SOURCE: Kelly, Douglas. “Guillaume de Machaut and the Sublimation of Courtly Love in Imagination.” In Medieval Imagination: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Courtly Love, pp. 121-54. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.

[In the following essay, Kelly analyzes Machaut's conception of love, observing that the poet's meticulous definition of love draws from classical and medieval literature.]

          and yet thei spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do;
Ek for to wynnen love in sondry ages,
In sondry londes, sondry ben usages

—Chaucer¹

Ici a commencé pour moi ce que j'appellerai l'épanchement du songe dans la vie réelle

—Nerval, Aurélia

THE REMEDE DE FORTUNE AND THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE

There are some incidental similarities between the Remede de Fortune and Guillaume de Lorris' Rose, similarities in structure and pattern characteristic of many dream visions in the late Middle Ages.² The poems are not entirely dissimilar in context, despite the episodic character of Machaut's dit. Innocence, youth, and oiseuse (Remede, v. 48) keep the Remede's lover occupied with various whims and pastimes; he is disturbed only by a persistent attraction to the “fleur souvereinne” (v. 59) that is his lady. Struck, as if by Love's arrows, with her beauty, he is badly in need of instruction (vv. 87-93). Instruction is given by the abstract perfections, the bonté (v. 177) he sees in his lady. She becomes the mirror and exemplar of all desirable good (vv. 171-72). This description of the lady's virtues and graces leads to congnoissance in the sense used in the Tresor amoureux. This in turn permits the analysis of love in the lai. But a misunderstanding separates the lady from the lover, and he retires, “com se fust songe / Ravis en parfonde pensée” (vv. 748-49) [as if in a dream, borne off by profound thought] into the Parc de Hedin (v. 786), a park

                                                  enclos
De haus murs et environnez,
Ne li chemins abandonnez
N'estoit pas a tous et a toutes.

(vv. 790-93)

[enclosed and surrounded by high walls. Nor was the way open to all.]

No bergiers allowed!³ Nor is any deduit (v. 819) lacking. But the lover, overcome by melancholy and despair, is long oblivious to the charms around him (vv. 2971-3012). The same inner alienation from the loveliness surrounding the disconsolate lover was used in Machaut's earlier Vergier, itself heavily marked by the influence of Guillaume de Lorris.

Et comment que li lieus fust gens,
Assis en sus de toutes gens,
Delitables et pleins de joie,
Certes, nul solas n'i avoie;
Car a ma gracieuse dame,
Qui a mon cuer, mon corps et m'ame,
Me fist Amours adès penser
Loyaument, sans vilein penser.

(Vergier, vv. 67-74)

[And even though the place was pleasant, located far from all people, delightful and abounding in joy, surely I took no pleasure in it. For Love made me ever think faithfully, and with no villainy, on my gracious lady who possesses my heart, my body, and my soul.]

The fountain (vv. 825, 836) and the “haiette” (v. 829) recall Guillaume de Lorris' advancement through the garden of Deduit towards the fountain of Narcissus. Other brief passages scattered through the Remede recall Guillaume de Lorris and even Jean de Meun: the meffet (v. 1210),⁴ idolatry (vv. 3190-3354),⁵ the placing of the lady, like the Rose, “outre une haiette” (v. 3378) [beyond a hedge], the mesdisans (v. 4204).

But the similarities are details. The differences are more striking. Machaut's conception of love is far more idealized than Guillaume de Lorris', or even than his own in the Vergier. Machaut retires to the garden because of disconsolate love, while the Rose lover goes there by chance, and falls in love after his arrival. The long discourse of Esperance is unlike anything in Guillaume de Lorris in length and utterly unlike him and Jean de Meun in content. The park itself is a place of solitary escape rather than proximity to the lady. The mesdisans are circumvented successfully. Reason and God are Love's allies (vv. 4250-56). The conclusion is happy.

In the Remede de Fortune Machaut gives ideal love a preeminence that is meant to capture its purity and realize its essential nobility. Walter Benjamin has suggested that the extreme in conceptualization comes closest to the idea's expression.⁶ It is in this sense that we may say that Machaut comes closer than any other courtly poet to the expression of fin' amors as idea. His love is in fact a sublimation. Machaut's attempt to effect such a sublimation is historically significant and intellectually original.

To understand what may have impelled Machaut to propose so extreme a kind of love, one must recall that a certain reaction to the vogue of erotic allegorical literature—however restrained the eroticism may have been—occurred in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century France. Personification allegory continued to serve as an agent for moral satire. The fourteenth-century Roman de Fauvel castigates ecclesiastical abuses and moral turpitude. More pertinent to our subject, Gace de la Buigne's Roman des deduis relates a siege in the form of a psychomachia in which the forces of vice are routed by those of Chastity, who sally forth from the castle to the battle cry “Viellece, Viellece, Viellece!”⁷ Jean de Meun himself ridiculed some forms of romantic and sexual love in his continuation of the Rose. And the Queste del saint graal is a powerful condemnation of the love idealized in Lancelot du Lac.

A counterreaction is apparent in courtly literature. The prologue to Jakames' Roman du Castelain de Couci contains a vigorous defense of love, with special emphasis on its beneficial and worthwhile features. This is an obvious response to those striving to undermine “Amours, qui est principaument / Voie de vivre honnestement.”⁸ These examples indicate the continuing crisis of credibility in courtly idealism into the later Middle Ages, by which Erich Köhler explains the attacks on courtly idealism and love in Jean de Meun and the Queste del saint graal,⁹ and to which the dit and the allegorical love poetry were a partial response.¹⁰

Machaut's contributions to dit literature and to the controversy about courtly love are significant: the love garden and the personifications of the Dit dou vergier; the allegory built on falconry Images in the Dit de l'alerion; the singular affair with Péronne d'Armentières dissolving into abstract, semilearned discussions in the Voir-Dit; figures from the Bestiaries on the enchanted river island in the Dit dou lyon, peopled only by those whose love is sincere and their ever-present enemies the médisants. The most influential of these writings, the Remede de Fortune, freely adapts not only material from the Roman de la rose, but, more substantively, certain ideas from Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy to the subject of Fin' amors.

Machaut took very seriously the instruction set forth in the Remede. He saw in it not only a love poem, but also a guide to the good life in all spheres of human activity. The example of Boethius' famous work must have deeply impressed him, since so many of his dits are consolatory in purpose. The debate in the Jugement dou roy de Behaingne offers intellectual consolation in a conclusion which permits two persons to understand and appreciate their sorrow. Consolation allows Esperance to encourage and instruct the disconsolate lover in the Remede. The Dit dou lyon is consolatory as well, as are the Alerion, the Fonteinne amoureuse, and the conclusion to the Voir-Dit.

THE CONFORT D'AMI: THE UNION OF HOPE AND IMAGINATION

The Confort d'ami is the broadest and most nearly systematic treatment of Machaut's thought on hope and consolation. Charles the Bad's imprisonment by the English¹¹ is the occasion for consolation, and Machaut himself plays the role of Boethius' Philosophia in offering consolation in the contexts of love for God, the lady, and honor. The foundation for love is hope in all three cases. Machaut's analysis in the Confort relies on the Remede de Fortune. In fact it expands the scope of the Remede beyond the courtly context at the same time that it integrates courtly love into an explicitly gradualistic worldview. Against despair caused by the loss of worldly possessions and loved ones, the result of inimical Fortune, Machaut recommends the reading of Boethius (Confort, vv. 1904-8).¹² Job (vv. 1707-20), Christ (vv. 1723-25), and Socrates (vv. 1758-67) provide Images of resistance to the melancholy (v. 1769) and despair (v. 1779) that may follow Fortune's bad turns. Hope provided them with consolation and a means to escape the power of Fortune. The same is possible in love. Charles' desire for the lady he is separated from is exacerbated by the fear of losing her (vv. 2057-2102). Charles needs to use his entendement¹³ (v. 2106), which can provide him with Douce Pensée, Souvenir, Desir, and Bon Espoir during the forced separation (vv. 2113-21). Bon Espoir is especially important.

Combien qu'il soit de tele sorte
Que tu es si mal entendans
Que tu n'iès mie ad ce tendans
Qu'i te servent de leur mestier,
Quant tu en as plus grant mestier,
Eins reputes a desconfort
Leur bien, leur douceur, leur confort.

(vv. 2122-28)

[So that matters have come to such a pass that your great lack of understanding prevents you from striving to win their assistance when you need it most; rather you find disagreeable their goodness, their gentleness, and their consolation.]

Hope frees Souvenir and Douce Pensée (vv. 2133-2208) as well as Desir (vv. 2209-36) from the grief and sorrow of despair. In turn, they give consolation. Imagination is part and parcel of the consolation.

Je t'ai dit que Douce Pensee
Est de Souvenir engendree,
Dont toutes les fois qu'il avient
Que de ta dame te souvient,
Se tu n'as pas en temps passé
Son commandement trespassé,
Eins l'as servi sans decevoir,
Tu dois en ton cuer concevoir,
Ymaginer, penser, pourtraire
La biauté de son dous viaire.

(vv. 2153-62)

[I have told you that Douce Pensee is born of Souvenir. Thus every time you happen to recall your lady, providing you have not earlier failed to follow her commands but have rather served her faithfully, you must conceive, imagine, think about, and portray in your heart the beauty of her sweet face.]

