[In this essay, Kendrick analyzes the theory of rhetoric addressed in L'Art de dictier and demonstrated in several of Deschamps's ballads in an effort to elucidate changing definitions of rhetoric in the late fourteenth century.]

Western society has viewed or defined rhetoric in different ways during different historical periods. Changes in ideology usually accompany changes in the political and socioeconomic structures of a society. Classical rhetoric, the art of oral persuasion, depended upon a public forum, a political organization that upheld some degree of free speech and upon an economic system that enabled large numbers of people to live together in cities. With the decline of Roman society and the rise of a highly fragmented, agrarian, “feudal” society, rhetoric lost its practical purpose and hence much of its value. During most of the medieval period, rhetoric was demoted as a subject of study to third place behind dialectic and grammar (the latter subsuming part of the content of the classical study of rhetoric). Nevertheless, medieval teachers found some new uses for the lore of classical rhetoric. They adapted Ciceronian rules to medieval forms of written and oral communication, especially letters, sermons, and poetry. Thus, to the educated thirteenth-century Frenchman, rhetoric might mean the rules for composing a letter or a poem and have nothing to do with public persuasion.

James Murphy has pointed out the great importance of Poggio's discovery in 1416 of the complete text of Quintilian's Institutio oratoria: “Poggio made it possible, for the first time since the final collapse of the Roman schools in the fifth century, for a reader to view rhetoric as part of an integrated social system built around a respect for civic life.”¹ Certain circles in Western Europe at this time were ripe for just such a discovery to bolster their views. Ideological change had already begun, especially in cities such as Florence and Paris and under political conditions of struggle between partisan groups that tried to gain power by means of verbal appeals for the support of an urban population. By the late fourteenth century, some men were discovering the practical value of rhetoric as a means of persuasion; they were redefining the content of rhetoric along classical lines and elevating rhetoric to a more prestigious place in the curriculum.

This gradual change in the idea or “theory” of rhetoric can be seen in the verse of the late fourteenth-century French poet and royal administrator, Eustache Deschamps. In the identical refrains of two early ballads, numbers “123” and “124,” eulogizing Guillaume de Machaut, who died in 1377, Deschamps pays Machaut the supreme compliment of calling him a “noble rhetorician.” In both these poems “rhetorician” is a synonym for “poet,” and Deschamps is identifying rhetoric with the ars poetriae, prescriptive manuals for composing verse. In the context of these two poems, Deschamps associates rhetoric with a specific kind of poetry, that written to be sung or performed to instrumental accompaniment.² The list of Machaut's mourners in the first strophe of “Ballad 123” includes French poets, sophists, poetry itself, and “all who have melodious voices” or who sing to instrumental accompaniment and “cherish the sweet art of music.”³ In “Ballad 124” Deschamps associates rhetoric with lyric verse by means of musical and poetic epithets for Machaut. In the first stanza he calls Machaut “flower of flowers of all melody” and “earthly god of harmony” before clinching his praise with the title “rhetorician,” and in the second stanza he calls Machaut the conduit leading out of the fountain of poetic inspiration.⁴

The well-known “Ballad 285,” in praise of Chaucer, was probably written sometime after 1380.⁵ Here again Deschamps attributes “rhetoric” to a poet, but he uses the word only once and in a context entirely different from that of the earlier ballads praising Machaut. The epithet Deschamps bestows upon Chaucer in the refrain is “translator,” not “rhetorician.” In the first strophe he praises Chaucer not so much for his poetry as for his great knowledge of philosophy, which Deschamps places first in the list of Chaucer's virtures: philosophy, ethical praxis, great poetic ability, brevity of speech, “wise” rhetoric, illuminating theory. Although their order is jumbled, the key words in this list (with the exception of “poetry”) are all included in the definition of philosophy given in the Livres dou tresor, a mid thirteenth-century French encyclopedia written in exile by Brunetto Latini, a Florentine administrator and member of the commune.⁶ Deschamps' borrowing of such terms from Latini is significant because Latini was among the first medieval scholars to elevate rhetoric above the other language arts. Following Cicero's De inventione, Latini classifies rhetoric as a part of political science, the art of government, and he goes on to praise the combination of the two as “the most noble of all the arts in the world.”⁷ Latini's rehabilitation of and emphasis upon this classical idea of rhetoric must have been due in part to the increasing usefulness of oral persuasion in contemporary Florentine politics. Although Deschamps does not go so far as Latini to define rhetoric as persuasion for a political purpose, nevertheless, he breaks with his previous practice by associating rhetoric with speech (and not with poetry) in the line, “Brief in speaking, wise in rhetoric.” For the first time in “Ballad 285,” Deschamps associates brevity and wisdom with rhetoric. Whereas earlier treatises on writing poetry emphasized rhetorical methods of amplification and ornamentation, Deschamps values rhetorical methods of abbreviation, methods that are most useful for oral persuasion. Furthermore, brevity and wisdom are two of the four points of Deschamps' later definition of rhetoric.

