Chaucer and his French contemporaries : natural music in the fourteenth century

__Chaucer and His French Contemporaries__ synthesizes Winsatt's work on Chaucer's French connections over the past twenty-five years, particularly his studies and editions of Machaut.

In this provocative and highly acclaimed study, a distinguished Chaucerian provides the first comprehensive analysis of the contemporary French influence on Chaucer. Bringing to the subject his expertise in both Chaucer and fourteenth-century French literature, James I. Wimsatt reveals the range and complexity of Chaucer's literary and personal relations with the important but neglected French poets of the fourteenth century. He demonstrates how the body of Middle French verse can open new avenues into the fundamental nature of Chaucer's poetry.

Chaucer and His French Contemporaries synthesizes Winsatt's work on Chaucer's French connections over the past twenty-five years, particularly his studies and editions of Machaut. At the same time, much is new: an analysis of the meaning of 'natural music' in the light of Deschamps' and Machaut's critical observations, a presentation of Jean de le Mote as a seminal influence in young Chaucer's poetic environment, a demonstration of the parallels and divergences of Froissart's and Chaucer's literary careers, an exposition of Granson's broad borrowings from his English friend, and a fresh look at the puys, the pourgeois poetic societies that flourished in northwest France and London.

Contents 7 Preface 9 1. Natural Music in Middle French Verse and Chaucer 17 2. Poetry in the English Court before Poitiers (1356): Jean de le Mote 59 3. Chaucer and Machaut: Man, Poet, Persona 93 Representations of the Poet, the Persona, and the Audience in Middle French Manuscripts 124 4. Machaut's Oeuvre and Chaucer's Early Poems 125 5. Machaut and His Tradition: Troilus, the Legend, and the Tales 157 6. Chaucer and Jean Froissart 190 7. Chaucer and Oton de Granson 226 8. Chaucer and Eustache Deschamps 258 9. Natural Music in 1400 289 Notes 309 Bibliography 367 Index 381