marie  287 n.39 Froissart, Jean: Ovidian examples (shapeshifting)  241; versions of rape 215

n.94; mentioned 17, 113 n.62, 114, 140 n.5, 231, 232, 233, 247 n.89, 272, 273, 275, 280 Bleu Chevalier  41 n.54 Espinette amoureuse  12 n.49 Joli buisson de jonece  12 n.49, 48, 63, 82 n.105, 192 n.21, 230, 243, 272, 281 Meliador  31, 32, 47 n.82, 63 n.39, 230 Orloge amoureux  149, 281–2 Prison amoureuse  12 n.49, 122 n.92, 190 n.11, 242 Fulgentius: the author  110, 224, 270; as book title 134, 170 n.82 Fyn loving  39 n.49 Gace de la Buigne: Roman des deduis 101 n.16, 288 n.44 Galderisi, Claudio  264 Gallo, Franco Alberto  1 n.2, 120 n.84 Gally, Michèle  269, 271–2 Garden: of Deduit in Echecs amoureux 63, 266, 268, 273, in Roman de la rose 221, 286–7; of Eden  254 Gaston Phebus: Livre de chasse  101 n.16 Gaudet, Minnette  84 n.110 Gautier d’Arras  225 Gautier de Conflans  215 Gauvain or First Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval  249, 251–2 Gender: in allegory  179–87; alternation 32, 271; and apprenticeship 66; Bisexual 271; contradictions 185; Double 271; fluctuation in manuscripts 183 n.120; Grammatical 35, 145, 167, 180–4, 198–206; Hierarchy of 23, 34, 157–8, 194; indifference 183–4; in Jugement Navarre 33–8; of lyric voices 46; metamorphosis 180; of personifications 198, 204; prejudice 204; reassignment 182 n.125; Sexual, 35, 42, 145, 153, 180–4, 194; and suffering 203 Genealogy: in French literature  250 n.107; of the Saluces family 250 General (generalité, genus; see also Special): and fortune  147; knowledge 125; and love 140–4; in modus divisivus 132–3; truths 226 Gentillesce 107 Geocentric: creation  13; universe 248 n.93 Geoffrey of Monmouth  268 n.169 Geoffrey of Vinsauf: Poetria nova 6–7, 102, 103, 113, 118, 119 nn.78–9, 150,

INDEX 343

153, 224; mentioned 136, 143 n.18, 151, 184 Gertz, SunHee  171 n.82 Gervais du Bus: Roman de Fauvel 39, 254 n.117 Gervase of Melkley: Ars versificaria 108–9, 110 n.48, 177 n.104 Ghibelines and Guelphs  254, 260 Girard, René  193 Gloss (glossing): après la lettre  260; to Aristotle translation 98; of Christine’s Advision  84, 229; as declaracion 233; of examples 166; in Echecs amoureux 264, 265; External and internal 146, 228; French 265; Jean de Meun’s ix, 228; Latin 266; Literary 228; Modern 228 n.27; Opposing 228; in Queste du saint graal 186; Reader’s 84, 186; in Roman de la rose 228; in Voir Dit 145–6, 166; mentioned 272 Gluttony  84 n.114 God: Accord with  258; in allegory 186, 242; as cause of death 201; and creation 279; and good love 81, 145; in Prise d’Alexandrie 216, 217; as source of virtues 25–6; mentioned 43, 186, 203 Golden Age  268 n.170 Gómez-Bravo, Ana M.  126 n.106 González Doreste, Dulce Ma  222 n.8 Gossip. See Slander Government and music  278 Grace: God’s (Divine)  24 n.7, 256, 294 n.61; Lady’s 294 Graft, Allegorical  180–1 Grail, Holy  228, 287 n.40, 294 n.61 Graisse du pot  113, 139 Grammar: and memory  113; and twisting noses 150 n.32 Greffier. See Secretary Grid-editing  131 n.139 Grief  49, 116 Grocheio, Johannes de: De musica  278–9 Guardians: in Roman de la rose  234; in Tresor amoureux 234–5 Guelphs. See Ghibelines Guichard-Tesson, Françoise  99–100, 263, 265 Guillaume de Conches  179–80 Guillaume de Lorris. See under Roman de la rose Guillaume de Machaut. See Machaut, Guillaume de Guillaume le maréchal  226 n.23

Hadewijch  175 n.97 Hardy, Sophie  216 n.95 Hardy, Thomas  241 Harmoniques  275, 280, 285 n.36, 290 Harmony: of creation  13; of fortune with divine providence and justice 254–5, 260; in good love 280; of musical instruments 284; Musical and world 274, 285, 289; Nature’s 289; and numbers 275, 279; Universal 279, 292 Hatcher, Anna Granville  128 n.124 Heaven: Dante’s  80; God and angels in 252 n.114; in Lai 16 81 n.100; for lovers 83 n.109 Heinrichs, Katherine  84 n.110 Hell: Dante’s  80; Devil’s 169 n.80, 252 n.114 Heraldry 172 Hicks, Eric  158 n.52 Hierarchy: Moral  270; of readers 263–4; Social 34 Histoire des Seigneurs de Gavre  40 n.53, 62, 80, 287 Hoepffner, Ernest  28, 37 n.44, 54, 161 n.56, 163 n.62, 288 n.46 Holcot, Robert: Moralitates  170 n.82 Holy Roman Emperor  254, 260 Holy Spirit  242 Homer  223 n.10 Homo viator in bivio (in trivio)  229, 246, 266, 267 Honor: Charles of Navarre’s  43, 44, 129, 163; Guillaume’s 148; Toute Belle’s 57, 75–6, 79, 80, 82, 89, 148, 172, 196, 232 n.43 Hope (esperance): Bad  163; Certain 163; Good 10, 16, 22–4, 26, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 51, 54, 55, 57–8, 60–1, 66, 82, 100–1, 118, 119, 120, 128, 129, 131, 149, 152, 162, 163, 169, 171, 205, 209, 212; Kinds of 182; of knight 259; in Ovide moralisé 185; as theological virtue 131, 163, 186; Uncertain 29, 47, 53, 57, 132, 163; Wish-fulfillment 163 n.60 Hoquet 279 Horace  133, 223, 224 Hülk, Walburga  45 Humility (humilité): in apprenticeship 88–91; and courtoisie 90 n.132; in love 89–91, 156 Humors 262 Hundred Years War  ix, 40 n.51, 135, 136, 170, 177, 230, 298 Hunt, Tony  254 n.117

344 INDEX Hunt: Bird  210; Coney 177, 194, 200, 289; and dogsong 289; Falcon 245; in late medieval allegory 101 n.16; in Navarre 177, 190, 199, 289 Huon de Meri: Tournoi de l’Antéchrist 287, 288 Huot, Sylvia  9, 48, 56, 76 n.82, 87 n.120, 161 nn.55–6, 231 n.40 Hurworth, Angela  214, 217 Hypocrisy, Malebouche’s  185 n.125 Ideal and reality  86 Idleness (otium, oiseuse) and music  279 Idolatry as sin  163 Image (ymage): of Amour  183–4; of beloved 55, 100; Guillaume’s 133; of lady 53, 54; Mental 100; Toute Belle’s 86, 124–5, 133, 213 Imbs, Paul  10–11, 55, 58 n.23, 161, 198 n.37 Imitation (see also Emulation): of models  8 n.35, 99–100, 105, 113–16, 165, 179, 224; in poetic competition 112–16, 165 Immaculate Conception  186 Immoderation: of Chevalier errant  254 n.118; in Echecs amoureux 221 Impotence: Artistic  62; of borgne 65 n.45; Guillaume’s 62; and languor 62; Moral 62; Poetic 62, 107, 212 n.77 Incipits  105 n.25 Inclination (natural movement)  103–4, 111, 116 Individual (particulier): in a group  132, 240; and ritual 176 Infanticide  162, 184 Ingenium. See Engin In quadrivio promoti (promota)  108, 109, 111, 263 Insomnium. See Dream Instability: Guillaume’s  58, 60, 64–5, 89, 146–8, 149, 211, 217; in love 50, 52, 56, 62, 68, 87; Social 230; Toute Belle’s 207; Venus’s 53–4 Insula amoena 39 Integument (integumentum, involucrum) 78, 122, 123, 168, 228, 271, 287 Intertexte  223–5, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 243, 249, 270, 271, 273 Intertextuality and apprenticeship  223–5 In utramque partem 165 Invention: Excessive  262; Human 123; and imaginatio 98; Musical context of 275; Nature’s 102 n.18; using poetries