Machaut does not demonstrate this contention in the Confort, but refers Charles to the Remede and one of his lais for a more thorough argument.

Et se son pooir [Hope's] vues savoir,
Sans oublier chose nesune,
Quier en “Remede de Fortune”
Et en mon “Lay de Bon Espoir”
Ou je l'aimme, et hé desespoir.

(vv. 2246-50)

[And if you wish to know her (Hope's) power, with nothing left unsaid that is pertinent to the subject, look into the Remede de Fortune and my “Lay de Bon Espoir,” in which I express my love for her, and my hatred of despair.]

In the Confort Machaut introduces examples showing the pattern of hope and despair in love: Orpheus and Eurydice (vv. 2277-2352, 2517-2640), Pluto and Proserpina (vv. 2353-2516), Paris and Helen (vv. 2645-82), and Hercules and Deianira (vv. 2683-2716). The choice is curious, since all the examples prove the unfortunate effects of desire despite the initial benefits of hope. But in each case Machaut ignores the misfortune to stress the immediate advantages of hope (much as Guillaume de Lorris turned the fountain of Narcissus from a mirror of self-love to a source of fin' amors). This is mythographic adaptation to context and meaning. Yet the tragic conclusion to each example suggests the misfortunes of immoderation in love or despair. For instance, Paris and Helen do not illustrate the ravages of desire leading to the fall of Troy.

Cuides tu, se Paris pensast
Que dame Heleinne le tençast
Ne qu'a s'amour deüst faillir,
Qu'il la fust alee assaillir?
Nennil, mais quant pas ne failli,
Je di qu'espoirs moult li vali,
Qu'espoir, ymagination
Font le cas, c'est m'entention,
Et les besongnes mieus en viennent
A tous ceaus qui en bien les tiennent.

(vv. 2673-82)

[Do you think that Paris would have gone against Helen if he thought that she would hold it against him or betray his love? No indeed. But since he did not fail, I maintain that hope was of great help to him, that hope and imagination make the argument valid, as I understand it. And matters turn out better to those who uphold them.]

The union of hope and Imagination in this passage is the foundation for good love and consolation.

Charles' contemplation of the lady's Image is therefore the source of Douce Pensee and Souvenir. And it serves to satisfy Desir through hope of recovering the real lady, much as Paris foresaw gaining the person and love of Helen.¹⁴ The conclusion of the Hercules Image shows not his death, but the benefits of hope.

Et aussi estoit la presente
La douce ymage cointe et gente
De la bele Deyamire
Ou Herculès souvent se mire.
Aussi bien te pues tu mirer
En ton ymage et remirer
Sa grant biauté, son cointe atour
Et son gentil corps fait a tour,
Et esperer qu'encor sera
Li bons jours qu'elle te fera
Joie par parole et par fait
De cuer fin, loial et parfait.

(vv. 2751-62)

[And also present was the sweet image, at once attractive and noble, of the beautiful Deianira, in whom Hercules often mirrors himself. Just so, you may mirror yourself in your image and consider its great beauty, its attractive attire, its gentle person perfectly fashioned, and hope that the fine day will yet come when she rewards you with joy, in words and deeds and through a fine, true, and perfect heart.]

“Idolatry” would seem to be an essential element in Machaut's notion of ideal love! He returns to it towards the end of the Remede in a prayer to Love and Hope, as well as in the idealized Image of the lady he adores.

Et quant riens plus ne ressongnay,
A deus genous m'agelongnay
Emmi la sentelette estroite,
Les mains jointes, la face droite
Vers le lieu precieus et digne
Qui m'estoit apparence et signe
A l'esperence que j'avoie
Que la ma dame trouveroie.

(Remede, vv. 3189-96)

[And when I no longer feared anything, I knelt down on my knees in the middle of the narrow path and, with clasped hands, my face turned directly towards the precious, worthy place which gave form and substance to my hope of finding my lady there.]

Yet such idolatry is merely an Image conceived in the mind to express a sincere love, much as mythographic figures exist only as unreal shapes until they acquire a truth through Imagination.

                    en amours n'a si bonne chose
Ne qu'amant doient amer si
Comme esperence, après merci.
Si te lo que tu la repreingnes
Et que dedens ton cuer la teingnes
Avec l'ymage gracieuse:
S'aras compaingnie amoureuse,
Aussi comme une trinité,
Car ce sera une unité
De toy, d'espoir et de l'image.

(Confort, vv. 2254-63)

[In love there is nothing so good, nor which lovers should love more than hope, except for mercy. I advise you to return to it, and to hold it in your heart together with the graceful image. Thus you will have a loving companionship, like a trinity, for it will be a unity of you, hope, and the image.]

The example of Boethius provides the pattern for right thought and right conduct (Confort, vv. 3749-58).¹⁵ Thus the central section on love and hope in the Confort parallels the instruction in the beginning and concluding sections on God and honor. The Biblical examples provide hope in and comfort from God, just as mythological figures encourage hope for the lady's love. Similarly, in the third part of the treatise honor and the good life reward perseverence in following the examples of illustrious and honorable forebears (vv. 3903-28). The Imagination of the lover's devotion corresponds to service to God and the family name. There are, of course, dangers in all three areas. In love, we have seen them adumbrated in the very examples Machaut uses to provide comfort, which serve as both promise and warning.¹⁶ For example, despair should not make Charles break his marriage; not only is a broken marriage socially wrong, it also angers God (vv. 3619-22). And ladies are among the sources of knightly honor, and should be upheld, like arms and religious devotion, with “science,” for “N'autre honneur n'as, n'autre science / Qu'armes, dames et conscience” (vv. 3251-22)¹⁷ [You have no other honor or science but arms, ladies, and good conscience]. There is good reason to suppose that Machaut is speaking of Charles' wife, whom he, like Paris and Pluto, abducted. The threat of Orpheus' and Hercules' fates is therefore very real. Transcending their faults by an ideal love would permit Charles to escape the loss and sorrows he must otherwise fear. The dissipation of fear is possible by hope.

But how did Machaut unite fin'amors and conscience? Part of the answer lies in the sublimation of desire and the consequent virtuous character of love. Of course, Charles' lady is his wife, so that sublimation is not quite so imperative as it may have been for Machaut in the Remede. But the problem goes beyond the conjugal-courtly dichotomy. In fact, Machaut's thoughts on the subject have a place alongside those of Watriquet de Couvin and the Condés.

The distinction between conjugal and extraconjugal love suggested by the case of Charles the Bad is in fact no solution. There are enough difficulties with love in marriage to preclude our settling for the superiority of marital affection over extramarital courtly love. Charles loved his wife and feared to lose her—with good reason: she had been abducted and forced to marry him. However, the example of Paris and Helen suggests that their love was real. Charles is not a counterpart to Galoain or Count Limors in Chrétien's Erec, who tried to force marriage and love on Enide. Rather Machaut disposes of the distinction between love and marriage simply and disarmingly. Like Andreas Capellanus, he postulates a polarity, arguing both that marriage be preserved and that love have its own, separate rights. One of his balades expresses this clearly (without the Confort, one might be inclined to view it as preposterous or merely humorous):

Et si devés amer, j'en suis tous fis,
                    Vo mari com vo mari
Et vostre amy com vostre doulz ami;
Et quant tout ce poez par honneur faire,
Vous ne devez vo cuer de moy retraire.

(“Balade CCXXXI,” vv. 12-16)

[And you must surely love your husband as your husband, and your beloved as your sweet love. And since you may accomplish all this honorably, it is wrong of you to take your heart back from me.]

Here as elsewhere we must beware of reading our scholarly sense of irony and propriety into an aristocratic spirit widespread in French literature of the Middle Ages—at least not before we are clear in our own minds regarding the terms of the quarrel of the Roman de la rose!

Ne fai pas clers tes consaus d'armes,
Qui doivent prier pour les ames
Et doivent compter et escrire
Et chanter leur messes ou lire
Et consillier les jugemens
Aus consaus et aus parlemens.
Si que tien chascun en son ordre
Si bien qu'il n'i ait que remordre.

(Confort, vv. 3105-12)

[Do not make your military counsel of clerics, who are supposed to pray for souls, keep accounts, write, sing or read mass, and give counsel on judgments handed down in conference and court. Let each person keep to his assigned place so that there may be nothing to criticize.]

This method of keeping tidy books, with every person and idea in place, is not only a horizontal classification, it is also a vertical evaluation based on generic distinctions in material style.

The Confort d'ami concludes with an admonition to love and serve God above all else, even one's own honor. For honor is

                                        la perfection
Ou toute humeinne creature
Doit plus tendre et mettre sa cure,
Après la joie qui ne fine
Qui seur tout est plaisant et fine.

(vv. 3920-24)

[the perfection towards which every human being must strive and apply himself, second only to the joy without end that is above all else pleasing and fine.]

Similarly, after discussing the ymage of the lady cultivated, served, and adored in the lover's heart, Machaut puts everything into proper perspective. He establishes in this way a hierarchy of “idols,” giving precedence, but not exclusivity, to God.

Mais, pour chose que je te die,
Garde toy bien que t'estudie
Soit adès tout premierement
En servir Dieu devotement,
Qu'il n'est amour qui se compere
A s'amour, foy que doy saint Pere,
Ne chose, tant soit pure, eu monde,
Ne que riens contre tout le monde,
Ou comme une ymage en pointure
Contre une vive creature.