Deschamps devotes all of “Ballad 1367” to the subject of rhetoric.⁸ In the opening lines, again borrowing Latini's terminology, Deschamps uses the rhyme words “theorique” and “pratique” (theory and practice) to set rhetoric within a broad philosophical framework and thereby increase its importance. Deschamps' ensuing definition of rhetoric consists of four points, which he recapitulates in the envoy of this poem and uses also in his prose Art de dictier (Art of Writing Poetry). This definition of the qualities of the good rhetorician—brevity of speech, succinctness, boldness, and wisdom—appears in no earlier work that I have been able to discover.⁹ The importance of this definition is its emphasis on rhetoric as oral persuasion or, as Deschamps puts it later in the first strophe, on “using every means to demonstrate ones intention.” Deschamps' use of the verb parler in this definition does not in itself prove that he conceives of rhetoric as oral presentation. In the Middle Ages parler could mean not only oral but also written expression, as it does in the second strophe of this ballad, where Deschamps holds up a group of ancient “authors,” including Virgil, as models for their correct “speech,” because they never “say a word too early or too late, but always make a true speech.” However, Deschamps' emphasis in this poem on the speaker's demeanor and delivery indicates that he conceives of rhetoric as an oral art. His four-point definition (brevity, succinctness, boldness, wisdom) must derive from Cicero's analysis of the poses a speaker may assume in his exordium or prologue in order to win the audience's good will.¹⁰ Following the prologue comes the division,¹¹ to which Deschamps devotes one line, skipping over the argumentative parts of a speech to conclude his explanation of rhetoric with remarks on proper delivery: the speaker must have a pleasing voice and a confident manner. With the comparison in the third strophe between the rhetorician and the physician (borrowed from Latini and Cicero),¹² Deschamps emphasizes the practical purpose of rhetoric. However, the end result of effective rhetoric, as Deschamps defines it in the envoy, is personal, not political. Deschamps' good orator wins fame, whereas Cicero's promotes just government and defends the common good.

Deschamps' definition of rhetoric in his prose Art de dictier adds little to the one he presents in “Ballad 1367.” Indeed, the ballad is a reworking and amplification of the material on rhetoric in the prose treatise, which Deschamps closes with the date of its completion, 25 November 1392.¹³ In the Art Deschamps places rhetoric last, and presumably highest, in the trivium, just as in “Ballad 1367” he advises the study of grammar and logic before rhetoric. In addition to giving the previously discussed four-point definition, he describes rhetoric as the “science of speaking correctly”; this is a literal translation of ars recte loquendi, a classical Latin definition of grammar given by Quintilian and others. In contradiction to the earlier medieval trend, Deschamps would increase the importance of rhetoric at the expense of grammar; he would include the lore of grammar in rhetorical studies, leaving the grammarians to teach the alphabet.¹⁴ As James Murphy has noted,¹⁵ Deschamps clearly distinguishes rhetoric from the composition of verse, which he handles in the Art de dictier under the heading of music, not under the heading of rhetoric. Over the course of fifteen years, from the composition of his poems eulogizing Machaut to his treatise on writing poetry, he turned to the more classical view of rhetoric as oral persuasion.