106; Poetic 263; Procedure 154, 223; and rewriting 224; and sens 116–21; and subtlety 12–13, 97–8, 123; Topical 134, 151, 166, 272 Involucrum. See Integumentum Isidore of Seville: Etymologiae 167 Jaeger, C. Stephen  2 n.9, 15, 17, 75 n.80, 81 n.100, 214 Jakemes: Châtelain de Coucy 62 James-Raoul, Danièle  130 Je: Exemplary  179; Plural 141; qui enseigne 65 Jealousy  51, 68, 202–3, 209, 256 Jean Acart de Hesdin: Prise amoureuse 101 n.16, 288–90, 293 n.59 Jean de Berry  31, 32, 53, 54–5, 125 n.103, 283 Jean de Condé: Messe des oiseaux 229 Jean de Hauville: Architrenius  6, 109, 188 n.3; in Echecs moralisés 109 n.43, 264 Jean de Luxembourg, King of Bohemia  29, 33 n.37, 167, 191, 192, 196 n.32, 198, 202, 203 Jean de Meun. See under Roman de la rose Jean de Werchin: Songe de la barge 110 n.50, 190 n.11 Jean II, King  43, 53, 178, 199 n.40 Jean Renart: Roman de la rose 56 Jeanne d’Armagnac  54 Jeanne de France  43 Jeay, Madeleine  199 n.39 Jedouin de Beauvillier  214 Jehan Cotart  120 Jehan d’Avesnes  40 n.51 Jeu-parti (parture): and audience  47, 238; Behaigne-Navarre as 38, 165; as debate mode 11, 98, 188 n.6, 196 n.32, 239; in Remede 86, 271, 297, 299; in Roman de la rose ix Johannes de Grocheio. See Grocheio, Johannes de John of Salisbury: Metalogicon  108, 109, 113; Policraticus 191 Joir (joie, jouisssance)  26, 29, 36, 42, 78, 85 Journey motif  229 Joy: Aesthetic and moral  291; in music 278 Judge (judges): Choice of  191–2; in dabate 166, 191, 194–5; Queen of France as 191; Multiple 235; in Voir Dit 68, 195 Judgment (declaracion, Verdict): Absence of  196 n.32; Audience as 226; of

INDEX 345

authority 88; in the Behaigne 33, 193, 194, 200, 201; in Chevalier errant 253; and context 218; in judgment dits 130, 158, 195, 196; in the Navarre 194, 196; Opposing 38; of Paris 53, 63 n.35, 266, 267; of patron 226, 238; in Tresor amoureux 235, 238; in Voir Dit 195, 196, 205 Jung, Marc-René  5 n.22, 9, 105–7, 118 Justice  248, 254–5, 262 Kay, Sarah  3 n.16, 24 n.7, 171 n.83, 174–5, 191 n.17, 199, 214, 222, 224–5, 226 n.23, 232 n.45, 254 n.117, 280 n.22 Keats, John, on Grecian urn  284 Keen, Maurice  200, 216 n.98, 238 n.61 Kempe, Margery. See Margery Kempe King: Duties of  121, 135; Philosopher, 44 Kissing and embracing  80, 123 Kristeva, Julia  223 n.11 Kügle, Karl  131 n.139 Kuhn, David  233 n.52 Lachet, Claude  65 n.46 La Fontaine, Jean de: ‘Les Animaux malades de la peste’  86, 178, 193, 206; fable on reed and oak 242; ‘La Jeune Veuve’ 32, 160, 200; ‘Le Paysan du Danube’ 178 Lancelot-Graal, Prose  270 Language instruction  265 Languor: as death and dying  62; en joliveté 61; and love 30, 49, 60–2, 68, 100, 116, 123, 129, 202–3; in poetic composition 62, 116; in women 61 Lapidary 71 Largess and music  278 Latin: Lay knowledge of  264; learning in translation movement 266; Toute Belle’s knowledge of 110 Latini, Brunetto: Tresor  90 n.131, 102 n.18, 118–19, 126–7, 134–5, 140 n.6, 143 n.17, 150, 151, 154 n.46, 197, 227 Latzke, Therese  86 n.118 Lausberg, Heinrich  154 nn.44–5 and 47, 156 n.50, 162 n.59 Lay d’Esperance 129 Lay de Bon Espoir  27 Layered performance  48 Leach, Elizabeth Eva  3 n.11, 17, 46 n.81, 61, 77 n.84, 143 n.15, 145 n.21, 164–5, 208 n.65, 213 n.81, 229, 231–2, 276–7, 288 n.45, 289, 292 Learning, Debatable  272–4

Lechat, Didier  141, 163 n.62 Lecoy, Félix  249 n.97 Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel  58 n.23, 175, 177 Lefèvre, Sylvie  45 n.72 Legacy, Machaut’s  231–3 Legaré, Anne-Marie  266 Le Goff, Jacques  63 Legrand, Jacques: Archiloge Sophie  2, 6, 17, 67, 87–8, 106, 112, 134, 139, 140, 143 n.17, 154 n.46, 158, 264–5 n.157; mentioned 101, 145, 162 Lendit  70 n.72, 74, 77 n.82, 80, 268 Léonard, Monique  121, 126 Lethargy, Poetic  212 n.72 Letter (epistre; see also Salutation): Exchanges of  248 n.96; in the Voir Dit, 5, 90–1, 97, 111, 171 n.83 Leube, Eberhard  162 n.58 Lexicon 215 Leys d’amors 9 Liar’s Paradox  86 Life (vie, vita): Active (activa) 63, 266, 267, 270 n.174; Contemplative (contemplativa) 63, 266, 267, 269; Errant 244; honneste 269; Long 248; Monastic 267, 269; Present 234; Short 256; solitaire 269; as trespassement 259; Voluptuous (voluptuosa) 63, 84, 266, 267, 269 Light metaphor  128–9, 290 Likening. See Assimilation Livre: Chevalier errant as  248 n.95; de mort and de vie 81 n.100 Livre du Roy Modus et de la royne Ratio 101 n.16 Livy  120 n.82 Logic (logique): according to Deschamps 98, 106, 153; of the imagination 98; Narrative 177; Redefinition of 152 Long moyen âge 63 Love (amor, amour, caritas; see also Art of love, Desire, Womanizer): and affection  39, 49 n.98, 75, 273, 279; and age 31–2, 56; as amor sapiens 29, 65 n.46, 132 n.144; as amor simplex 65 n.46, 132 n.144; and apprenticeship x, 66; and arms 237–8, 239; Arthurian 268 n.169; Bad 131, 135, 149, 204, 268; Bar-room 120; Bestial 84–5, 287; Byways of (oubli, méchanceté, indifférence) 64; Carnal 24, 30, 31, 69, 79, 80, 249 n.8; Chaste (chastity) 9, 24, 27, 36, 37, 38 n.47, 40, 43, 49, 63,

346 INDEX 65 n.46, 69, 79 n.92, 81, 85, 88–9, 92, 100, 165, 185, 205, 211, 231, 259, 268, 273, 296, 298; and chivalry 230, 246; in Confort d’ami 129–30; Conjugal 39 n.49, 54–5, 62, 273, 279, 291; Constant 63, 123; contexts 222–3; Courtly 10, 14, 35, 44, 222; and courtoisie 35; and death and dying 62; debate 190; Definitions of 131, 249; de lonh 10; Description of 64, 249; Divine 186; disproportionné 88–9; dongereuse 88; and dubitabilia 191; Ennobling 74; Envy and 55, 241; Equality in 89; Erotic 85; Extramarital 54–5; Fatherly 252; as feminine noun 183 n.119; as first cause 236; Foolish (fole) 78, 256; in Froissart’s dits 229–30; in general 140; of God 44, 48; Good (bonne) 10, 13, 23–7, 36, 42, 49, 51–2, 55, 61, 64 n.41, 65, 68–71, 75, 78, 82–3, 86, 91–2, 108, 112, 124, 128, 129, 131, 133, 135, 136, 140, 148–9, 156, 161, 165, 170, 174, 179, 185, 195, 204, 205, 209, 211, 212, 223, 231, 232, 236, 237, 248, 259, 260, 268, 269, 279, 280, 285, 291, 294, 296; Green 174; and heart 240; in Heaven 80–2, 83 n.109, 141 n.8, 211; Hierarchy of 44, 240; and honor 80, 83, 92; by inclination 63, 104; Irrational 202–3, 287; Kinds of 10, 11, 38–9, 41–2, 47, 52, 79–80, 88, 101, 120, 128, 132–3, 140, 177, 179, 189, 229, 236, 239–41, 272, 279; as lust 13, 63, 69, 84, 163, 192 n.24; for Mary 230; Moderating influence of 287; Moral decline of 260; motif 232; and music 278–9; Nature’s 280; in Occitan tradition 9–10, 40, 48, 70, 296; par ouï-dire x, 55, 56 n.18, 115; as passage 243, 248; plots and modes of 272; Possessive 51, 169, 170; Providential 81; Psychology of (Medieval and early Modern) 64 n.41; Pure (Purus) 9, 67, 69–70, 77, 80, 82, 132 n.144, 236, 237, 248; Reasonable 171; Rejection of 91–2, 120–1, 133, 231, 273; Romance model of 62; scripts 128; Self-sufficient 70; Semantic range of 15; and separation 46, 54, 64 n.42, 83, 129, 189, 195; Sincere 205; Sinful 203; Sote 40, 140; Sovereignty (signorie, overlordship) in 89–91; Stability and instability of 51–2, 87, 139, 145–9; story 265; Sublime 81 n.100; Sufficient 205; Turtledove 214 n.86; Uncertainty of 27 n.15, 221–2,