(vv. 2763-72)¹⁸

[But, whatever I may say to you, see that you apply yourself ever and foremost to serving God devoutly. For no love is comparable to His love, by the faith owed Saint Peter, nor is there anything on earth so pure, like a speck in comparison to the whole world, or a painted Image compared to a living creature.]

The idolatry of Pygmalion that Jean de Meun castigates with such wit in the Roman de la Rose becomes, in Machaut's conception of love, an acceptable idolatry.¹⁹

Pymalion fist l'image d'ivoire
Que moult pria et ama sans recroire,
Mais il n'ot pas si tres noble victoire
                    Ne tel eür
Comme j'aray, se Morpheüs avoire
Ce que je tieng qui sera chose voire.

(Fonteinne amoureuse, vv. 963-68)²⁰

[Pygmalion made the ivory image to which he prayed often and which he loved constantly. But he gained no victory so noble, nor fortune so good as I shall have if Morpheus makes true that which I believe to be true.]

Pygmalion in bono, and in love, reflects Machaut's tendency to rationalize and idealize love. The lady is now an Image to adore and imitate rather than an object to desire and possess. The Image sets forth a truth, and thus escapes the folly and fantasy read into it by Jean de Meun. The technique is still Macrobian. In the last analysis, Machaut's truth is the primacy of hope through the Imagination.

THE REMEDE DE FORTUNE: MACHAUT'S MATURE CONCEPTION OF FIN' AMORS

We may now follow Machaut's advice in the Confort d'ami and turn to the Remede de Fortune for his justification of the synthesis of fin' amors and Boethius as hope in love. The principal episode in the dit represents the poet visited by Esperance personified. She offers consolation to the lover “sick unto death,” a sad victim of Fortune and Love, as he describes his state in a long complainte. She is the most obvious adaptation from Boethius, the Philosophia of the Consolation.²¹ But the change of name points to two obvious differences between Machaut and Boethius. First, the context is different; Boethius had no use for love not directed towards God, His creation, or humanity.²² Second, the controversy over the value of idealized love must have become very acute for Machaut to have had to resort to the unlikely resources of Boethius to support his idealization. Yet like Guillaume de Lorris, who adapted Ovid to a new context, Machaut succeeded in accommodating certain elements from Boethius' Consolation to his own understanding of courtly love. The replacement of desire by hope effected a real sublimation of love.

In courtly literature before Machaut and in a good number of his own fixed forms and in the dits preceding the Remede and the Jugement dou roy de Navarre, love is linked to both desire and hope. The general definition of love in Andreas Capellanus implies them both. Sight and reflection on the object of sight (visio and cogitatio) lead to desire—“Aliquis super omnia cupit alterius potiri amplexibus” [Each one wishes above all things the embraces of the other]—and to hope—“omnia de utriusque voluntate in ipsius amplexu amoris praecepta compleri”²³ [by common desire to carry out all of love's precepts in the other's embraces]. I understand willingness to serve and obey as predicated on hoped-for rewards. Andreas' ensuing differentiation among kinds of love is based on the extent to which desire gives way to hope. It also implies shifting emphasis from direct visio to cogitatio, that is, in the Boethian hierarchy of cognitive faculties, from sensus to imaginatio. The immediate sensual satisfaction of desire (amor rusticanorum, venality) is condemned. Andreas prefers the qualities and virtues one may acquire in service of the loved one and in contemplation of his or her Image in the mind's eye as the sum and total of those qualities. At the extreme, amor purus is a form of love that excludes the satisfaction of physical desire.

Nonetheless, desire is still present, even in amor purus.²⁴ Guillaume de Lorris has the god of Love combine both hope and desire in the instruction given the lover. Hope is a temporary consolation for unsatisfied desire.

Beneoite soit Esperance,
Qui les amanz ensi avance!
Mout est Esperance cortoise:
El ne laira ja une toise
Nul vaillant ome jusqu'au chief,
Ne por perill ne por meschief.

(Rose, vv. 2629-34 [2615-20])²⁵

[Blessed be Hope, who thus furthers the cause of lovers! Hope is very courteous: right up to the end, she will never leave any valiant man, in any peril or distress.]

In Machaut's two earliest dits, the Vergier and the Jugement dou roy de Behaingne, desire and hope still unite in fin' amors. Most difficulties arise from their incompatibility.

In the dits antedating the Remede, the lover's unhappiness and grief are caused by the turns of Fortune's wheel. The ups and downs of Fortune in courtly love are implicit in Andreas Capellanus' maxim “Semper amorem crescere vel minui constat” (p. 310) [It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing (p. 184)]. This fact is fundamental to the maintenance of love as set forth in book 2. It is to assure that love will continue to grow, and thus escape the turns of Fortune, that Andreas insists on an amor sapiens. Amor sapiens is less subject to the fluctuations and vicissitudes common in other kinds of human love. “Qui enim probus invenitur et prudens, nunquam facile posset in amoris semita deviare vel suum coamantem afficere turbatione. Sapiens igitur, si sapientem suo connectit amori, suum amorem in perpetuum facillime poterit occultare et sapientem coamantem sapientiorem sua solet exhibere doctrina et minus sapientem sua consvevit moderatione reddere cautiorem” (p. 17). [A man who proves to be honorable and prudent cannot easily go astray in love's path or cause distress to his beloved. If a wise woman selects as her lover a wise man, she can very easily keep her love hidden forever; she can teach a wise lover to be even wiser, and if he isn't so wise she can restrain him and make him careful (p. 35).] Guillaume de Lorris also alludes to the place of Fortune's wheel in love (Rose, vv. 3981-91 [3953-63]). The Image is frequent in love poetry after Guillaume.²⁶ Machaut uses it in the first half of the complainte in the Remede, where Fortune and Love appear as allies against the lover, destroying his happiness.

Is it not, then, astonishing to hear Esperance assert that

amy vray ne sont pas en compte
Des biens Fortune, qui bien compte,
Mais entre les biens de vertu.

(Remede, vv. 2801-3)

[true lovers are not reckoned among the rewards of Fortune, if one reckons rightly, but among the rewards of virtue.]

To her way of thinking, the remedy to Fortune's wheel is love itself. In the complainte Machaut presents the traditional view of the relationship between love as desire and love as hope. As we have seen, love conventionally subsumes both desire and hope. But Esperance, and we may confidently assume Machaut himself, does not equate them. Desire is subject to Fortune because desire may be satisfied or denied by someone or something not subject to the will of the person who desires. The possibility of denial of the object of desire causes fear, suffering, despair, death. All this is exemplified in the first part of the Remede, where the lover, afraid to speak and convinced he has lost the esteem of his lady, retires in solitude to die a lover's death. This is certainly a conventional representation. In what seem to be his last moments, the lover sings his complainte to Fortune and Love, whom he holds equally responsible for his plight. Then Esperance appears, like Philosophia in the Consolation, in the quiet splendor of sunlight shining through clouds on a dark, melancholy day (vv. 1481-1505).²⁷

Conventions apparent in chansons and in the Roman de la rose justify the appearance of Esperance at this moment as a turn of Fortune's wheel for the better. But her appearance is also foreshadowed in the lai which the lover recites to his lady near the beginning of the Remede. The lai pleases the lady so much that she wishes to know the author's name. The lover, fearful lest by revealing his name he incite her anger or displeasure, falls dumb and withdraws from her presence. Clearly, he fails to comprehend the import of his own composition. For the lai argues that douce Pensée, Souvenir, and Espoir suffice for the happiness of the lover because they bring him contentment (vv. 431-44). The “port d'autre confort,” the “Plus querir” of desire are the cause of the lover's melancholy when Esperance appears to him. Esperance supplants desire and liberates the lover from the very Fortune blamed for his ills in the complainte. The separation of hope and desire makes possible the cleavage between love and fortune. The stress in the lai on mollification of the pain caused by desire becomes the burden of Esperance's instruction. Yet all Esperance really does, like her counterpart in Boethius,²⁸ is to recall to the lover, and make him understand and appreciate, what he said in the lai, what he knows but does not yet understand.

Briefly, there are two kinds of biens enjoyed by the person possessing self-mastery (“de toy la signorie,” Remede v. 2485): Patience and Souffissance, which together are conducive to Bonneürtez, or beatitudo (vv. 2487-89). They are “bien de Nature” (v. 2469) in the Boethian sense of gifts natural to man and thus not subject to change or loss.²⁹ They are not among the biens de Fortune, which may be granted or withdrawn at the turn of her wheel. To achieve Bonneürtez a proper understanding of Fortune is essential, for from that understanding men may draw hope (vv. 2505-2742). To understand Fortune is to be able to live with, rather than subject to, Fortune. Fortune's turns can be explained very simply: whatever goes up must come down. But also, whatever comes down must go up (vv. 2689-2734). The ineluctable rotation is regular and thus predictable. Hope is not only possible, it is assured to him who understands Fortune. He need merely await the upward turn of the wheel after it brings him low. The fear, hilarity, grief, and desire that afflict those subject to Fortune give way through understanding to Bonneürtez (part of man's nature) founded on patience and contentment. This thought was already familiar to the lover from his lai. It also preserves the lineaments of Boethius' thought, despite a rather exuberant optimism (vv. 2717-21). But what does it all have to do with love?