This change reflects, not only Deschamps' reading of works like Latini's Tresor,¹⁶ but also the influence upon Deschamps of the ideas of a group of lawyers, churchmen, and bourgeois whom he refers to in his verse as the “old counselors.” This group of men worked with Charles V to strengthen the position of the French monarch both ideologically and practically. They wrote royalist propaganda, translated classical works that could be interpreted as such (e.g., Aristotle's Ethics, Economics, and Politics), and suggested and carried out administrative reforms to strengthen the king's control of the realm.¹⁷ The aim of this royalist propaganda was to persuade the French bourgeoisie, especially the citizens of Paris, that their interests lay with a strong ruler who could control the disruptive forces within the kingdom, the great nobles and the lower classes. During the minority of Charles VI (1380-9), while the king's uncles made most political decisions, verbal persuasion became the old counselors' chief method of trying to maintain the prestige of the monarchy and of undercutting the policies of the royal uncles. In this situation of political struggle in an urban setting, rhetoric once again became useful.

Deschamps rejects both the earlier medieval view of rhetoric as a means of embellishment and an aesthetic or formal view of poetry as pleasure. For Deschamps, the chief function of poetry is persuasion; he uses his verse, especially his moral ballads and chansons royales, to promote what the old counselors conceived of as the “common good.” In the broad sense of the word, the aim of his verse is political. A great many of his thousand-odd moral ballads treat one of the three kinds of government or “practice” that Latini, following Aristotle, defines: self-government (ethics), government of a household (economics), and government of a city or people (politics).¹⁸ Probably because he is following this scheme (and because the topic would appeal to a bourgeois audience), Deschamps devotes far more poems than previous poets to the subject of running a household, royal or private. In addition to these themes, the value words in Deschamps' verse also reflect the concerns of the classical rhetorician. In his didactic poems teaching rulers and individuals how they should behave, Deschamps emphasizes classical civic or social virtues, such as economy or prudence, over Christian spiritual virtues.

Although Deschamps did not theorize in his Art de dictier about how rhetorical methods could be applied to verse to make it more persuasive, his poetic practice shows that he was keenly interested in this subject. His collections of moral ballads and chansons royales (the forms he preferred for political commentary) contain many series of poems on the same themes handled differently. Such series suggest that Deschamps was experimenting at applying rhetorical methods to poetry in order to discover the most persuasive way to develop a given topic. It seems likely that Deschamps would have chosen only one version from each series of poems for oral performance or written circulation. Although much work remains to be done in this area, I would like to indicate a few of the ways in which Deschamps was experimenting with rhetorical methods.

Deschamps' definition of the qualities of the good rhetorician (brevity, succinctness, boldness, wisdom) shows his interest in the persuasive effect of the poet-speaker's persona or voice. In his advisory ballads, Deschamps tries to create an impression of his own character that will capture the good will of his audience. He puts his definition of the qualities of the good rhetorician into practice by creating for himself the persona of the preudomme, a persona that is highly credible because it represents an ethical and material ideal for Deschamps, the old counselors, and presumably also for the French bourgeoisie.¹⁹ Deschamps creates this persona both implicitly and explicitly: implicitly through plain style,²⁰ the brief form of the ballad, and advisory themes such as moderation (the middle way) and the common good; explicitly by identifying himself with the preudommes he supports in his verse against the “foolish young counselors”²¹ and by defending his criticism of others on the basis of his character as a preudomme.²² Rather than experimenting at creating different kinds of personae, Deschamps uses different ways of creating the same preudomme persona.

Perhaps because of Latini's statement that the first sentence of a speech or letter should be “weightier” than the rest in order to gain the audience's credence and interest,²³ and perhaps also to give the impression of succinctness, Deschamps paid great attention to the opening strophes of his poems. In several series of poems he worked toward the ideal opening in which the entire first strophe is one complex sentence with all subordinate and parallel clauses leading up to the proposition or summary statement of the refrain. An example of this “weighty” opening appears in “Ballad 343” below.²⁴ Deschamps also applies rhetorical methods in the conclusions of his chansons royales and ballads. He uses the envoys to refresh the audience's memory by summing up or repeating the major points of the argument. Generally his summary envoys are rather perfunctory lists, but occasionally he changes the pattern, as in “Ballads 177” and “179” (I, 311-12, 314-15). In the former, he uses the fable of the grasshopper and the ant to create an extended comparison with two types of courtiers. In the body of the latter ballad, he presents a straightforward argument against trusting foolishly in reward for service at court; then, instead of reiterating the major points of the argument, he condenses the same exemplum into the envoy as a gloss upon the previous argument. With such variations on his usual system, Deschamps follows Latini's advice (p. 383 after De inventione 1.52.98) and tries not to bore his audience with repetitive perorations.