248; Unstable 91–3; Villainous 171; Violent 214 n.86; Virtuous 69, 82, 89, 211; Visual melody in 284–5, 294; voluptuosus 120, 132 n.144, 199 n.41; as war and conquest 269; without climax 291; in youth 244 Lubricity and music  278 Lucas, Maistre  233 n.48 Lusignan, Serge  15 n.54, 264, 265 Lust: Old men’s  163; as vice 69, 84. 268 Lydgate, John: Reason and Sensuallyte  100 n.13 Lynch, Kathryn L.  188 n.3 Lyric (formes fixes): clusters  47–8, 116, 190; Debates in 190; Inserted 230, 231; Narrative wrapping of 45; as resources 45 Lyrical narrative poetry. See Dit Machaut, Guillaume de: as author  2, 33, 40 n.52, 130, 133, 158, 174–9, 194, 211 n.76, 264; as figure 2–6, 7, 9, 11, 21–2, 31–2, 40, 43, 51–2, 56–60, 62–3, 73 n.76, 79–93, 99, 101–5, 107, 112–26, 135, 136, 138–42, 154–62, 165, 168–71, 174–9, 180, 184, 185, 189–90, 193, 194, 196, 197, 198; as judge in Voir Dit 171, 189, 195–6; as model in Voir Dit 107, 145–9; Multiple roles of 189, 193 Alerion  11, 18, 28, 41–2, 47, 49, 50, 52, 56, 61, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69 n.60, 78 n.91, 82 n.106, 83, 86, 87–8, 91, 101–3, 124, 125, 129, 132–3, 145, 148 n.25, 159, 161 n.56, 171, 177, 189, 195, 199 n.39, 200, 202, 204, 205, 207, 210, 215, 216, 227, 236, 240, 263, 269, 284–5, 286, 295 Cerf blanc  18, 39 n.50, 183 Confort d’ami  10, 11, 17, 18, 22, 25, 27, 43–5, 48–9, 50, 52, 56, 67, 68, 69, 90 n.132, 91, 92, 98, 102, 126 n.104, 129–30, 131–2, 135, 137, 163, 165, 175 n.94, 178, 186, 188, 189, 192, 193, 198 n.37, 207 n.63, 214, 218, 222, 243, 254, 262, 267, 268, 272, 273, 285 Dit de la fleur de lis  18, 24 n.7, 173, 183 Dit de la harpe  18, 183, 294 Dit de la Marguerite  18, 214 n.85 Dit de la rose 18 Fontaine amoureuse (Morpheus)  9, 11, 18, 22, 40 n.51, 50, 51, 52–5, 56, 64, 66, 67, 82, 86, 87, 90 n.132, 91, 107,

INDEX 347

123, 125 n.102, 132, 140, 141, 169 n.78, 189, 192, 195, 223, 273, 282–3 Jugement Behaigne  x, 18, 28, 29–33, 34–5, 36, 37–8, 41, 42, 44, 61, 69, 74, 81 n.100, 82, 88, 91, 120, 131, 154, 157–8, 159, 160, 161, 164, 165, 166–7, 171, 177, 183, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196 n.32, 197, 198, 199, 200 n.45, 201–5, 206, 209–10, 226 n.24, 236, 258, 298 Jugement Navarre  x, 3, 4, 11, 18, 28, 33–8, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 49, 60, 68, 79, 86 n.119, 87, 88, 123, 129 n.127, 135, 136, 150, 152, 153, 154–67, 170, 177, 178, 180–1, 182 n.115, 184, 189, 190, 191, 192–5, 196–201, 202, 203–5, 206 n.59, 208, 210, 214 n.86, 215, 216 n.95, 226 n.211, 237, 254, 271, 274, 298 ‘Lay de plour’  81 n.100, 113 n.60, 201 Louange des dames  xi, 4 n.18, 47, 48, 49, 50, 56, 60–1, 68, 70–1, 77–8, 79 n.93, 80, 89, 101, 142, 172, 201 n.51, 210, 211, 248 n.96 Lyon  11, 28, 38–41, 47, 63, 85, 87, 132, 133, 148 n.25, 177, 189, 199 n.40, 214, 216, 236, 240, 241 Opera dubia  120 n.86 Other lyrics  21–2, 32 n.33, 40 n.51, 45–50, 51, 54–5, 61, 62, 64 n.42, 67–8, 69–70, 81 n.100, 82, 101, 118, 207 n.64 Prise d’Alexandrie  x, 18, 117 n.72, 175, 177 n.105, 189, 214–18, 222, 223, 226, 229, 252 n.114, 267, 273, 282 n.31, 298 Prologue  1, 2, 10, 12, 18, 22–3, 26, 41 n.54, 66, 100, 104, 106, 111, 116–17, 118, 120, 131, 132, 133–4, 152, 162, 169 n.80, 176, 183, 212–13, 214, 282 Remede de Fortune  1, 2, 3 n.16, 10, 12, 16, 18, 23–7, 28, 31, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 43–5, 47, 49, 50, 51–2, 53 n.7, 55, 60 n.28, 61–2, 66–7, 68, 69, 78, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 97, 100, 101, 103–5, 118, 124 n.97, 126 n.104, 128–9, 131, 136, 142–5, 147, 148, 149, 152, 163, 165, 171, 173 n.89, 176, 189, 199, 200, 207, 222, 225, 248, 268, 271, 279, 282, 284, 297, 298, 299 Vergier  10, 12, 18, 28–9, 30, 31, 33, 39, 40 n.51, 46, 69, 105, 120, 183,

189, 194, 200 n.45, 202, 204, 210, 228, 266 Voir Dit  ix, x, 1–6, 7, 8 n.32, 9, 10–12, 15, 16, 18, 22, 31–2, 40 n.51, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51–2, 55–93, 97, 99, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110–16, 118, 120–30, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138–42, 143, 145–9, 150, 152, 154, 156, 163, 167–8, 171–9, 180, 182, 183–4, 185–6, 187, 188, 189, 190, 193, 195–6, 197, 198–9, 203–13, 215, 218, 221, 222, 224, 226, 228, 231, 235, 241, 244, 249, 258, 259, 260, 263, 268, 271, 272, 273, 275–6, 282, 285 n.36, 290, 291, 293, 294, 297–9 Macrobius: Saturnalia  273 n.10; Somnium Scipionis 121 nn.88 and 90, 124; mentioned 123, 224, 270 n.176 Macrocosm 265 Madness in examples  155 n.48, 161 Magnanimity; of good love  195; and music 278 Malleability of poetic expression  166 Maniere: de dame 181; de fame 147, 180, 181, 186, 271; de fiction 249 n.96; d’home 181, 247, 271; de vieux 186 n.127 Manuscript (manuscripts; see also Anthology manuscripts): Alain de Lille’s  102 n.48; of Archiloge Sophie 100 n.12; Bern Burgerbibl. A 95 24 n.7; BNF fr. 143 265 n.152; BNF fr. 1508 265 n.157; BNF fr. 1584 47, 76 n.82, 128, 144 n.119; BNF fr. 1586 144 n.20; BNF fr. 22545–22546 47, 76 n.82; Chantilly Bibl. Condé 485 24 n.7; of Chevalier errant 249 n.100; Dresden Sächsische Landesbibliothek OC.66 (D) 264 n.155; of Echecs amoureux 264, 266, 267; of Echecs moralisés 99–100, 264, 267; Glossing in 109 n.44; Machaut’s 33, 44, 47, 144; of Ovide moralisé 106–7; of Prise d’Alexandrie 214 n.82; Venice Biblioteca Marciana FR.APP XXIII (V) 264 n.155 Margery Kempe  175–6, 177, 178, 181 n.112 Marginalia: to Evrart’s Echecs amoureux 99–100; in Lydgate’s Reason and Sensuallyte 100 n.13 Marie de Champagne  226 n.24 Marie de Clèves  110 Marie de France  225, 297 Marie de Giblet  215–16