As Machaut declares in the lai, love, rightly understood, is not a manifestation of desire. Nor can it be construed as a bien de Nature, since love is not given to man as part of his nature. It is rather a bien de vertu (v. 2803), founded on virtue because of the fidelity of the lover. The constant heart is not subject to Fortune (vv. 2804-10). This does not exclude hope for love, at least love of a Platonic sort. All good men and women admire virtue, as Boethius taught.³⁰ Thus the lady whose foremost quality is bonté (v. 177) cannot fail to recognize the faithful aspirant to her love (vv. 1796-1808, 1827-58). The lover himself may rest content in the awareness of the bonté he gains from love for his lady; he too becomes virtuous, and virtue, as Boethius said, is its own reward.³¹ What more could he “desire”—or rather, hope for? In this conception of love the virtuous lady will inevitably reward the virtuous lover by returning his love. No doubt this is what impressed the lady when she heard Machaut's lai, for she later remarks:

Mais quant Esperence s'en mesle,
Je ne doy pas estre rebelle
A son voloir, eins vous ottroy
Loiaument de m'amour l'ottroy;
Qu'elle m'a dit que vous m'amez
Et vuet qu'amis soiez clamez.

(vv. 3841-46)

[But when Esperance intervenes, I must not revolt against her will. Rather I grant you faithfully the gift of my love. For she told me that you love me and wish to be called my beloved.]

Thus the lady's love is also confirmed by hope. Hope for love (but no more!) is not subject to Fortune, for the lady as well as for the gentleman. All of this conforms to the Remede's description of the lady as the source of the lover's virtue. What differences may we then perceive between the object of desire and the object of hope? The lai provides a succinct answer to this question.

The lover consoles himself with “l'Espoir de joïr” [the hope of enjoyment]. Enjoyment of what? The sight of his lady, including conversation and reflection on her Image as expressive of beauty and worth. This is douce Pensée and Souvenir.

Mais quant je voy
Le trés bel arroy
                    Simple et coy,
                    Sans desroy
De son corps, le gai,
                    Et que je l'oy
Parler sans effroy,
                    Par ma foy
                    Si m'esjoy
Que toute joie ay.

(vv. 495-504)

[But when I see the very beautiful adornment, neat and pleasing and without blemish in her gay self, and when I hear her speak calmly, indeed I am so joyful that I possess every joy there is.]

To see his lady is always possible, and to a certain extent it is a condition a virtuous lady can readily accede to (vv. 3343-48) and even feel honored by. Not only the conduct of the lady in the Remede, but also that of Bel Acueil in the Rose when he first comes forth to greet the lover (Rose, vv. 2787-2822 [2771-2806]), make that much obvious. The lady would simply be manifesting her courtesy. But to seek further rewards is to desire, and therefore to ask too much.³² Then she may feel compelled, like Dangier in the Rose, to dismiss the lover abruptly and angrily. The lover who desires is subject to Fortune and change, may lack sincerity or become insincere,³³ and is perforce unhappy.

Qui vorroit plus souhaidier,
                    Je n'os cuidier
                    Si fol cuidier
Que cils aimme de cuer entier
Qui de tels biens n'a souffisance;
Car qui plus quiert, il vuet trichier.

(Remede, vv. 459-64)

[Were someone to ask for more, I dare not go so far as to presume that he loves wholly and sincerely when he is not content with such rewards. For he who seeks more wishes to deceive.]

The lover should make his lady's beauty not an object of desire, but an object lesson (vv. 339-42). Contemplation of her Image makes him aware of the inner worth it represents, and thus encourages him to conform his own character to the lady's example.

Machaut's description of the lady makes this apparent (vv. 167-326). She possesses bonté (v. 177), understood as the sum and source of her virtue and qualities: she possesses both physical and spiritual perfection. Abstractions are transferable attributes. “Le poème est donc comme un miroir flatteur que le prince ou le chevalier consulte avec anxiété ou complaisance pour y retrouver l'image de ses amours. … Pour répondre à cette interrogation, le poète de cour lui propose normalement le regard de sa dame où, nouveau Narcisse, il contemple son image.”³⁴ The transfer is dependent only on the lover's capacity to perceive and willingness to emulate. The lady's Image shows him what he must attain in order to equal her³⁵ and thus show himself worthy of her love.

The lady's perfection is also a source of hope for the lover, since the realization of that hope depends entirely on his own willingness to conform to her example (v. 338). And that possibility is very real, since we know from the beginning of the Remede that the lover's special talent—Machaut as narrator identifies himself with the lover throughout the dit—is to be a lover (vv. 45-70). Esperance herself reminds him of this fact in the course of her instruction (vv. 2618-27).

There are other sources of happiness allied to hope. Dous Regard softens the pain of desire as soon as it appears, and renders the lover immune to the sickness and grief associated with desire in most courtly literature.

Car comment que Desirs m'assaille …
Certes bien en vain se travaille,
Car tout garist son dous regart
Qui paist d'amoureuse vitaille
Mon cuer et dedens li entaille
          Sa biauté fine.

(vv. 639, 644-48)

[For however Desire may assail me … he assuredly struggles in vain. For her gentle look heals everything, and nourishes my heart with the nourishment of love and engraves in it her exquisite beauty.]

To possess the lady's Image is to possess her qualities, that is what makes her desirable. But their realization is inner possession. This is meaningful as hope (vv. 3337-48). Therefore Esperance proclaims that he who desires errs, while he who is content with Dous Regard really loves (vv. 1994-2002). This fits neatly into Boethius' conception of happiness.³⁶ The lover may now exercise the Patience and Souffissance essential to the good and happy life. He is virtuous, and love is the reward for that virtue.

The fact that Esperance envisages a lover unmolested by desire, and therefore content with less than might satisfy desire, makes it clear that Machaut is proposing sublimation when he replaces desire with hope.³⁷ Only in this manner is it possible for him to describe love—vraie amour—as a bien de vertu. Machaut means no glossing or halfway measure similar to that often found in courtly writing, where the lady and the lover are more chaste, or more nearly chaste, because they are faithful to one love and exclude all others.³⁸ Machaut's words do mean what they say. Love is to rise above desire if the lover is to be happy and virtuous. To wish for more is immoderate. Moderation is essential to the reasonable, happy, virtuous life in the Remede de Fortune, as in Boethius. Again we are brought back to hope as the remedy for misfortune born of desire, and to vraie amour as the remedy to Fortune.

Machaut goes no further. The distinct categories of God, love, and honor set up in the Confort obtain in the Remede. Human love does not become a stepping stone to higher forms of love. The idea of using it in this way could have occurred to him from reading the Consolation, or by analogy: he relates the music of love poetry to angelic music in the Prologue (V, vv. 105-46). His lady remains very much in this world, as does the love itself. In the concluding section of the Remede the lover, revitalized as it were by Esperance, returns to his lady to apologize for his silence after reading the lai, and to declare his hope. The two go on to participate in an active social life of dances, feasts, mass, promenades, parties, concerts, and carols. The conventional description of these activities exemplifies the preceding instruction: to see one's lady, speak with her and share a common understanding, to grow inwardly by her example, are sufficient to the lover who realizes all his hope in the Image, the sight, and the bel acueil of his lady.

Sight, the dous regard, is allied to hope and a sense of security in the lover. It is also important to the lady. She is able to perceive her suitor's sincerity even when he is mute in her presence. For no false lover can counterfeit the colors of sincere emotion. (vv. 1780-85). White, red, dark, and blue in the lover's face form the heraldic shield of faithful love. Here Machaut uses the popular device of the heraldic emblem to describe the lover's changing colors and the sentiments associated with them (vv. 1863-78).³⁹ The effectiveness of the shield depends on the arm bands of hope, broken when the lover despairs of his love and is dying of unrequited desire (vv. 1941-46). For hope to be possible, the shield must be held up and shown to the lady (vv. 3420-28). This takes place in the Remede when the lover comes out of retreat.

Thus Machaut's lover is content in the realization of hope. Just before meeting his lady again he offers a prayer to the god of Love, asking only to see and speak to her (vv. 3343-48). The extensive description of the entertainment and pastimes suggests mutual contentment and exemplary happiness. There are no activities, secret or otherwise, to imagine beyond what Machaut shows, contrary to what some readers have argued from the examples of other dits and of the romances.⁴⁰ Machaut's representation of the foolish lover, both in the Remede and later in the Voir-Dit, shows how the danger of excessive melancholy (Chaucer's “sorwful ymagynacioun”) is overcome, replaced by a splendid vision of light and harmony within oneself and in the world. This is a “plaisant ymagination” (Prologue V, v. 61). The same concerns return in Machaut's instruction as the ami in the Confort d'ami and the Fonteinne amoureuse. Devotion to the highest kind of love releases the lover from the dreadful sickness which befell those whose sorrow vanquished their rational faculty and drove them to despair in mad pensers.⁴¹

A few sentences from Balzac's Peau de chagrin seem to sum up the instruction contained in the Remede de Fortune. The author of Le Lys dans la vallée would certainly have had no difficulty appreciating the conception of love espoused in the Remede. “L'homme s'épuise par deux actes instinctivement accomplis qui tarissent les sources de son existence. Deux verbes expriment toutes les formes que prennent ces deux causes de mort: VOULOIR et POUVOIR. Entre ces deux termes de l'action humaine, il est une autre formule dont s'emparent les sages, et je lui dois le bonheur. … Vouloir nous brûle, et Pouvoir nous détruit; mais SAVOIR laisse notre faible organisation dans un perpétuel état de calme. Ainsi le désir ou le vouloir est mort en moi, tué par la pensée; le mouvement ou le pouvoir s'est résolu par le jeu naturel de mes organes. En deux mots, j'ai placé ma vie, non dans le cœur qui se brise, non dans les sens qui s'émoussent; mais dans le cerveau qui ne s'use pas et qui survit à tout.”⁴² And a little further on: “Ma seule ambition a été de voir. Voir n'est-ce pas savoir?” Transposed into the world of the Remede de Fortune, Balzac's words retain their full significance. Hope gives the lover a life free from consuming desire in the knowledge and vision of his lady's perfection. And it holds the promise of happiness in imitation of her virtue. Imagination makes that knowledge attainable.

