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Article Excerpt
Li poete qui jadis furent,
Qui eulz et le siecle decurent, Dieu le creatour mescrioient Et les creatures crioient, Se fesoient au pueple acroire Tel fiction qui pas n'ert voire. (1)
(Ovide Moralise)
Much critical attention in the past quarter-century has focused on Guillaume de Machaut's expansion and redefinition of vernacular authorship, as reflected both in the thematization of poetic composition and authorial identity in his corpus of dits amoureux, and in the production of codices devoted to the orderly presentation of his collected works. (2) Machaut, in fact, was apparently the first vernacular French poet to receive the designation "poete." (3) The term is used by Eustache Deschamps in his ballade on the refrain "Queje soie vostre loyal ami" [That I might be your loyal friend], in which he offers his services to "Dame Peronne," the heroine of Machaut's Voir Dit, after the great poet's death in 1377. (4) Deschamps applies two terms to his illustrious predecessor in this ballade, identifying Machaut as "Noble poete et faiseur renomme" [noble poet and renowned versifier] (v. 3). As both Ardis Butterfield and Deborah McGrady have observed, Deschamps' use of the terms "poete" and "faiseur" allows him to distinguish complementary aspects of Machaut's literary output. (5) And in so doing, Deschamps alludes not only to different facets of Machaut's authorial identity, but also to different modes of reading that his diverse oeuvre calls for.
In the late fourteenth century, a poete is someone who, like the Latin auctores, uses mythological or allegorical fictions in a systematic way to express hidden meanings, while a faiseur is someone who creates verses that might be very beautiful and very intricate, but do not have the same hermeneutic complexity or intellectual richness. (6) Deschamps himself uses the word "poeterie" in this sense in his ballade on the refrain "Grant translateur, noble Geoffrey Chaucer" [Great translator, noble Geoffrey Chaucer], thought to have been written c. 1377-80, in which he addresses the English poet as "Ovides grans en ta poeterie" [Ovid, great in your poetry]. (7) And in yet another ballade, in which he laments the loss of a book containing his own verses, Deschamps places himself in a group including Ovid, Socrates, Seneca, Virgil, and Orpheus, applying the terms "poeterie" and "rhetorique" to their shared labors. (8) In the Art de dictier, however, he refers to the composers of forme fixe lyric as "faiseurs." (9) If Deschamps claimed "poeterie" as his own domaine, it was almost certainly because of the Miroir de mariage, a masterful orchestration of different forms of allegory and exegesis, and perhaps also because of the "poetic" content of certain ballades dealing with mythological themes. (10) As for Machaut, his many lyric compositions would qualify him as "faiseur renomme," but it can only be his use of mythological fictions and his elaborate reworkings of courtly allegory--his masterful exploitation of a literary tradition whose crowning achievements include the Ovide Moralise and the Roman de la Rose--that earned him the epithet "poete." Machaut's narrative dits--not merely verse, but "poetrie"--required the same kinds of close and careful reading that would be afforded to texts like the Rose and the Metamorphoses.
Jean Froissart, in his Prison amoureuse written four or five years before Machaut's death, portrays himself as supplying his patron with both lyric poetry and a "petit dittie amoureus" [little love poem] composed, "par figure" [in figurative language], on the model of Ovidian mythology. And whereas the lyrics are received as ornamental pieces for private or public entertainment, it is the mythological tale--specifically, "la grant poetrie qui dedens est contenue" [the great poetry contained in it]--that requires "exposition" in order to clarify the tale's didactic message, its commentary on the joys, trials, and dangers of love. (11) Commentaries on allegorical and mythological texts, in fact, make up a considerable part of the Prison amoureuse, which is at least as much about the art of reading poetry as it is about the art of love. The rise of vernacular "poetrie," with its subtle allegorical figures, requires a corresponding subtlety in the reading practices to which it is subject; and it is often the court poet himself who offers lessons in reading and interpretation, incorporated into his poetic works. In this respect as in so many others, Froissart shows himself a perceptive reader and disciple of Machaut. (12)
What I wish to argue here, in short, is that Machaut's frequent pairing of a poet figure with an aristocratic lover or patron--a feature of several of his dits amoureux--is a means of distinguishing different kinds of reading to which his poetry is subject. (13) As an examplary case, I will focus on the Fonteinne amoureuse. (14) This text is famous for its presentation of the poet and the prince as a "couple" who, together, produce poetry. (15) Within this framework, the prince is associated with a preference for literal reading, using myths as historical narratives and applying them to his own experience; and with a poetics of transparency, in which outer appearance corresponds to inner worth, a dream is really about what it seems to be about, and the words of a poem really mean what they seem to say. The presence of the poet, however, points to another way of reading the lyrics and the dreams presented in the text, reminding us that one cannot stop with a merely literal reading or with an ideal of purely mimetic representation.