348 INDEX Marriage: in Confort d’ami  43; in Froissart’s Meliador 31; in Echecs amoureux 269; in farce and nouvelle 31; in Fontaine amoureuse 54–55; in lyrics 49; for monetary gain 242 n.73 Martianus Capella: Commentary on  264; Marriage of Mercury and Philology 264, 270 Martineau, Anne  172 Masculinity, Guillaume’s  184 Masterpiece of art of poetry and prose 6–7, 109 Materia: propinqua 227; remota 130, 224, 227, 273, 287; remota and propinqua 109, 118, 126, 131, 134, 141, 150, 165 n.67, 224–5, 226, 228, 249, 266; rudis 109 Mathematics 222 Matiere: Amour’s  100; Fictitious ix Matthew of Vendôme: Ars versificatoria  108; mentioned 136 Maupeu, Philippe  229, 244 n.78 McGrady, Deborah  76 n.82, 141, 192 n.23, 231 nn.40–41 Mean (moyen) between extremes  151–2, 157, 159, 166, 205, 210, 236, 254 Measure (mesure), Musical: in French versification  280, 290; and harmony 291 Médisance. See Slander Meffait de cors. See Sexual intercourse Melancholy: and dorveille  282; in late medieval poetry 232 n.45, 242, 276; and love 30, 52, 148; source of weird oddities 262–3 Mélange  83, 261, 272, 297 Melodie (melodieuse): Aesthetic  xi, 275, 279, 283–96; in Chevalier errant 261–2; Diverse 13; in falconry 290–1; in Heaven 296; Moral 289, 296, 299; Oral and visual 284–7; as rage 286–7; as sense of harmony and musical proportions 275; Synaethetic 286, 291–6; Unheard 291; Universal 275, 287–91; in verse 274; Visual 294; in weaving 285–6, 292 Memory (remembrance; see also Souvenir): apensive, retentive, memoire 261–2; in Boethius 24 n.7, 60 n.28, 124 n.97, 148 n.26; in Latini’s Tresor 119; in Machaut’s rhetoric 100; in medieval French 124 n.98; in medieval grammar and rhetoric 113; in Voir Dit 112–13

Ménard, Philippe  153 Meneghetti, Maria Luisa  246, 261 Mercy (merci): Carnal  29, 30; honnête 24 n.7, 27, 36, 55, 67, 70, 74, 78; and hope 37, 44; as souffisance 73; villain 55; mentioned 54, 190 Messelaar, P. A.  90 n.131, 127 Mesure, Meanings of (see also Moderation, Measure) 274 Metamorphosis: Christine de Pizan’s  139, 180; Dané into laurel 185–6; Fictional and moral 184, 271; Gender 139, 180; Io 242; Mercury 271; Ovidian 147; Semantic 257; Ulysses’s men 179–80 Metaphor, Architectural  119; Simian 279–80 Mews, Constant  134 n.151, 206 n.57 Microcosm: Human  279; mentioned 13, 265 Midpoint: Mathematical  128; in the Remede 128–9; and ruling 128; in symmetry and specularity 128 n.123; in the traitié 128; in the Voir Dit 11, 55, 57, 128 Minnis, Alastair J.  127–8, 130, 136, 297 Minus provecti (provecta)  108, 109, 110, 263 Mirror for princes  43 Misandry (vituperes d’home)  34, 35, 159, 160, 164, 194, 201, 203–4, 213 Misogyny (vituperes de fames)  4, 34, 40, 68, 79, 84, 107, 135, 143, 159, 160, 164, 167, 181, 190, 194, 200, 203–4, 213, 254 Misunderstanding (descongnoissance) 256 Mode (see also Modus), Musical: Dorian  277; Frigian 278; Lydian 278, 295; Mixed Lydian 278 Rhetorical: Ambiguity as  229; Pedagogical 231, 263; Philosophical and scientific 131–3; Poetic and rhetorical 131, 133–7, 214; and subject matter 277–8; Trial 190; in Tresor amoureux 285 Model: Exchange  114–16; Love as 214; Lyric 62; Poetic 5, 6–9, 11, 100, 111; Romance 62; Voir Dit as 105–6 Moderation (mesure): in judgment  198; as social imperative 198 n.37 Modus (see also Mode, forma): agendi 207; collectivus (debate, argument for and against) 137, 190, 214, 227–8, 236, 252–3, 272, 276; descriptivus (descriptive) 131, 133,

INDEX 349

134–5, 136, 137, 139, 150, 206, 227, 228; diffinitivus (defining) 131–2, 139; digressivus (digressive) 131, 133, 135–6, 227, 228, 261, 272; divisivus (classificatory) 131, 132–3, 137, 139, 152, 270; exemplorum positivus (exemplary) 11, 97, 131, 133, 137, 139, 141, 154, 156, 177, 193, 241, 272; fictivus (fictive) 131, 133; improbativus (denying) 131, 133, 197, 241; narrationis (narrative) 189; operandi 176; poeticus (poetic) 131, 131–4; praeceptivus (docendi, preceptive) 136, 256, 263; probativus (affirming) 131, 133, 197, 241; transumptivus (metaphorical, allegoricus) 97, 131 , 133, 134, 136, 137, 147, 178, 180, 226, 270, 272 Modi tractandi. See Forma tractandi Molière 16 Molinet, Jean: Roman de la rose moralisé 228 n.27 Mollesse  146, 180, 199 n.40 Monologue, Interior  189 Monson, Don A.  64 n.42, 65 n.46, 77 Montage  ix, 45, 47, 122, 127, 130, 135, 136, 142, 153, 176, 222, 227, 261 n.142, 272, 290, 291, 295, 297 Moos, Peter von  15 n.57, 117, 119 n.80, 191, 192 Mora-Lebrun, Francine  182 n.115 Moralité (Morality): Aesthetic  xi, 278; and amour 242, 244; in art of poetry 264; Christian 244, 259; et hystore 274; in instruction 265; Religious 82, 255; in Tresor amoureux 236, 241; véritable 123, 139 Moralization: Context and scope of  266; of courtly love 222; by Toute Belle 112 Moral; conduct and music  277; pleasure 299 Mortensen, Daniel E.  197 Mouvance and midpoint  128 n.124 Mühlethaler, Jean-Claude  3 n.11 Mulder, Etty Martha  199 Multiculturalism and multisecularism 15–16, 184 Multiple interpretations  272 Music (musique): in all of nature  13; Angelic 287; and apprentice poets 280–2; artificiele 133–4, 280; and comfort 62, 276; in Deschamps 274; and education 280; and eloquence 278; Evrart de Conty’s knowledge of 265

n.159; harmonies 265; Human 13, 279; mondaine (of the spheres) 13, 279, 280, 289, 291–2; morale 285, 289; naturele 241, 274; and rethorique 235, 276; Universality of 274, 290, 291, 293; and versifying 13; mentioned 16, 117, 118, 120, 164, 222 Mutability  240, 244 Mutations: Fortune’s  45 n.70; as mue 41 n.57; Ovidian 138 Mystics  175 n.97 Naming as a fictional character: Agravain l’Orgueilleux  251; children 251; during a tournament 251 n.110; Esperance 129; on festive occasions 251 n.110; Helen (Thomas de Saluces’s illegitimate daughter) 251; Keu the Seneschal 251; Lancelot (Thomas de Saluces’s illegitimate son) 251 Narrative: in dits  230; Inserted 140; Mini47; in Voir Dit 229 Natural disorders and love: Epidemics  57, 135, 170, 177, 194; Seasonal changes 57; Weather (storms) 52, 57, 135, 141, 170, 171, 177; mentioned 230–1 Nature and nurture  252 Nature. See Maniere Neologism 265 Newels, Margarete  198 n.37 Newes, Virginia  60 Nicole de Margival: Dit de la panthère d’amour 126 Nobility: Degradation of  40 n.51; and good love 54; Kinds of 239–40; Toute Belle’s 65, 199 n.40 Nominalism and personification  239 Nouvet, Claire  287 Obermeier, Anita  47 n.87 Obscuring 136 Olson, Glending  277 Open questions. See Dubitabilia Oral instruction in Voir Dit 99–100 Order (ordonnance, ordre): in Alerion 102–3; in argument or debate 126; according to Brunetto Latini 126–7; in Chevalier errant 261–2; in Christine de Pizan 127; Chronological 128, 189; de ce (du) monde 234, 242, 245, 247, 254, 255, 260; in dress 172; in God’s creation 292; in human activity 273; of human microcosm 279; in manuscript anthologies 128; Natural and artificial