A great many of Deschamps' experimental series of poems involve invention, or the discovery of different ways of proving a point. For example, in “Ballads 108” and “109” (I, 222-4), Deschamps presents two different arguments against holding tournaments during wartime. In the former he draws his arguments from Christian authority, emphasizing the deadly sins of pride and envy that tournament participants customarily commit. In the latter he holds up the example of the “ancients,” who used tournaments only as training for war; from their positive practice, he then draws a moral for his contemporaries. As well as with invention, Deschamps experiments with more formal aspects of presentation or expression of a theme, such as verse form, order of arrangement, and level of style.

In some respects the huge single manuscript compilation of Deschamps' works²⁵ resembles an exercise book in which the poet has followed Quintilian's advice to authors who want to gain “facility:” “Much may be gained from paraphrasing our own words in a number of different ways: for instance, we may specially select certain thoughts and recast them in the greatest variety of forms, just as a sculptor will fashion a number of different images from the same piece of wax.”²⁶ However, facility was not Deschamps' only aim. In support of his partisan group and probably also as a result of his early legal training²⁷ and reading of works such as Latini's Tresor, Deschamps directed most of his efforts, not at writing beautiful poetry, but rather at writing persuasive, “practical” poetry.

Deschamps was not alone in attempting to write practical poetry. In her seminal article, “The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II,”²⁸ Anne Middleton points to a similar trend in contemporary England. Neither were Deschamps' poetic methods unique. His preudomme persona is similar to the persona or voice of Ricardian “public” poetry as Middleton defines it: “This poetic voice is vernacular, practical, worldly, plain, public-spirited, and peace-loving—in a word, “common,” rather than courtly or clerical, in its professed values and social allegiances” (p. 96). Both Deschamps and Ricardian public poets persuade by convincing their audience that its interests are the same as the poet-speaker's. Deschamps differs from Ricardian poets, not in his stance of public spokesman dedicated to the common good, but rather in his motivation for assuming this stance. Middleton associates the increasing political and socio-economic importance of the English bourgeoisie with the rise of Ricardian public poetry; thus, because it speaks to and for the bourgeoisie, Ricardian public poetry is, broadly speaking, partisan. However, according to Middleton's analysis, late fourteenth-century English writers assume the common voice, not so much as a rhetorical method of gaining good will in order to argue a cause, but rather because this voice is the appropriate vehicle for expression of their values. Deschamps' use of the preudomme persona in persuasive poems is, however, both partisan and political. The presence of a bourgeois audience makes his poetry possible; however, he writes persuasive poetry and assumes the role of public spokesman because he is motivated by the contemporary political struggle between the old counselors and the barons for control of the royal government. Political necessity stimulated Deschamps to revise his views of rhetoric and poetry and to use poetry in promoting the interests of his partisan group. One wonders whether close examination of the sparser sources of Ricardian intellectual, social, and political history might reveal clear political motives for some Ricardian poets' adoption of the common voice and thus for the rise of public poetry in England.²⁹

Notes

1. James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1974), p. 360.

2. In this identification of rhetoric with lyric composition, Deschamps follows Machaut. See Warner F. Patterson, Three Centuries of French Poetic Theory, I (Ann Arbor, 1935), 83.

3. All texts are taken from Deschamps' Oeuvres complètes, eds. Marquis de Queux de St.-Hilaire and Gaston Raynaud, 11 vols. (Paris, 1878-1903). Volume and page numbers appear in parentheses after the quotation. Following is the first stanza of “Ballad 123”:

   Armes, Amours, Dames, Chevalerie,
   Clers, musicans, faititres en françois,
   Tous sophistes, toute poeterie,
   Tous ceuls qui ont melodieuse voix,
   Ceuls qui chantent en orgue aucune fois
   Et qui ont chier le doulz art de musique,
   Demenez dueil, plourez, car c'est bien drois,
   La mort Machaut le noble rethorique.

   (I, 243-4)

4. The first two stanzas of “Ballad 124” are as follows:

   O fleur des fleurs de toute melodie,
   Tresdoulz maistres qui tant fustes adrois,
   O Guillaume, mondains dieux d'armonie,
   Apres voz faiz, qui obtendra le chois
   Sur tous faiseurs? Certes, ne le congnoys.
   Vo noms sera precieuse relique,
   Car l'en plourra en France et en Artois
   La mort Machaut, le noble rethorique.