THE TRANSITION FROM THE JUGEMENT DOU ROY DE BEHAINGNE TO THE JUGEMENT DOU ROY DE NAVARRE

The conception of vraie amour founded on hope is set forth by Machaut for the first time in the Remede. The two earlier dits, the Vergier and the Jugement Behaingne, make nothing of the idea; they know only the problem created by unsatisfied desire, and see hope only as a temporary consolation. In the Vergier hope is uncertain, as the lover swings between desire and hope. There is no more than the possibility of pity sometime in the future, after loyal, secret, but also long service to the lady (Vergier, vv. 1290-93). The same is true in the Jugement Behaingne. The wavering between hope and desire is an effect of Fortune (vv. 684-700, 725-45), much as it is in the Remede's complainte. Noteworthy by contrast is the role of sight in the two dits. Sight is a source of grievous desire, indeed of a kind of impotence. In Macrobian terms, the Image is an insomnium.

Quant je vueil faire ma clamour
A ma dame de ma dolour,
Je ne la puis araisonner
Ne je ne puis un mot sonner,
Einsois pers toute contenance,
Scens, vigour, maniere et puissance,
Tant sui dou vëoir esperdus.

(Vergier, vv. 1095-1101)

[When I wish to remonstrate with my lady because of my pain, I cannot speak to her nor can I utter a single word. Rather I lose all self-control, wit, strength, manner, and force, so overwhelmed am I when I see her.]

In the Jugement Behaingne sight is decisive in the debate as to whether the lady or the gentleman suffers more in love. The lady's loved one has died, the man's has been unfaithful. He is judged the greater sufferer. The lady no longer sees her loved one and thus has no object for either hope or desire, whereas the unfaithful lady is still alive and thus condemns the man to hopeless desire for what once was (Jugement Behaingne, vv. 1005-8).⁴³ Before the Remede then, Machaut followed tradition in fusing desire and hope in fin'amors.⁴⁴ He was still very close to Guillaume de Lorris: hope is a conventional consolation, and there is no escape from suffering caused by unrequited desire, especially when the lover despairs of satisfying it. Fortune still holds sway, as at the end of the first part of the Rose.

It is therefore particularly significant that the Jugement dou roy de Navarre reverses the decision handed down in the Jugement Behaingne. The reversal has been ascribed to bemused, ironic condescension to the wishes of ladies offended by the decision favoring the man in the earlier poem.⁴⁵ But it was Machaut's new conception of love that made the revision necessary. Since the second Jugement and the Remede are virtually contemporary,⁴⁶ Machaut must have been anxious to correct his earlier conception of love as desire. In the Jugement Navarre, Desire is no longer among the counsellors who hand down the decision. In its place stands Souffissance,

Qui de trés humble pacience
Estoit richement äournée
Et abondanment säoulée
Et pleinne de tous biens terriens.
Elle n'avoit besoing de riens,
Ne li failloit chose nesune;
Hors estoit des mains de Fortune
Et de son perilleus dangier.

(Jugement Navarre, vv. 1288-95)

[who was richly adorned with and liberally abounding in most humble patience, and was full of all mundane goods. She required nothing, nor did she lack anything at all. She was outside Fortune's reach and her perilous domination.]

Only the real death of the loved one can deprive the lover of hope, and this is precisely the cause of the lady's loss in the Jugement Behaingne as well as here (Jugement Navarre, vv. 1842-56). But the man may still derive consolation and satisfaction from the knowledge that his lady is unworthy of him, the memory through dous penser and souvenir of past joy, and the hope that she may yet improve. And finally—a rather astonishing addition to the circumstances in the Jugement Behaingne—the lady left him for a good marriage! (Jugement Navarre, vv. 2517-30). This stress not only on souffissance and espoir, but also on mesure and bonneürtez, shows how profound a change occurred in Machaut's conception of love in the Remede, and underscores the extent to which love has now become a sublimation.

Each of the two Jugement poems debates an amatory problem, as in the dialogues of Andreas Capellanus and in numerous jeux-partis. The question seems trivial, even silly: Who suffers more, the lady whose lover has died or the man whose lady has abandoned him for another?⁴⁷ However, as so often in such debates, the immediate question is a convenient pretext for exemplifying important ideas and sentiments that determine the arguments and the final judgment. The later Jugement Navarre replaces love by desire with love by hope.

The change is apparent in the respective catalogues of abstractions accompanying the judge in each poem. As personifications, they make up his counsel. In the Jugement Behaingne appear Hardiesse, Prouesse, Largesse, Richesse, Amour, Biauté, Loiauté, Leesse, Desirs, Pensers, Volenté, Noblesse, Franchise, Honneur, Courtoisie, Jeunesse, and Raison (vv. 1476-91).⁴⁸ In the Jugement Navarre only two personifications survive from the earlier poem, Raison (vv. 1163-92) and Largesse (vv. 1265-78); the others are Congnoissance and Avis (vv. 1155-62), Attemprance (vv. 1193-1200), Pais and Concorde (vv. 1201-18), Foy and Constance (vv. 1219-26), Charité (vv. 1227-32), Honnestez (vv. 1233-38), Prudence and Sapience (vv. 1239-64), Doubtance de meffaire, with Honte and Paour (vv. 1279-86), Souffissance (vv. 1287-1304), and Mesure⁴⁹. Just as the first Jugement harks back to the Rose in its choice of personifications, so the new Jugement shows the striking influence of the Remede.

In the Jugement Behaingne, Raison expounds on the dangers of love.

                    Il n'est ame,
N'homme vivant qui aimme si sans blame,
S'il est tapez de l'amoureuse flame,
Qu'il n'aimme mieus assez le corps que l'ame.
                    Pour quel raison?
Amour vient de charnel affection,(50)
Et si desir et sa condition
Sont tuit enclin a delectation.
                    Si ne se puet
Nuls, ne nulle garder qui amer vuet
Qu'il n'i ait vice ou pechié; il l'estuet;
Et c'est contraire a l'ame qui s'en duet.
                    Et d'autre part,
Tout aussi tost com l'ame se depart
Dou corps, l'amour s'en eslonge et espart.
Einsi le voy partout, se Dieus me gart.(51)

(Jugement Behaingne, vv. 1704-19)

[There is no one alive whose love is so blameless—once he has been scorched by the flames of love—who does not love the body more than the soul. Why? Love comes of carnal desire, and its desires and its states are all inclined to delight. And no man nor woman who is willing to love can exclude vice or sin from it; it's unavoidable. And it is contrary to the soul, which is grieved by this state of affairs. And on the other hand, just as swiftly as the soul departs from the body, love quits it and is dissolved. I see it happen everywhere, so help me God.]

The decision is a foregone conclusion. Since the object of the lady's desire is dead, the desire itself must die with her just as it did in the deceased lover. But the gentleman's lady is unfaithful. He therefore is subject to jealousy and the suffering of unrequited desire. This is Reason's conclusion, and the judge accedes to her authority (Jugement Behaingne, vv. 1931-56).

Interesting in this debate is the conflict between Reason and Love. Reason insists that she never approved the gentleman's love (Jugement Behaingne, vv. 1725-26). Her words recall Reason in the Roman de la rose.

                    Les maus d'amer
Sont en son cuer qui li sont trop amer;
Qu'Amours le fait nuit et jour enflamer,
N'il ne vorroit, ne porroit oublier
                    Son anemie.
Savez pourquoy? Pour ce que Compaingnie,
Amour, Biauté et Juenesse la lie,
Et Loiauté, qu'oublier ne vueil mie,
                    En grant folie,
En rage, en dueil et en forcenerie
Le font languir, et en grant jalousie,
Et en peril de l'ame et de la vie.

(Jugement Behaingne, vv. 1728-39)

[The pains of love are in his heart, and they are very bitter for it. For Love makes him burn night and day, so that he would not, nor could he forget his fair enemy. Do you know why? Because Company, Love, Beauty, joyful Youth, and Fidelity cause him to languish in great folly, rage, grief, and madness, and in great jealousy, to the peril of his soul and his life.]

However different matters may have appeared while there still was the possibility that the lady would return his love, Reason insists that he ought to have given up Love and returned to Reason when she did finally abandon him for another (Jugement Behaingne, vv. 1746-51). This is consistent with Reason in Guillaume de Lorris' part of the Rose.