350 INDEX 103, 126; Poetic 261 n.142; in the rondeau 103; Social 261, 278; in the traitié 126–7; in the Tresor amoureux 235, 237, 240; as world unravels 138 Oresme, Nicolas: translation of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics  98, 221–2 Orgasm. See Delectacion Ornatus mundi  291 n.53 Oton de Grandson: and Machaut  84 n.110; mentioned 32 n.32, 113 n.60, 231 n.40 Outrage  49, 113 Overlordship (sovereignty, haussage, maitrise, signourie)  89–91, 155–6 Ovid: as authority  134, 267; Moralizations of 270; Metamorphoses 226; Remedia amoris 38–9 n.48, 78, 145; mentioned 7, 18, 109 n.44, 110, 122, 186, 224 Ovide moralisé  8 n.32, 17, 18, 106–7, 111, 122, 125, 134, 139, 141, 169 n.78, 185, 186–7, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 235, 241, 242, 248–9, 266, 270, 272, 287 Oxymoron, Human  64 Page, Christopher  14 n.54, 48, 103, 113 n.60, 279, 280 n.20, 281 Paien, Thomas  113–14, 139, 165, 179, 189, 275 Papal legate  217 Paradise (paradis): as coitus  83 n.109; Earthly 288; in Heaven 82, 288; in love 81 n.100, 83, 287, 288 Paris, Paulin  15, 84 n.110, 297 Paris, University of  262, 263 Paris et Vienne  31 n.29 Parkes, M. B.  150, 192 Parler vulgairement 230 Part (segment) in forma tractatus 127–8, 129 Partes orationis   193–6 Partonopeu de Blois 225 Parture. See Jeu-parti Pascal, Blaise: Pensées  151 n.37 Pastoureau, Michel  172, 251 n.110 Patron: and humility  90 n.132; intertexte 227; judgment 136–7 Patterson, Warner Forrest  169 Payenie  246, 250, 255, 257 Penser: and sens 117; Vilein 29, 39, 76, 81 n.100 Performance of Remede complainte  145 n.21 Periphrases 265 Peronne. See Toute Belle

Perseverance 104 Personifications: Abstenance  259; Abstinance contrainte 174, 184, 185 n.125; Ami 155, 171, 228; Amicicia 170 n.82; Amour (god of love, goddess of love, queen of love) 2, 7, 12, 22–3, 28–9, 32–3, 39, 52, 60, 75, 80, 89, 91–2, 100, 111, 120, 131, 144, 145, 147, 148, 156, 164, 170, 172, 173 n.89, 182 n.116, 183, 189, 194, 200 n.45, 202–3, 207, 209, 211, 213, 229 n.34, 233–7, 240, 241–2, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248 n.96, 253–4, 255, 257, 259, 266, 267, 270, 271; Antigenius (Antigamus) 53; Attemprance (Temperance) 151–2, 156–7, 158, 159, 194 n.28, 259; Avis 151, 183, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 256; Beau Mantien 235 n.56; Beau Parler 235 n.56; Beauté 32–3, 202–3, 234, 235 n.56, 257; Bel Acueil 184; Bonneurté 33–8, 60, 86 n.119, 123, 129 n.127, 136, 151, 154–5, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163 n.60, 166, 167, 177, 189, 190, 192, 194, 196–7, 199–201, 204; Bonté 235 n.56; Celer 29, 194 n.28; Charité 156, 259; Chastity (Chasteté) 180, 259, 268; Compaignie 202–3; Connaissance 12, 195, 196, 198, 232, 233–6, 242, 243, 244–8, 249 n.96, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 269; Contenance 259; Courtoisie 13, 235 n.56; Cremeur 235 n.56; Cruauté 29; Cupido 54 n.10, 270, 279, 287; Dangier 88, 90, 234; Death 200 n.45, 203; Deduit 54 n.10, 63, 183, 270; Desire (Desir) 24–5, 29, 55, 58, 124, 144, 194 n.28, 235 n.56, 283; Doubtance de mespresure 29; Douceur 257; Doulz Regard 235 n.56; Dous Penser 117, 285; Dous Plaisir 194 n.28; Entendement 232; Esperance-Espoir 2–3, 12, 24, 29, 37 n.43, 43–4, 51–3, 55, 57 n.22, 58–60, 64 n.41, 66, 67 n.53, 74, 104, 111 n.54, 117, 118, 124, 128–9, 136, 163 n.60, 171, 179, 182, 189, 194 n.28, 204 n.56, 205, 235 n.56, 245, 257–8, 259, 283, 298; Estableté 207; Faux Semblant 85, 87, 174, 211, 228, 243; Fortitude 259; Fortune (Blind Fortune) 24, 25, 32, 35–6, 42, 44–5, 47, 70, 82, 97, 101, 142–9, 150, 193, 199, 200, 201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 213, 224 n.16, 232, 241, 245, 246, 248–9 n.96, 250, 253, 254–5, 256, 257, 259, 260, 273–4; Foy 161,

INDEX 351

162, 163 n.60, 166–7, 245, 257–8, 259, 268; Franchise 34, 157, 160, 194 n.28, 200, 216 n.95; Genius 53 n.10, 83 n.109, 228, 229; Genoa (Gennez) 249 n.96; Grace 29, 194 n.28, 234; Hardement 235 n.56; Honnesté 34; Honneur 76, 77, 235 n.56; Honte 38, 57 n.22, 64 n.40, 235 n.56; Humilité 235 n.56; Hymenaeus 53, 270, 279; Intelligence 247; Jalousie 41 n.55; Jealous Husband 245; Jeunesse (Joinece, Juenesce) 32–3, 111, 115, 194, 202–3, 230, 258, 290; Jocus (Sport) 53, 270, 279; Joye 52, 290; Justice 259, 268; Largess 290; Loyauté 29, 32–3, 39, 183, 202–3, 209, 234, 235 n.56, 243 n.77; Maintieng 183; Malebouche 41 n.55, 181, 182 n.115, 183 n.119, 184, 185 n.125; Maniere 235 n.56; Médisance 81 n.100; Mercy 58; Mesure 87, 160, 161, 162, 166, 192, 195, 196, 198, 200–1, 274, 282, 289; Nature 2, 22, 24, 42, 73–4, 91 n.131, 100, 104, 116–17, 132 n.145, 176, 201, 212–13, 228, 229 n.34, 234, 252, 266, 267; Oiseuse 257 n.130; Pais 37; Penser 194 n.28, 235 n.56; Peur 38, 57 n.22, 182; Philosophie 124 n.97, 229–30; Pitié 29, 194 n.28; Plaisance 117; Plaisir 257; Prudence 160, 162, 243, 247, 248 n.43, 259; Raison (Reason) 24, 26, 28–30, 31, 32–3, 42, 52, 60 n.28, 120, 151–2, 166, 167, 192, 194, 195, 196, 198, 201–3, 205, 209, 212, 228, 232, 234, 236, 243 n.77, 247–8, 249, 255, 256, 258, 260, 268–9, 271, 289; Renown (Loz) 289; Scens 183; Seürté 35, 36; Sobriety 269; Souffisance 243 n.77; Souvenir 183, 194 n.28, 285; Travail 245, 257, 258; la Vieille 228; Vieillesse 247, 258; Virginity (Virginité) 259; Vouloir (Voulenté, Will) 29, 194 n.28, 247; Worthies 260 Persuasion  98, 221, 222 Petrarch: Griselda 250 Philippe de Novarre: Quatre âges de l’homme  261 n.141 Philogyny  4, 135 Pickens, Rupert T.  41 n.54 Picoche, Jacqueline  91 Pierre de Lusignan  175, 189, 214–17, 223, 229 Pierreville, Corinne  226 n.23 Piety, Filial  252 Pilgrim staff in Rose 87