   La fons Circé et la fonteine Helie
   Dont vous estiez le ruissel et les dois,
   Ou poetes mistrent leur estudie
   Convient taire, dont je suis moult destrois.
   Las! c'est par vous qui mort gisez tous frois,
   Qui de tous chans avez esté cantique.
   Plourez, harpes et cors sarrazinois,
   La mort Machaut, le noble rethorique.

   (I, 245)

5. This poem cannot be dated precisely. A date in the 1380's would, however, be consistent with the ballad's one allusion to Chaucer's Troilus and its three to the House of Fame. I reject as overly ingenious the suggestion that the ballad alludes to the Wife of Bath's, Franklin's and Merchant's Tales. For this interpretation, see Zacharias Thundy, “Matheolus, Chaucer, and the Wife of Bath,” in Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner C.S.C., eds. Edward Vasta and Zacharias Thundy (Notre Dame, 1979), pp. 53-4. The first stanza of “Ballad 285” is as follows:

   O Socrates plains de philosophie,
   Seneque en meurs et Anglux en pratique,
   Ovides grans en ta poeterie,
   Bries en parler, saiges en rethorique,
   Aigles treshaulz, qui par ta theorique
   Enlumines le regne d'Eneas,
   L'Isle aux Geans, ceuls de Bruth, et qui as
   Semé les fleurs et planté le rosier,
   Aux ignorans de la langue pandras,
   Grant translateur, noble Geffroy Chaucier.

   (II, 138-9)

6. In Latini's scheme, as in Vincent of Beauvais', philosophy or wisdom has three parts: theory, concerning the nature of things; practice, concerning how men should behave; and logic. The theoretical sciences are theology, physics, and mathematics, the latter including arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. The practical sciences are ethics, economics, and politics, or alternately, the mechanical arts and the verbal arts, the latter including grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Latini, paraphrasing Cicero, also emphasizes the necessity for the eloquent man to be wise (as Deschamps puts it, to be “saiges en rethorique”). See Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou tresor, ed. Francis J. Carmody (Berkeley, 1948), pp. 317-18, and De inventione 1.1-3. The author of the Ad Herennium, believed in the Middle Ages to be Cicero, omits this discussion.

7. Li livres dou tresor, p. 17.

8. Qui bien sçavoir veult l'art de theorique,
   Avant qu'il soit bon rethoricien,

   .Iiii. poins fault avoir en sa pratique:
   Parler briefment, en substance et en bien
   Hardiement, saigement, et que rien
   Ne soit obmis qui a son fait affiere;
   Par membres doit diviser sa matiere,
   En tout moien moustrer s'entencion
   Par douce voix et par seure maniere:
   Rethorique a en ce parfection.

   Qu'il soit fondé en gramaire, en logique,
   Qu'il ait veu maint acteur ancien,
   Valerium, Tulle et Policratique,
   Tite Live, Seneque et Pricien,
   Virgile aussi, Socratès, Lucien,
   Qui de parler a droit furent lumiere;
   Sanz dire mot ne devant ne derriere,
   Fors que tous jours faire vraie oroison:
   En tous leurs diz s'il est qui bien y quiere,
   Rethorique a en ce parfection.

   Et qui delesse ou fuit par voie oblique
   Ces.iiii. poins, qui sont li vray moyen
   De bien parler, ou l'un d'eux, il s'embrique,
   Si comme fait le foul phisicien
   Qui veult ouvrer, et n'est praticien
   Es corps humains, dont pluseurs sont en biere;
   Qui l'art ne scet, en celli ne se fiere
   Pour en ouvrer, car c'est perdicion;
   Ces.iiii. poins donc retiengne et acquiere:
   Rethorique a en ce parfection.

   Parler briefment, et saigement l'applique
   Hardiement en substance, et si que
   Ces.iiii. poins mis en conjunction
   Font renommer et faire homme autentique
   En prononçant voix de douce fabrique:
   Rethorique a en ce parfection.