Of course, her opinion is not to the liking of Love and his followers. They attribute the gentleman's plight to his failure to allow Love to assuage his suffering by finding him a new, worthier love (vv. 1808-11). The solution is reasonable, and credible in Machaut even after the Remede de Fortune. In the later Dit de l'alerion, the lover loses an unworthy lady because she is unfaithful. Love intervenes to comfort him and find him a better lady (Alerion, vv. 3813-21). Even Reason encourages him to persevere in his good intentions while awaiting a more worthy love. And Reason leads the lover back to the garden of Deduit! (Alerion, vv. 4675-96) Essential in all these cases is adherence to the right kind of love rather than abandonment to desire, sadness, melancholy, a more or less figurative death like that after the complainte in the Remede. What does change, along with Reason's attitude to love, is the nature of love itself.

Or couvient que chascuns s'apuie
A bonne Amour secretement,
Se viveront discretement
A la soubreté de souffrance.
La trouveront il Esperance
De cui il seront pourveü,
Quant a ce point seront veü.

(Alerion, vv. 4668-74)

[It then behooves each person to rely secretly on good love, if they will live cautiously by the sobriety of long suffering. There they will discover Hope, with which they will be provided when they find themselves thus far advanced.]

These lines bespeak the profound change that accounts for the composition of a second Jugement with its new dramatis personae and new debate. Machaut is not striving to assuage women offended by the pronouncement against the lady in the Jugement Behaingne. He is presenting a retrial because his new conception of bonne amour in the Remede requires it.

In the Jugement Navarre, Machaut acknowledges the divergence and variety of forms and subjects he has written about (vv. 884-87). This is apparent despite superficial resemblances, in the divergent judgments handed down in the two dits. And there are other significant adaptations. Machaut separates Love and Nature in the Jugement Navarre.

Car Bonne Amour en sa part tient
Un cuer d'amant tant seulement
Sans naturel commandement.

(vv. 2174-76)

[For Good Love retains on his side a lover's heart alone, without the incitements of Nature.]

This conforms to Esperance's argument in the Remede. Love is not a bien de Nature but a bien de vertu. In both poems Machaut liberates love from external determination, dependence on another's will, and the misfortune of deceit. The bond between good love and virtue is implicit in the Jugement Navarre. Nature has no part in it.

Nature donne bien couleur
A ami d'un plaisant cuidier
Qui li fait folement cuidier
Acomplir ce qu'Amours desprise.
Et par si faite fole emprise
Sont fait maint incouvenient
Qui valent trop meins que niënt.
Plus desclairier ne m'en couvient
Pour ce que point d'onneur n'en vient.

(vv. 2186-94)

[Nature does give to the beloved the appearance of a pleasant thought which makes him foolishly presume to accomplish what Love scorns. And from such a foolish undertaking spring many improprieties which are worth much less than nothing. It is not proper for me to say more about it, for it redounds to no one's honor.]

These words are uttered by Pais.

In the trial Machaut plays the advocatus diaboli against his own ideas. He bases his case on feminine frailty, specifically woman's changeableness. The subterfuge is worthy of Jean de Meun, who founded his mysogynist bias on well-known and time-honored authority (Rose, vv. 15195-242 [15165-212]). Machaut uses la donna è mobile commonplace to demonstrate the unstable, fickle nature of woman. The argument has a certain cogency in a debate between a man and a woman, and Machaut, still playing the advocatus diaboli, interjects into the argument the erroneous opinion that the trial has to do with the two sexes. But the issues at stake go beyond the participants in the Imaginative trial. As Daniel Poirion has stated, “la vraie poésie n'est pas le simple reflet de la vie superficielle. Bien souvent, elle cherche à rejoindre l'essentiel, au-delà de la circonstance.”⁵² Whatever its appeal to those of Jean de Meun's persuasion, the diatribe against women raises serious questions that the counselors are quick to recognize and take umbrage at.

Most immediately, it contradicts Machaut's own protestations of service to ladies, and indeed the import of his entire œuvre. But beyond this (medieval writers are not necessarily consistent from work to work), the very universality of Machaut's condemnation undermines one of the cornerstones of the Remede's teaching.

Il est certain—et je l'afferme—
Qu'en cuer de femme n'a riens ferme,
Rien seür, rien d'estableté,
Fors toute variableté.

(Jugement Navarre, vv. 3019-22)

[It is certain, and I affirm it, that there is nothing solid in a woman's heart, nothing sure, nothing stable, but only absolute changeableness.]

If this is so, the goodness of the lady essential to the argument of the Remede is universally untenable, and the description of her qualities an insomnium. The whole foundation of fin' amors collapses before eternal feminine wiles.⁵³ The médisance is roundly condemned by the counselors.

Of course Machaut never argued that all women, or men, are perfect. The hierarchical distinction among the birds in the Alerion shows his awareness of realities and possibilities, and suggests the options left to the male lover in the Jugement Navarre. In the Alerion, the loss or betrayal by a loved one brings the lover back to Love and Reason so that he may await a new, worthier love. The two Jugements show, by topical adaptation, the same possibilities. The unfaithful lady in the Jugement Behaingne takes a lover “nouvellement, sans cause, autre que mi” (v. 705) [out of fickleness, for no reason, other than me]. She excuses herself on the grounds that Love, to whom she is ultimately subject, changed her inclination (vv. 746-63). In the Jugement Navarre, she leaves her lover for a good marriage. But marriage is no impediment to love. The pronouncement Andreas Capellanus ascribes to Marie de Champagne reverberates in Charité's words when she advises Machaut that, if the lady marries by necessity or through the counsel of her family,

                    ce n'est pas fais
Dont cils doie enchargier tel fais
Comme de lui desesperer;
Eins doit penser et esperer
Qu'elle y a profit et honneur,
Quant en la grace d'un signeur
Seroit de droit nommée dame.
Ceste raison bon cuer enflame
D'amer mieus assez que devant.

(Jugement Navarre, vv. 2517-25)

[this is nothing such that he ought to take on the burden of despair. Rather he ought to think and hope that she has profit and honor from it, when, by the grace of a lord, she should by rights be called a lady. This reason does enflame a heart to love much better than before.]

The idea is important to Machaut and is implicit in the understanding achieved in the conclusion to the Voir-Dit. For precisely the fact that the gentleman can hope for love despite his lady's marriage while the lady cannot because her lover has died necessitates the change in the second Jugement (vv. 1842-56). The Jugement Behaingne, where love is a manifestation of desire, may conclude that death removes the object of desire and thus releases the desire. But in the Jugement Navarre, the death of the loved one destroys all hope, and therefore the sorrow remains. This is not so if the loved one marries another person, since the lover may still hope in the virtuous sense of the Remede de Fortune.

Machaut concludes the Jugement Navarre with a recapitulation of the ideas found in the Remede. Reason pronounces the verdict, as she did in the Jugement Behaingne. Bonneurtez and those favored by him are not subject to Fortune, nor are they dependent on persons or circumstances. Self-sufficient love provides hope, and hope in love effects the realization of love.

La est Bonneürtez assise
Entre ami et loial amie
Qui ne vuelent que courtoisie.

(Jugement Navarre, vv. 3900-902)

[Happiness is there established between a lover and his faithful beloved who wish only courtesy.]

This new “courtly” love necessitated a reconsideration of the thesis propounded in the earlier Jugement Behaingne. The new conception is set forth and argued in the Jugement Navarre in an exemplary case, and in the Remede. The change is psychologically sound. The love of the Jugement Behaingne seeks to project the Image of the lady onto the real lady, and love is thus either an imposition or is dependent on that lady's acquiescence. The Jugement Navarre internalizes the Image as a pattern for virtue and excellence. Even the lady's marriage to another man cannot forestall such Imagination, nor deprive it of efficacy.

MACHAUT'S LATER DITS: THE CONTINUED UNION OF IMAGINATION AND HOPE

After the Remede de Fortune, all Machaut's dits adhere more or less explicitly to the new conception of fin' amors. In the Dit dou lyon:

Et se Dieus me doint nom d'ami
De li que j'aim trop mieus que mi,
Que s'il estoit a ma devise
Qu'en lui de mon petit servise
Deüsse avoir aucune joie,
Riens plus ne li demanderoie
Fors tant qu'a son trés dous viaire
Peüst bien mes services plaire
Et qu'elle sceüst que siens sui,
Si que mieus l'aim que mi n'autrui,
De cuer, sans pensée villeinne.

(vv. 249-59)⁵⁴

[And if God were to grant that I be beloved of her whom I love more than myself, and it depended on me that my small service should bring me some joy, I would ask no more of her than that my service should provide her pleasure and that she would know I am hers such that I love her more than myself or any other, sincerely, with no villainous thought.]

The passage is entirely consistent with the opening lines of the lai in the Remede, as well as with the life of the lover after he returns to his Lady at the end of that dit. In the Alerion:

Et cil qui a destre se tiennent,
Si qu'amant loial se maintiennent,
N'ont chose qui bien ne leur plaise.
S'il ont merci, il sont moult aise;
S'il ne l'ont, il prennent substance
De par moy [i.e. Amour] et bonne Esperence,
De quoy il sont si bien chevi
Qu'il sont tout adès assevi

(vv. 2897-2904)

[And those holding to the right so that they remain faithful lovers, have nothing that does not please them. If they have mercy, they are very happy about it. If they do not, they draw sustenance from me [i.e. Love] and from good Hope, with which they are so well provided that they are ever content.]