Pitié xi Pity and music  278 Plague: in France  230, 298; in Jugement Navarre 194, 199 Plaisance  16, 22–3, 26, 37, 45, 55, 63, 70, 74, 100, 119, 120, 123, 124, 131, 132, 152, 162, 269, 276 Please and instruct (delectare et prodesse) 133, 273 Plots, Potential: in examples  141; in lyrics 45 Plumley, Yolanda  7–8, 46 n.76, 113 n.62, 223 n.11, 280 n.20, 281 n.27 Poesis 108 Poet: Apprentice  10, 62; Latin x; lover 3; Occitan 296; Self-taught 6–10, 110 n.50; Singing 280–2 Poete: Vernacular  x, xi; mentioned 130 Poetics: of contraires choses and dubitabilia  228; of ritual 176–7 Poetries: of examples  106–7, 111, 123, 134, 138, 139, 154, 162; Ovide moralisé as 106–7 Poetry and music  277–80 Point (punctum, points to adjudicate). See Articles of judgment, Poirion, Daniel  12, 65 n.47 Polytheism and subjectivity  89 Pope: Schismatic  242; mentioned 215, 254 Portrait. See Image Porveance (foresight)  119 n.80 Possamaï-Perez, Marylène  270 Precious stones (see also Treasure-trove) as virtues  71, 294 Pregnancy: Dido’s 162; of wife in Provence 161, 162 Pre-Text 224–5 Pride as sin  163 Probability in molding examples  151 Probra 102 Procreation  162, 270, 280 Progress of Chevalier errant  255, 256, 257, 259 Prooftext 149 Proportions: in amorous harmony  290; and harmony 291; in nature 279, 284–5, 291–2, 293–4; in music of the spheres 280; in versification 278 Prose composition  97, 111 Prose Lancelot  41 n.54, 107, 141 Prose Tristan 297–8 Prosimetrum: Chevalier errant as  244–5, 260; Voir Dit as 45, 110

352 INDEX Providence, Divine  254–5 Prudence 248 Psychology, Medieval faculty  153 Psychomachia in Voir Dit 57–8 Puy 278 Quadrivium  6, 108, 109 n.44, 263, 264, 265, 280 Quandary: in Chevalier errant  252, 257; in Fontaine amoureuse 55; in late medieval dits 3, 88, 125–6; in Machaut’s art of poetry 177, 222; in Tresor amoureux 252; in Voir Dit 11, 79, 86 Quest: Arthurian  63; for connaissance 13, 200, 250 n.105; and errances 245–6, 254 n.118, 257, 259; in Froissart’s Meliador 230; for Golden Fleece 271; Love 63, 254; for ordonnance du monde 254; Semantic metamorphosis in 257 Queste del saint graal  228, 255, 259, 270, 287 n.40, 294 n.61 Question for Decision (iudicii quaestio; see also Articles of judgment): and point’s to adjudicate  197; Topical 197 Radolphus de Longo Campo: Commentary on Anticlaudianus  266 n.163 Rage. See Melodie Raimondi, Gianmario  264 Rape  75, 182, 185, 215 n.94 Reader (readers; see also Audience): of anthology manuscripts  133; Clerical and lay 242–3; considers and construes 224; and context 183; Contradictory 173; Feminine 84 n.110; Hasty 121; Hierarchy of 213–14; Implied 264; Individual 243; and interpretation 43, 47, 79–80, 89, 141, 149, 228–9; as judge 196, 228, 237–8; Knowledgeable 280–1; Medieval 223; Modern 164; Multiple 223; of musical notation 280–2; reception 165; Robertsonian 84 n.110; and self-reflection 47–8; Sens of 84; Solitary 277; Subtle 84, 124, 228; Thomas de Saluces as 245 Readings: Contradictory  165, 172; Intertextual 223–5, 229; Multiple 186, 228; Other 83–91; as self-examination 229 Reamacion 51 Rebellion in France  121, 123 Rebuttal  156 n.51, 193, 211, 212 Reception of medieval music  276

Reconfiguration: of autobiographical material  106; in debate 158, 160, 194; of examples 111, 118, 141, 145–9, 153, 154, 157, 171, 241; by rewriting 165 Reconsideration: in debate  158; of experience 240; of Navarre examples 154–64; Subtle 167–8; Topical 162 Recontextualization: in Chevalier errant 254; in Machaut 254; in Roman de la rose 227; in Tresor amoureux 254 Recreation, Nature’s  295 Recueil. See Anthology manuscripts Redite. See Citation Refrain studies  105 n.25 Refutation of objection  165 Regensburg Love Songs  2 n.10 Registreur. See Secretary Règles de la seconde rhétorique 106 Reinvigoration (see also Resuscitation): in Tresor amoureux  235; mentioned 45 Reliquary in Rose 87 Remigius 270–1 Reno, Christine  84 Repentence 163 Reprise. See Citation Rés d’Alemaigne 293 Resource (see also Source): Fictions as 118; in poetries 10; in romances 248; Source as 223–5 Resuscitation (see also Reinvigoration) 32, 64, 66, 81 n.100, 107, 123 Rethorique: as French versification  235; Premier 222, 231; Seconde 6, 7, 9, 100, 102 n.18, 105, 116, 133, 134, 136; mentioned 16, 117, 118, 120, 164, 222, 241 Reverdie 288 Rewriting: Boethius  225; Kinds of 223 n.10; Poetic 161 n.56, 168; Rhetorical tradition of 275; in schools 116; sources 223–5, 272; Toute Belle’s 224 Rhetoric (see also Rethorique): Deliberative  195; Juridical 193, 195; and memory 113; and narrative composition 225; and poetry 98 Richard de Fournival (see also De Vetula): Bestiaire d’amour and response  112 n.55; mentioned 188 n.3 Ridewell, John: Fulgentius metaforalis 134, 170 n.82; mentioned 188 n.3 Riffaterre, Michael  223–4, 227, 243, 271 Riote 228 Ritual: consistency  179; and emotion 176 n.102; as Erlebnismuster 178;

INDEX 353

Exemplary 176; and order 127; Poetics of 176–7 Robert d’Estouteville  120 Rollo, David  182 n.115 Roman de Cardenois 47 Roman de Lancelot  228 n.29 Roman de la rose: Debate on  79 n.92, 165, 191; Evrart de Conty’s rewriting of 8, 267 n.167, 273; on friendship 170 n.82; Guillaume de Lorris 10, 27–8, 121, 227, 228, 267, 286, 287–8; Jean de Meun 30, 32, 39, 60 n.28, 64, 83 n.109, 85, 87, 122, 123, 130, 155, 182, 184, 202, 222, 223 n.11, 227–9, 258, 260, 266, 267, 268 n.170, 272, 286–8; Montage in 130; mentioned ix-x, 4 n.19, 7, 17, 18, 33, 63, 80, 84, 88 n.126, 90, 107, 127, 141, 156 n.49, 160, 171, 181, 185 n.125, 199 n.40, 207, 210, 211, 216, 224, 241, 242, 247, 249, 257 n.130, 259, 266, 268–9, 271–2, 279 Roman de Hem  251 n.110 Roman: as romance  126; as traitié 130 Roman de Thèbes 188 Roman de Troyle 85 Romance and traitié 248 Romans d’antiquité 225 Roques, Gilles  196 Rose, Red  71–2 Rosenberg, Samuel N.  105 n.25 Roy, Bruno  99, 145 n.21, 265 Rubric. See Branch Rudesce 107 Rudiments of poetic art  105 Rudis (rude): materia  108; pupil 107–9, 280–1 Ruhe, Ernstpeter  63 n.35 Ruling. See Midpoint Rumor, False  208–9 Saint Alexis  128 n.124 Salutation: in letters  90–1; with tu and /or vous 90 n.132, 111 n.54 Salvation 259 Saulnier, Chantal de  101 n.16 Schilperoort, Johanna Catharina  231 n.40 Schism  230, 242, 263, 298 Schlumbohm, Christa  193–4, 196 n.32 Schmolke-Hasselmann, Beate  252 n.113 School, Machaut’s  229, 263 Schwarze, Michael  230 n.37, 273 Science  xi, 264 Script. See Erlebnismuster Scudéry, Madame de: Clélie  63–4, 176