   (VII, 208-10)

9. Nevertheless, Deschamps seems to have translated this definition (or followed an earlier translation) from a Latin source, because his vague etymological explanation of the relationship between the component parts of rhetoric and its name does not work: “Rhetoric is the science of speaking correctly, and it has four parts which reflect it, all applied to its name.” If, however, Deschamps invented this definition of the qualities of the good rhetorician, he may also have invented the etymological-sounding explanation to lend his definition authority.

10. In Latini's section on prologues, which paraphrases De inventione (1.16.21), “sagement” and “hardiement,” two of the key words in Deschamps' four-point definition, appear together as terms to use in praising one's audience in order to win sympathy. A few lines later Latini counsels the orator to promise his audience that he will speak briefly (“briement”). It is possible that Deschamps extracted his definition of rhetoric from this section of Li livres dou tresor (pp. 338-9).

11. Here Deschamps follows Latini, who condenses Cicero by omitting the narrative section of the speech between the exordium and the partition. Such evidence suggests that, although he knew Latin well enough to compose verse in it, Deschamps nevertheless relied on Latini's encyclopedic treatment of rhetoric in French rather than on classical Latin works such as De inventione or Ad Herennium.

12. De inventione 1.5.7; Li livres dou tresor, p. 319.

13. Over short periods of time (days or weeks rather than years), Deschamps often reworked the same material in different verse forms or transformed it from prose to verse. He did this, for example, with many of the themes of his “Double lay de la fragilité humaine,” which is itself a versification of Innocent III's famous prose treatise, “De contemptu mundi. …” Deschamps' definition of rhetoric from the Art de dictier is as follows:

    Rethorique est science de parler droictement, et a quatre parties en soy a lui ramenées, toutes appliquées a son nom; car tout bon rethoricien doit parler et dire ce qu'il veult moustrer saigement briefment, substancieusement et hardiement.

    (VII, 267)

14. In “Ballad 1281,” another relatively late poem, Deschamps gives the same definition of rhetoric as in the Art de dictier. He calls rhetoric the “art of speaking correctly in every case” (with a pun on grammatical cases as well as speaking situations): “Rethorique fait a droit parler ciaulx / Qu'elle introduit en tous cas proprement” (VII, p. 23, vv. 25-6). In the same poem he reduces the content of grammatical study to the alphabet. There may, however, be a punning identification here of grammar with dictamen (the art of writing letters): “Gramaire aprant a tous lettre publiques, / Qui des bas lieux fait monter aux plus haulx” (vv. 11-12). “Lettres publiques” may mean alphabet or official letters; likewise, the second line of the definition may refer to progressive mastery of the hierarchy of the alphabet (with A as the bottom and Z as the top) or to the master of dictamen as social climber.

15. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, p. 115.

16. Latini quite explicitly distinguishes rhetoric from the ars poetriae. He repeatedly emphasizes the persuasive intention of rhetoric and disassociates rhetoric from mere techniques of ornamentation or amplification:

    Por ce sont il deceu, cil ki quident que raconter fables ou ancienes istores ou quanque on puet dire soient matire de rectorique. Mais çou que l'om dist de bouche ou que l'om mande par ses letres apenseement por faire croire, ou par contençon de loer ou de blasmer ou de conseil avoir sor aucune besoigne ou de choses qui requierent jugement, tout çou est de la maniere de rectorique. Mais tout ce que l'on ne dist artificielement, c'est a dire par noble paroles, griés et replaines de bonnes sentences, ou par aucunes choses davant dites, est hors de ceste science et loins de ses riules. Pour ce dist Aristotles que la matire de cestui art est sour.iii. choses seulement, c'est demoustrement, conseil, et jugement.

    (pp. 319-20)

17. For the names and contributions of some of these men, who are not strictly synonymous with the Marmosets, see Leopold Deslisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V (Paris, 1907); Wilhelm Berges, Die Fürstenspiegel des hohen und späten Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1938); Alfred Coville, Les premiers Valois et la Guerre de Cent Ans (1328-1422) (Paris, 1902); and W. F. Patterson, Three Centuries of French Poetic Theory, I (Ann Arbor, 1935). For general background on contemporary political struggles see Edouard Perroy, The Hundred Years War, trans. W. B. Wells (New York, 1951).

