Courting controversy? Poetic manipulations of politics in the mid-fifteenth century

Book section

This chapter uses Machaut’s JRB and JRN as a launch-pad for reading the relationship of response between Martin Le Franc’s Champion des dames (c.1442) and Complainte du livre du Champion des dames a maistre Martin le Franc son acteur, with the aim of understanding better the stakes at play in the fifteenth-century false retraction. The Champion references explicitly to Machaut’s judgment poems, and both the Champion and Complainte entertain an analogous interaction of metatextuality, intertextuality, and historical reference. This results in a similarly enticing and subtle interlacing of poetry and court politics. Le Franc and Machaut contribute distinctively to a characteristically late-medieval reflection on authorship as a dialogic process concerned as much with book reception as with its production.

Authors: Swift, H

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Host title: Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond
• Chapter number: 3
• Place of publication: Gainesville
• Publication date: 2017-11-07
• DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813062419.003.0004
• ISBN: 9780813062419
• Language: English
• Keywords: intertextuality; judgment poems; authorship; metatextuality; Martin Le Franc