Second Rhetoric. See under Rethorique, Seconde Secretary (greffier, antigraphe, registreur) for poets  11 n.43, 192, 234 Seduction  69 n.60, 182 Segre, Cesare  229, 246 n.86 Self-flagellation  21–2, 30, 42, 51 Self-knowledge  142, 243–4, 247, 252 n.114, 256, 259–60, 267 Semantic range  15, 44 n.69, 257, 265 n.160 Sens (scens, san): commun 117; en chambre, salle, and taverne 117, 120, 133 n.45; Machaut’s 22–3, 104, 152, 162; and modes 131; Marie de Champagne’s 226 n.24; and penser 117; Poetic 104, 106, 116–24, 126; Poet’s 295; Reader’s 84; Toute Belle’s 120; in Voir Dit 129 n.129; mentioned 16, 227 Senses. See Faculty Sentement (de sentement)  1, 26, 66, 92, 101, 110 n.51, 118, 119 n.80, 142, 156, 157, 174, 184, 202 n.51, 205, 237 Separation. See Love Sermon: Catechistic  244, 246–7; Examples in 163 Settings, Architectural and topographical 234 Seurplus 83 Sexual intercourse (factum, fait accompli, meffait de cors; see also delectation)  25, 27, 31, 40, 78, 79, 83, 84–5, 86, 146, 268; of personifications 184 Sheridan, James J.  53 Sieper, Ernst  264, 265, 269 Signature, Poetic (griffe)  130–1, 214 Silence: on fictional truths  125, 242, 263; and Toute Belle 177; Women in love 46 Simpleton, Guillaume as  226 n.23 Simulacres 251 Simulations, Artist’s  102 n.18 Sincerity (see also Sentement)  174, 203, 211, 212 Singularity  174–5, 176, 177, 240 Sins (pechiés): Biblical  82; in Confort d’ami 129–30; in love 31, 32, 33, 40, 85; Seven deadly 256; and Toute Belle 211; versus theological virtues 113 Slander (gossip, médisance)  79, 207 n.64, 209, 213 Sobriety 269 Solterer. Helen  112 n.55 Somnium (songe). See Dream

354 INDEX Sondry: ages and landes 14, 49; usages 13–18, 31, 40, 177 Sone de Nansay  65 n.46 Songe de la pucelle  31 n.29 Songe vert  31 n.29, 32 n.34, 173 n.89, 181, 183 n.118 Souche. See Stump Souffisance  24, 26, 27, 36, 37, 42, 44, 51, 55, 70, 73, 74, 77, 78, 82, 100, 169 Source (Antecedents; see also Resource): of Chevalier errant  266; Evrart’s 266; Imbedded 45; Machaut’s 5, 215 n.91; of medieval writers 223; Secondary 241; Vernacular 263 Souvenir  45, 100 Sovereignty. See Overlordship Spearing, A. C.  175–6, 177, 181 n.112 Special (especialité, species; see also General): descriptions  132–3, 134; and fortune 147; knowledge 125; in love 140, 144 Specularity. See Midpoint, Spinosa, Giasinta  291 n.53 Stability (estableté): in love  68, 89, 91, 207; Virginal 185 Stakel, Susan  279–80 Stendhal: Le Rouge et le noir 160 Stiennon, Jacques  287 n.39 Strubel, Armand  101 n.16, 228 n.28, 229, 231 n.40, 233 Stump (souche), Guillaume  as 75, 77, 107 Subjectivity: Christine de Pizan’s  230 n.39; Guillaume’s and Toute Belle’s 178; Individual 89, 230 Sublimation (see also Abstinence)  27, 81 n.100, 131, 132, 280 Subtle (subtlety): allegory  124, 187, 271; art de la forme 127; and art of poetry 203; Connaissance’s 234; in contraires choses 186; dream 121, 124–6; examples 139, 167–8, 179; Excessive 262; fiction 241; and forma tractandi 136; French poetry 8, 111, 171; green 172; integumenz aus poetes 168; invention 97–8; medieval poetry 92, 110, 124, 270; modes 9, 131; Poetic 227; poetry 83; poetry in the Voir Dit 97, 112, 116, 120, 145, 169–70, 222; reading 84, 108 n.40; reconfiguration 167–8; speech 98; understanding (soutil entendement) 156 Suffering: Cause of  193, 194, 203; Degree of 33, 154, 157, 194, 198, 201–3; Human 224–5 n.16; in love 41; Psychology of 36

Suicide: Châteleine de Vergi’s  162; Dido’s 162 Sumptuary laws  199 Surplus (see also Sexual intercourse) and separation 83 Sweetness (douceur, suavitas)  70, 97, 111, 293, 295 Swift, Helen J.  38 n.45, 222, 223 n.11, 272 Syllepsis  181, 182 n.115, 183, 257 n.132 Symmetry. See Midpoint Synaesthetic: experience  284, 287 n.40; grail 294 n.61; poetry 13, 111 Szkilnik, Michelle  119 n.82, 248 n.95 Tabard, Laëtitia  176 Talent  103–4, 106, 111, 120 Taverne  117, 120, 169 n.80, 287, 288 Taylor, Jane H. M.  120 n.85, 158 n.52, 162, 190, 299 Témoignage 215 Temperance (actrampence)  248, 269 Temptation and morality  75 n.80 Tendre sur: estime  63, 65, 148; inclination 63; reconnaissance 63–4 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord: ‘Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’  240; mentioned 241 Tensos 11 Test: of Christians  250, 260; as Erlebnismuster 260; of friend or lord 256; of Griselda 250–1 Theology 243 Thomas d’Angleterre: Tristan et Iseut 225 Thomas de Saluces: Chevalier errant 12, 17, 30, 63, 164, 182 n.116, 183 n.118, 229, 239, 243, 244–63, 265, 266, 267, 269, 272, 273–4, 298 Tilliette, Jean-Yves  150 Title 297 Topical, Exploration of the  299 Topos. See Common place Tournaments and love  38 n.47, 87 n.121, 182 Tous voirs ne sont pas biaus a dire 85, 125, 171, 174, 242, 263 Toute belle (every beautiful woman) 3, 5, 73, 132, 133 n.145, 206, 213, 236 Toute Belle: as autodidact  6–10; on beauty 276; her dream 123–4; and endoxon 199 n.38; and good love 68–74, 79–93, 101–5, 174–9, 190, 195; knowledge of musical notation 112, 116, 276; as model 221; her nobility 207; portrait (ymage) 121–2, 189; her

INDEX 355

progress 5–6, 99, 105, 107–8, 110–12, 116, 136, 138–40, 142, 165, 210, 221, 223; as reader 190–1, 228; Relatives and acquaintances of 74, 189, 209; siren song 145; as Socrates 186, 256; Stability of 89, 145–9, 168–71, 186; Virtuous 61–2, 89, 118, 167; mentioned x, 1, 3–6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 22, 31–2, 41 n.56, 50, 51–2, 56, 58, 63, 133, 154, 184, 189, 206, 222, 230–1, 247, 275 Trachsler, Richard  181, 222 n.8, 246, 248 n.95, 249 n.99, 251, 257, 260 Traitié  126–34, 135–6, 236, 248 n.95, 261 n.142, 289 Translatio studii  263, 264 Translation: from Latin to French  98, 265; movement 97–8, 263, 266 Transmission of Latin learning  263, 264 Treasure-trove (tresor): Key to  71–2, 82, 87; Toute Belle’s 71–4, 75, 82, 87; in Tresor amoureux 234 Tresmontainne (polar star)  9, 52, 71, 290 Tresor amoureux  12, 17, 22 n.4, 38 n.47, 128 n.124, 191–2, 229, 233–44, 246, 247, 248, 250 n.104, 251 n.111, 256, 259, 261, 263, 267, 298 Trial (proces)  160, 197 Trivium  6, 108, 264, 265, 280 Troubadours and trouvères 225 Truth (see also Fiction): Ambiguity of  263; Danger (peril) of telling 167–8, 171 n.83, 226–7; and falsehood/ fiction ix, 3, 10, 16–17, 54, 83, 88, 98, 106, 125, 139, 142, 168, 249, 263, 297, 298; Inconvenient 258, 298; Individual 141–2, 230; Learned 272; Machaut’s 80; Moral 225; Narrator’s 215; Religious 256; for twelfth- and thirteenth-century authors 297–8; Toute Belle’s 142 Turbulence, Emotional  52–60, 299; of the times 230 Tuve, Rosemond  228 n.28 Uncertainty motif  195, 217–8, 221, 230, 234, 235, 240, 248, 263 Unique excellence  133 n.145, 176, 291 Unité (equality) in love  89–91, 156 University: learning and court  264; subjects 265 Unliklynesse: Chaucer’s  21; Machaut’s 21–2, 65, 169 Van den Abeele, Baudouin  41 n.57, 101 n.16