This contrasts with the “Faus prians” (v. 2860) who require their lady's merci (v. 2878) to satisfy desire.

S'il l'ont, il n'en scevent que faire,
N'il leur desplaist, n'il leur puet plaire,
N'il ne scevent de quoy il vivent.
Adont dedens leurs cuers s'avivent
Foles pensées couvoiteuses,
De bien pointes et souffraiteuses.
La ont il planté de deffaut
Et si ne scevent qu'il leur faut.
Et s'on les sert de brief refus,
Estre n'en puelent que confus,
Car parmi le refus s'aïrent,
Pour ce qu'a senestre se tirent.

(vv. 2879-90)

[If they have it, they don't know what to do with it; it doesn't displease them, nor can it please them, nor do they know what sustains them. Whereupon in their hearts revive foolish, possessive thoughts, at once goaded by and lacking good. There they have an abundance of lack, and yet don't know what they lack. And if they are given a quick refusal, it can only mix them up; for in the very act of receiving the refusal they grow angry, wherefore they pull to the left side]

There is no more qualitative distinction in Machaut's mind between possession or lack of merci than there is in Andreas Capellanus between amor purus and amor mixtus. But for Machaut, merci is a secondary consideration, and fin'amors may offer just as much contentment without it. Christine de Pisan expresses similar views in the Rose debate, and the Commentator on the Echecs amoureux makes such a distinction characteristic of fin'amors. In these works, as in the Alerion (vv. 4341-48), the union of Reason and Love accounts for the division between the good and bad lover. The Fonteinne amoureuse expresses the same ideas,⁵⁵ stressing the domination of hope over melancholy despite the long complainte in which hope seems to surrender to desire, melancholy, and despair. Hope is possible because of the lady's Image.

Car d'Esperance la seüre
Par ton ymage nette et pure
Contre Desir et sa pointure
                    Me garniray.

(Fonteinne amoureuse, vv. 2267-70)

[For I shall arm myself with sure Hope against Desire and his sting by means of your clear and pure Image].

Hence Imagination restores Esperance. Venus herself loses her inflammatory character (vv. 1307-24) and becomes consolation distinct from Desire (vv. 2351-66).

Machaut's new conception of love is bound up with his attempt to fit good love into traditional ideals, and in particular into a Boethian framework. This is implicit in the Remede and the Confort. But it is also evident in the Jugement Navarre. In Reason's decision, the implications of Machaut's conception of Bonneurtez are set forth not only for love (vv. 3893-3908), but also for Nature (vv. 3857-76),⁵⁶ prosperity (vv. 3887-88), friendship (vv. 3889-92), knighthood (vv. 3909-27), and learning both public and private (vv. 3928-56). Nor are these the only domains within which the principle of Bonneurtez is operative (vv. 3881-83). Here again we encounter the emanation of an abstract principle into the frequent and varied realms of human activity and experience. The technique is frequentatio.

Mais je n'en diray hui le tiers,
Non mie, par Dieu, le centisme.
Car dès le ciel jusques en bisme
Ses puissances par tout s'espandent,
Et de ses puissances descendent
Circonstances trop mervilleuses,
Et sont a dire perilleuses,
Qui s'apruevent par leur contraire.

(Jugement Navarre, vv. 3840-47)

[But I shall not express now even a third, nay, in faith, the hundredth part of its power. For its power extends everywhere from heaven even into the very depths, and there descend from its power very marvellous circumstances, ones which are perilous to say, but which are proven by their opposite.]

Reason, who is speaking, thus extends by Imagination the scope and instruction beyond love itself in order to situate and support her analysis of love. Machaut does much the same thing in his presentation of Art at the outset of the Remede. The use of proof by contraries is a device familiar from Scholastic logic.⁵⁷ At the beginning of the Jugement Navarre Machaut opposes the grief from the plague of 1348-49 to the joy and good fortune that follow,⁵⁸ when a reasonable love is possible, one that guarantees the lover's happiness because of the sublimation of desire in hope (Jugement Navarre, vv. 2919-21). This too is common, traditional wisdom (Jugement Navarre, vv. 2122-24). Similar thought appears at the beginning to the Alerion (vv. 1-129). And it is, as we have seen, systematically and gradualistically elaborated in the Confort d'ami.

In the Voir-Dit Machaut suggests merci along with the sublimation. Yet even here he leaves the curious in doubt, as Venus causes a cloud to descend upon Péronne d'Armentières in bed with her septuagenarian lover. We never learn whether Machaut suffered the disappointments of a Goethe or the successes of a Hugo with young women (Voir-Dit, pp. 157-60). This is because it does not matter whether he obtains merci or not, since love is self-sufficient and not dependent on desire. Elsewhere in the Voir-Dit Machaut argues for hope as a palliative to desire, an escape from the wheel of Fortune, and a source of security and integrity in love.⁵⁹

In Machaut's fixed forms we find the new conception of love in some poems, while others still advance the more conventional courtly love described in the Vergier and the Jugement Behaingne. Perhaps most of them were written in Machaut's earlier, less settled years. The longer dits fall principally after his fortieth year. Only among the lais does the new conception appear especially prominent. One has the impression that Machaut deemed the new love suitable to the most difficult and consequently most excellent fixed form. The emphasis on hope in the lais is striking, given the importance assigned to both the subject and the form of the lai in the Remede and the Voir-Dit.⁶⁰ The one other prominent subject in the lais is the Virgin Mary.

Machaut's idealism is obviously impracticable in most times and places. The quarrel in Jean le Seneschal's composite Cent Ballades concerning the relative advantages of fidelity and infidelity,⁶¹ the whole tricky question of sincerity that will suddenly loom large in courtly writing at the turn of the century, and the superhuman demands of virtuous hope as Machaut envisages it—all these considerations were to bring crashing down the whole elevated structure of the Remede, like the nave at Beauvais a century earlier, almost as soon as it was raised. The Image was too abstract for matière. Yet it is still curious to observe this final, outwardly effortless extension of the courtly spirit to the limit of a love both virtuous and mundane, before skepticism and cynicism, or realism, discarded it once and for all. The debate in the Belle dame sans mercy and the conclusion to Jehan de Saintré are telling arguments against Machaut's conception of fin'amors as a viable ideal, despite the rigor and authority of his argument.

The characteristics peculiar to Machaut's conception of courtly love have significant implications for the notion of love as an art and for Imagination in the art of poetry. Certainly the stress on hope and the resulting sublimation of desire had repercussions on otherwise conventional commonplaces, embroidered upon and varied in expression, but largely the same for most courtly poets since the twelfth century. In particular the sublimation raises anew the question of the relation of the love Machaut describes to Christian morals, especially in the light of his amalgamation in the Voir-Dit of reasonable love and an “idolatrous” representation of the god of Love and the Image of the lady.

SUBLIMATION, MORALITY, AND IMAGINATION

Sublimation represents a movement away from the concrete apprehension of a person or object by means of a transpersonal, idealized projection. The Image which realizes that projection reacts upon the individual realizing the sublimation by Imagination so as to depersonalize him or her. Thus the type tends to supplant the individual, as the arts of poetry foresaw in the instruction on descriptio as representation.

          Davumque a pectore tolle,
Nec vultu mentire Numam. Concordia vultum
Affectumque liget.(62)

[Take Davus out of your heart, and do not feign Numa in your face. Let Concord bind together your expression and your sentiments.]

In Machaut's case, the movement from desire to hope entailed the idealization and sublimation in the Imagination of love. For time has no power to cause the Rose of such a love to fade and die.

Mais vraiement ymaginer ne puis
Que la vertus, où ma rose est enclose,
Viengne par toy [Fortune] et par tes faus conduis,
Ains est drois dons naturex; si suppose
                    Que tu n'avras ja vigour
D'amanrir son pris et sa valour.

(“Balade notée XXXI,” vv. 9-14)

[But truly, I can not Imagine that the virtue wherein my rose is enclosed comes from you (Fortune) and your false conduct. Rather it is a true natural endowment. And it presumes that you will never have the power to lessen her renown and worth.]

Accordingly, a more impersonal, abstract Image becomes appropriate to the representation of the lady. She becomes, in keeping with Machaut's conception of Art expressed in the Remede, a “master” to imitate and to love. Imagined only as the abstractions representing her qualities—ex sensu quo fiunt—the qualities exist in a realm outside any materiality save their representation in the lover himself. But, ideally, to equal the lady in love the lover must divest himself of his materiality as well, that is, his desire must sublimate as hope. Only in this way can the Rose never fade and the aging poet experience the love described in the Voir-Dit. Machaut is coming close to Intellection, the incommunicable direct contemplation of abstractions that precludes poetry because it would pass beyond the vocis imago, the verbal representation of the idea as an Image formed in the mind and projected onto paper. In the Remede, we have observed the progressive abstraction from the description of the lady to the description of love. Machaut could go no further. He thus returned to a real world bathed indeed in the splendor of a sublimated love, but actualized in mundane activities in the final description of life with his lady.

The principal Image in the Remede is the extended dialogue—at points, the debate—between the poet and Esperance personified. The second Image is in two parts that are circumjacent to the dialogue. It contains the lai, and exemplifies the good and bad love elucidated by Esperance. The plan is thus as follows:

Poet and Lady: Fearful love (vv. 357-1495)—1139 lines

Poet and Esperance (vv. 1496-2964)—1469 lines.