For a clarification of late medieval ideas about vernacular verse composition and poetic fictions, we can turn to Evrart de Conty (c.1330-1405). Evrart offers a useful discussion of these matters in his prose commentary on the Echecs amoureux, written around 1400. Though of a later generation than Machaut, he first appears in court records in 1363, at a time when Machaut himself was still alive and producing poetry for royal patronage--as it happens, at around the time of the composition of the Fonteinne amoureuse. (16) Evrart was a member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris and served as personal physician to Charles V from 1363 until the king's death in 1380, but his commentary provides ample evidence for an equally impressive expertise in both Latin and vernacular literature. In addition to the Echecs amoureux itself and its obvious model, the Rose, he cites classical authors--Aristotle, Galen, Ovid, and Virgil, among others--as well as vernacular texts such as the prose Lancelot, the Chastelaine de Vergi, the Roman de Renart, and the Prise amoureuse; while his brief excursus on metrics displays a familiarity with the technical aspects of forme fixe lyric composition. Though he does not cite Machaut by name, it is very likely that he knew the work of his older contemporary as well as that of his fellow courtier Deschamps, and that his views of vernacular poetry were shaped in part by their writings.
Evrart begins his voluminous commentary by explaining that the author of the Echecs amoureux resembles classical authors in two respects, in his use of allegory and mythology, and in his use of verse:
Il resemble aux poetes anciens en tant qu'il parle aucunefoiz aussi come en faignant et fabuleusement, en disant moult de choses qui ne sont pas du tout a entendre a la lectre ainsy come elles gisent de premiere venue, ainz ont mestier d'aucune declaracion a eeulx qui ne sont pas apris ne acoustumes de la fainte maniere de parler des poetes, car elles ne sont pas sanz raison ainsi faintes, ainz contiennent en elles aucune grant sentence secrete moult souvent.
Item il resamble aux poetes car il fait son livre par rimes et par vers; et de ceste maniere de parler par rimes et par vers ou mectres, usent communement en leurs faiz les poetes, pour plus sutillement et plaisaument dire ce qu'ilz veulent, car en rime et en mectre est la parole assise et mesuree par musical mesure, c'est a dire par nombres ressamblables a ceulx dont les consonances musicaulx dependent, en laquel musical consonance se delite moult Fame humaine naturelement, come Aristote dit ailleurs. (2-3)
[He resembles ancient poets in that he sometimes speaks in fictions and fables, which cannot be understood literally as they seem at first glance, but require clarification for those who are not accustomed to the poetic manner of speaking in fictions; for these fictions aren't made for no reason, but very often they contain some great secret meaning. And he resembles poets because he made his book in rhyming verse; and poets commonly use this manner of speaking in rhymes and metrical verse, to express themselves more subtly and pleasantly; for in rhyme and meter, speech is subjected to musical measure, that is, numbers similar to those that determine musical harmonies, in which the human soul naturally delights, as Aristotle says.]
His ensuing discussion of the uses of fiction cites three reasons why an author would resort to this technique: "pour parler plus seurement" [to speak more securely], "pour parler plus secretement et...
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