Vapors  262 n.146 Vengeance and music  278 Venus’s cloud. See Cloud Verdure as a person’s vigueur  173 n.88 Verdict. See Judgment Vergil: Aeneid  6, 109 n.44, 151 n.39, 162; mentioned 18 Verisimilitude 152 Via: racionis 267; sensualitatis 267 Vice (vice, vitium): in character  42, 236; in love 31, 32, 33, 40, 69, 81, 85, 174; in poetry 4, 7, 235; Women’s 203 Victorin, Patricia  172 Vigor and love  60–1 Villa, Renzo  250 Villain (vilonnie, villenie, Villein) 4, 31, 39, 53, 63, 69, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 110, 117, 163 Villon, François: Lais  233 n.52; Testament 288; mentioned ix, 41 n.54, 120 Vincent de Beauvais  227 Violence, Male  155, 159; Masochistic and sadistic 161; Polypheme’s 169; Selfinflicted 21–2; Wife’s 155–6 Virago  147, 151 n.37, 181, 182, 183 Virginity: Dané’s  186; and Diana 269; Toute Belle’s 185 Virtue (vertu, virtus): afflebie 61–2; Beauty of 73; in body 286; in Boethius 131; Capital 256–7; Cardinal 254; Chevalier errant’s 257; Devil’s 15; Diana’s 269; Etymology of 167; God-given 35, 146; in good women 204; humilité 90; Innate 199; Intellectual 261–2; Kinds of 277–80; Lack of (mollesse) 30, 52, 146; in love 51, 69; of music 277; Natural 160; Theological 24, 25, 163, 248, 254, 256, 259 Viscount of Turenne  217 Visio. See Dream Vita. See Life Vitz, Evelyn Birge  175 Vituperation (see also Misandry, Misogyny) 133 Vivre seculerement  42, 101–2, 185, 269 Voices: Autobiographical  175; Male and/ or female 46, 47, 52 n.6, 56, 69, 172 Voir dire: apertement  227, 228; covertement 227, 228; en partie 227; in poetry 98; mentioned 263, 297, 299 Wace: Roman de Brut  38 n.47, 40, 268 n.9 War (strife): in the Chevalier errant 253, 254, 260, 263; in Echecs amoureux 269;

356 INDEX in France 121, 123, 135, 230; in the Voir Dit 57, 141, 230–1 Ward, John O.  109 n.44 Ward, Marvin James  245, 251, 257 n.134 Wax (cire): Configuration and reconfiguration of  154, 178; in Geoffrey’s Poetria nova 153; matiere 215; as metaphor for invention 149, 152–3, 164–7; as mind (ingenium) 150; Misshapen 174; nose 138, 150, 174; in Roman de la rose 227 Weakness, Christian  250 Wenceslas de Brabant  47 n.82, 122 n.92, 230 Wheel of Fortune  82, 97, 143–4, 145, 146, 149, 150, 158 n.52 Widowhood. See under Love Wilkins, Nigel  282 n.29 Willard, Charity Cannon  110 n.50 Wimsatt, James I.  84 n.110

Window motif  76 Winkelmann, J. H.  246 n.83 Wolfzettel, Friedrich  114 n.63, 143, 222, 272, 273 Womanizer: as busybody lover (commere) 63, 85, 121 n.90; in Rose 63, 121 n.90 Woods, Marjorie Curry  102 n.18, 109 n.44, 110 n.48, 135, 136 n.159, 193 n.27 Worship 176 Wrapping of lyric and narrative  45 Ymagines Fulgencii  134, 170 n.82 Ysaïe le triste 56 Zeeman, Nicolette  1, 67, 108 n.40, 213 Zink, Michel  14 n.53, 21, 163 n.61, 178, 230, 232 Ziolkowski, Jan M.  15 n.54, 136, 150 n.52 Zumthor, Paul  45, 87, 175

Already Published 1.  Postcolonial Fictions in the ‘Roman de Perceforest’: Cultural Identities and Hybridities, Sylvia Huot 2.  A Discourse for the Holy Grail in Old French Romance, Ben Ramm 3.  Fashion in Medieval France, Sarah-Grace Heller 4.  Christine de Pizan’s Changing Opinion: A Quest for Certainty in the Midst of Chaos, Douglas Kelly 5.  Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, eds Eglal Doss-Quinby, Roberta L. Krueger, E. Jane Burns 6.  The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred, Andrew Cowell 7.  Logic and Humour in the Fabliaux: An Essay in Applied Narratology, Roy J. Pearcy 8.  Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci, Tony Hunt 9.  Philippe de Vigneulles and the Art of Prose Translation, Catherine M. Jones 10.  Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song, Helen Dell 11.  Chartier in Europe, eds Emma Cayley, Ashby Kinch 12.  Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old French Hagiography, Emma Campbell 13.  Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France, eds Rebecca Dixon, Finn E. Sinclair with Adrian Armstrong, Sylvia Huot, Sarah Kay 14.  The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: A Critical Edition, Ruth Harvey, Linda Paterson 15.  Old French Narrative Cycles: Heroism between Ethics and Morality, Luke Sunderland 16.  The Cultural and Political Legacy of Anne de Bretagne: Negotiating Convention in Books and Documents, ed. Cynthia J. Brown 17.  Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France, Katherine Kong 18.  The Old French Lays of Ignaure, Oiselet and Amours, eds Glyn S. Burgess, Leslie C. Brook 19.  Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes, Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginie Greene, Sarah Kay, Sharon Kinoshita, Peggy McCracken 20.  Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry, Julie Singer 21. Partonopeus de Blois: Romance in the Making, Penny Eley 22.  Illuminating the Roman d’Alexandre: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264: The Manuscript as Monument, Mark Cruse 23.  The Conte du Graal Cycle: Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, the Continuations, and French Arthurian Romance, Thomas Hinton 24.  Marie de France: A Critical Companion, Sharon Kinoshita, Peggy McCracken 25.  Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature: Renewal and Utopia, Rima Devereaux

26.  Authorship and First-Person Allegory in Late Medieval France and England, Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath 27.  Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance, ed. Philip John Usher, Isabelle Fernbach 28.  Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, eds Daniel E. O’Sullivan, Laurie Shepard 29.  Violence and the Writing of History in the Medieval Francophone World, eds Noah D. Guynn, Zrinka Stahuljak 30.  The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry, Jennifer Saltzstein 31.  Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du Monde: Narrative Voice, Language and Diversity, Simon Gaunt 32.  The Pèlerinage Allegories of Guillaume de Deguileville: Tradition, Authority and Influence, eds Marco Nievergelt, Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath 33.  Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book, Jane H. M. Taylor 34.  Unsettling Montaigne: Poetics, Ethics and Affect in the Essais and Other Writings, Elizabeth Guild

“A milestone in Machaut studies and in late-medieval French literature in general. Machaut, already considered the seminal figure in late-medieval poetics and music, here comes across in these respects more clearly than ever. Kelly also further contextualises him within what we might call the authorial ‘apprenticeship tradition’ of Boethius, the Roman de la Rose, Dante, and later Gower,Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan. The fruit of one of the field’s most distinguished scholars today.” NADIA MARGOLIS, MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE

DOUGLAS KELLY is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Cover illustration: ‘Poet and apprentice’. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 22545, f.157v. C OVER DESIGN: SIMON LOXLEY

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

Truth, Fiction and Poetic Craft

DOUGLAS KELLY

Guillaume de Machaut was celebrated in the later Middle Ages as a supreme poet and composer, and accordingly, his poetry was recommended as a model for aspiring poets. In his Voir Dit, Toute Belle, a young, aspiring poet, convinces the Machaut figure to mentor her. This volume examines Toute Belle as she masters Machaut’s dual arts of poetry and love, focusing on her successful apprenticeship in these arts; it also provides a thorough review of Machaut’s art of love and art of poetry in his dits and lyricism, and the previous scholarship on these topics. It goes on to treat Machaut’s legacy among poets who, like Toute Belle, adapted his poetic craft in new and original ways. A concluding analysis of melodie identifies the synaesthetic pleasure that late medieval poets, including Machaut, offer their readers.

MACHAUT AND THE MEDIEVAL APPRENTICESHIP TRADITION

Gallica

MACHAUT AND THE MEDIEVAL APPRENTICESHIP TRADITION

DOUGLAS KELLY