GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT: LYRIC POET

Abstract

IT has unfortunately become the fashion to condemn the poems of the fourteenth-century versifiers without considering them from any viewpoint but that of the twentieth century. A glance into any standard history of French literature will confirm this opinion. The most that anyone will normally say for the Ballades of Machaut or Deschamps is that they are important for the history of the development of this and kindred forms. Style is usually not considered except so far as it concerns the use of allegory or mythological figures, and if it is considered we are restricted to a general statement such as: in comparison with his predecessors he shows progress the use of learned language and allusions, which he applies, albeit at second hand, to lyric poetry.I However true this may be, it is by no means the whole story, and if personal feelings rarely intrude this art for art's sake, at any rate poetry of a rare elegance, and even beauty, is frequently to be found. It is unnecessary to read farther than the oft-quoted 'Blanche com lys, plus que rose vermeille' (Chich2 i, LXXXII) to realize this, for this piece is quite typical of Machaut's shorter lyric poems. An artificial poet is the criticism most often applied to Machaut.3 In a way it is a compliment, since it reveals how full of ingenuities his works are, and even though many of these ingenuities may appear puerile to the twentieth-century mind, they were indispensable to the poetry-loving nobles of the fourteenth century. Moreover, if we look beyond the superficialities of this poetry we are sometimes led into a dream world of unimagined beauty, whose tranquillity and enchantment nothing is allowed to disturb. The artifices of the 'Roman de la Rose', so beloved by fourteenth-century poets, become the setting for the lover's plaint or adulation. Of course, poetical accomplishment the fourteenth century was not measured by the criteria of present-day criticism, namely originality of theme, emotional intensity, vivid imagery and the like, but by perfection technique. The name rhetorique, applied to