18. Li livres dou tresor, pp. 20-1.

19. Preudomme does not mean simply “prudent man,” although prudence, the “counseling” virtue is one of the chief qualities of Deschamps' advisory preudomme persona. According to Latini, prudence is the first of the moral virtues; it is a combination of good sense and wisdom that enables one to distinguish good from bad and to take counsel before acting (p. 231). Other aspects of the late fourteenth-century concept of the preudomme can be gleaned from the writings of the old counselors and from Deschamps' own verse. In brief, the ethical qualities of the preudomme (prudence, fore- and hind-sight, wisdom, common sense, honesty, moderation, moral virtues, and independent judgment) have a material basis in the preudomme's self-sufficiency, his ability to earn his living either through his own labor, his learning or skill, or the wise management of his property. Although the preudomme can belong to any of the three medieval estates (laborers, clergy, nobles), the emphasis on independent earning in this idea of the preudomme suggests that it is meant to glorify a group of men that does not correspond to any one medieval social and economic class but rather to an evolving group which one might term “bourgeoisie moyenne.” In “Ballad 106,” for example, Deschamps explains the ethical qualities of the preudomme in terms of his material situation. Following are the first stanza and envoy of this ballad:

    Qui puet vivre de son loial labour,
    De l'art qu'il a, ou de sa revenue
    Sans exceder, il vit a grand honour,
    Car sa vie est de tous bonne tenue,
    Puis qu'il ne toult, qu'il ne ravit ou tue
    Et que tousjours a loyaulté s'adresce,
    N'aquiere ja chevance malostrue:
    Mieulx vault honeur que honteuse richesce.

    Princes, prodoms puet de nuit et de jour
    Aler partout; sa teste lieve et dresce;
    Mais desloiaulx ne quiert que tenebrour:
    Mieulx vault honour que honteuse richesce.

    (I, 219-20)

20. Latini states that an honorable cause please the audience without any prologue or verbal “ornamentation” (Li livres dou tresor, p. 335, after De inventione 1.15.20 and Ad Herennium 1.4.6-7). Thus a speaker who wants to imply that he and his cause are honorable may use plain style to achieve this effect.

21. See, for example, “Ballad 1215,” the first stanza of which follows:

    Ainsi comme l'en seult querir
    Par necessité en la cendre
    Le feu au doit, pour secourir
    De nuit au larron qui veult prandre
    Les biens d'un hostel et surprandre
    Les gens par default de lumiere,
    Convendra briefment que l'en quiere
    Les preudommes ou ilz seront;
    Car ceuls gouverner ne sçaront
    Qui ont mis le monde en balance
    Par trop grant jeunesce qu'ilz ont:
    Saiges se doit garder d'enfance.

    (VI, 208-9)

22. Deschamps justifies himself with the character of the preudomme, for example, in the opening stanza of “Ballad 348,” where he also attributes to himself the boldness of the good rhetorician:

    Aucuns dient que je suis trop hardis,
    Et que je parle un pou trop largement
    En reprouvant les vices par mes dis
    Et ceuls qui font les maulx villainement.
    Mais leur grace sauve certainement
    Verité faiz en general sçavoir,
    Sanz nul nommer fors que generalment.
    Que nulz prodoms ne doit taire le voir.

    (III, 71-2)

23. This seems to be Latini's interpretation (p. 322) of Cicero's summarizing remarks on the exordium in De inventione 1.18.25. Latini, himself a notary, is probably influenced in this interpretation by current notarial practice.

24. Il semble a ceuls de ceste aage present
    Qu'il ait en eulx plus honeur et vaillance,
    Sens et advis et bon gouvernement,
    Bonté, beauté, seignourie et puissance,
    Subtilité, parfaitte congnoissance,
    Qu'il n'ot oncques en noz predecesseurs,
    Es anciens, qui, par leurs grans labeurs,
    Les royaumes et les terres conquirent,
    Et grans citez fonderent les pluseurs;
    Ja ne feront les presens ce qu'ilz firent.

    (III, 60-2)

25. This manuscript, number 840 in the French National Library, is quarto size and contains 1162 pages of text written in double columns in several hands.

26. The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, trans. H. E. Butler (London, 1922), 10.5.9.

27. In Ballad 225 Deschamps claims to have studied the arts and law.

28. Speculum, LIII (1978), 94-114.

29. In an earlier form, this paper was read on May 29, 1980, in Montreal at the First Canadian Seminar of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. The author thanks the Izaak Walton Killam Trust administered by Dalhousie University for supporting research necessary to this paper.