Poet and Lady: hopeful love (vv. 2965-4256)—1292 lines.

The first meeting between the poet and the lady illustrates the wrong kind of love, based on fear, uncertainty as to the lady's feelings towards him, and the possibility of the lover's failure to realize his desire. The second meeting illustrates the right kind of love. It rests on the certainty that the lady knows his sentiments and cannot but respond to a love purified and sublimated as hope.

But most significant is the appearance of Esperance herself. Besides the formal discussion of love and hope, Esperance realizes metaphorically her qualities by the Boethian Image of light penetrating clouds. This Image, at the beginning and the middle of her section,⁶³ recalls the splendor and revitalizing influence of Boethius' Philosophia, of whom she is an obvious parody.

Finally, the Remede is interspersed with various emblematic Images, the most interesting of which are the shield of love described by Esperance⁶⁴ and inspired by the features of the lover himself that, in Machaut's estimation, are “la vraie et loyal enseingne / Que nuls faus amoureus ne porte” (vv. 1854-55)⁶⁵ [the true and faithful emblem that no false lover bears]; the statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream from Daniel 2.32-33 (vv. 1001-1096); and the ring of Esperance (vv. 2094-2109, 4053-96). But because of its more discursive character, the Remede is not Machaut's best example of an elaborate Imagination.

As personification began to recede as a viable trope for Imagination, a new source of Images already latent in personification assumed prominence: Ovidian mythography. The greatest immedite influence upon the choice of figures were the mythographies, above all the Ovide moralisé.⁶⁶ The Ovide moralisé, like the later Commentary on the Echecs amoureux, allows for three kinds of allegorical readings for the Images of the gods and goddesses borrowed from Ovid: historical, astrological, and moral. Historically, the figures of classical mythology were considered euhemerizations, and became patterns for conduct in later historical events and persons; this is broadly a kind of typology, or allegorical figuration not so much in the sense of prefiguration as of exemplification.⁶⁷ Both Machaut and Froissart use it extensively. It functions as proof in argumentation in Machaut's debate poems because of the alleged historicity of the mythological personages.⁶⁸ The astrological sense construes the gods and goddesses as planets that influence the lives of men. It is reflected in Froissart's treatment of the commonplace ages of man. The scheme is worked out in the Joli buisson de jonece, which, together with the Espinette amoureuse, describes the young man's progress during the age of Venus, from that of Mercury to that of the Sun, that is, from childhood playmates through a fin' amors to the time when the grizzly poet turns to the Virgin Mary in prayer.⁶⁹ The chronological progression prefigures Charles d'Orléans' Retenue d'amours and Songe en complainte, except that in the latter dit Nonchaloir supplants the Virgin Mary. Astrological figures also encompass natural phenomena and bestiary figures, both of which are invented and allegorized with some originality in Machaut's and Froissart's love poems.⁷⁰ Finally, the moral allegory of mythological figures is paramount in the Ovide moralisé in imitation of which both poets expressed their views on the morals of courtly love through both personifications and mythological figures.

The moralizations of Ovid thus established an awareness of the allegorical possibilities of mythology and illustrated a methodology useful for Imagination. A few gods and goddesses had already intruded into vernacular literature, making their presence acceptable and assimilable, by extension, to non-religious contexts. Furthermore the standard medieval source of religious allegory, the bestiary, had been successfully mined for Images amenable to the context of courtly love by Marie de France, Richart de Fornival, Nicole de Margival, and others.⁷¹ But the bestiary did not prove durable. Only Machaut used it extensively and with originality, in the Dit de l' alerion.

The Alerion is an elaborate, although structurally simple, allegorical disquisition on good and bad love. A discursive framework describes, classifies, and ranks the various loves of the poet in conformity with an aristocratic hierarchy of birds of prey. Its simplicity is apparent by comparison with Fornival's Bestiaires, in which there is elaborate interplay between argument and bestiary illustration. The Alerion is limited to one kind of animal, ravenous birds of prey differentiated according to their relative nobility determined in the sport of bird hunting.⁷² The technique is alternation of letter and gloss. There are five sections in the Alerion distinguishable by one of four birds as “beast”:

1. The sparrow hawk (vv. 130-1557).

2. The alerion, part 1 (vv. 1558-3028).

3. The eagle (vv. 3029-3812).

4. The gerfalc (vv. 3813-4524).

5. The alerion, part 2 (vv. 4525-4784).

Different kinds of ladies are identified with the different birds, and their actions are interpreted autobiographically by Machaut in chronological sequence within the context of fin' amors. The relative mobility of the different ladies' love corresponds to the bird with which each is assimilated. The gloss is itself continuous, insofar as the lover's quest of his lady, his errors and fortune, provide a view of love typical in Machaut. There is emphasis on excellence and hope in order to “vivre seculerement” (v. 2; cf. vv 4668-90) and virtuously.

But despite its ingeniosity and the interest of much of Machaut's interpretations, indeed despite its originality the consistent glossing of detail moves the Alerion dangerously close to the “one-to-one” relation that Rosemond Tuve has shown to be inimical to the best allegory.⁷³ When all mystère is signification, little or no merveille remains for the nondiscursive play between letter and sense that distinguishes Guillaume de Lorris. The Dit dou lyon, chronologically prior to the Alerion, avoids this pitfall by a more ambivalent representation of the Lion on the Island of Loyal Lovers. Like Guillaume's Rose, the Lion is not glossed. Yet his fidelity in an amorous context illustrates meaningfully the trials and rewards of noble love.

But Machaut's didacticism in the Alerion is deliberate. Detailed interpretation of each episode in the bird section is his constant concern.

Or poons nous ci regarder,
Pour aucuns poins de droit garder,
En faisant en po d'argument,
Pour moustrer plus evidemment
De ce que j'ay ci devant dit
Les entencions de mon dit,
Dont je moustre par exemplaire.(74)

(vv. 1633-38)

[Now we may consider this matter, in order to keep certain facts straight, by means of a topical elaboration so as to demonstrate more convincingly, on the basis of what I said before, the intention of my dit; this I shall show by exemplification.]

Imagination should express the Image in the heart of the lover. In the Lyon, Machaut represents the lady as the Image in his heart that inspires thought, the immoderata cogitatio of Andreas Capellanus.

Car la trés douce imprecion
De son ymagination
Est en mon cuer si fort empreinte
Qu'encor y est et yert l'empreinte.(75)

(Lyon, vv. 207-10)

[For the most gentle impression of her Imagination is so firmly impressed in my heart that the impression is still there and ever will be.]

These pensers provide the substance of the various Images, particularly the bestiary figures, that people the Lyon and the Alerion. As in Raoul de Houdenc's Roman des eles, the alerion is an Image of the ever rising virtue and quality of the lady.

Lors par ymagination
Perçoit dedens s'entention
Sa dame monter par humblesse
Tout au plus haut air de noblesse.

(Alerion, vv. 2589-92)

[Then by Imagination he perceived with his understanding his lady rise in humility to the very heights of nobility.]

The Imagined flight transpires entirely in the Imagination of the poet.

Quant monter la voit telement
Des yeus de son entendement
Et bien parfaitement y pense.

(Alerion, vv. 2593-95)

[When he sees and considers thoroughly with the eyes of understanding her great upward flight.]

A psychomachia ensues wherein the poet is torn between an awareness of his own circumscribed qualities and his will to rise with the lady. One is as if transposed into the sentiment inspiring Bernart de Ventadorn's Image of the rising and falling lark. The Image reverts, however, to its source, the unified perfection of the lady contrasted with the uncertain inner dichotomy of the lover.

Il la voit par voie ordonnée
Comme alerion eslevée
En haut air de grace et d'onneur
Avec Amours, son droit signeur,
Si haut que li entendemens
De l'amant en ses jugemens
Ne scet desclairier verité,
Tant y a haute quantité
De noblesses et de vertus.

(Alerion, vv. 2651-59)

[He sees her rise like the alerion in ordered flight into the upper reaches of grace⁷⁶ and honor with Love, her proper lord; so high was she that the lover's understanding could not by his estimation of it express its truth, so great is its nobility and virtue.]

The lady's inimitable virtues nonetheless require imitation in the lover in order for him to be worthy of her. She is so far above him that he can scarcely comprehend, let alone overcome, the distance. The Image is an adequate rendering of the descriptive problem in Imagination.

The Jugement Behaingne and Navarre and the Confort d' ami stress allegorical personification and mythological figures. Remarkable in the three dits is Machaut's use of examples as proof. These are taken not only from Ovidian mythology but also from recent French history. Their significance derives from the context, from the careful delineation of truth in the form of sensible Images.

The sublimation of fin' amors, its separation from Nature and desire, was effected by showing its subordination to and derivation from Bonneurtez and virtue, as well as its complementary relationship with Souffissance and Esperance. The attempt in the Remede to elicit a more refined love distinguishable from other kinds, whether courtly or not, corresponds to an artistic intention going back to Andreas Capellanus and Guillaume de Lorris, and typical of the troubadours and trouvères as well. But Machaut, like Andreas Capellanus, is concerned with questions that transcend poetic evocation, questions which concerned scientific and moral writers in the twelfth century. Frequentatio in example, personification, and bestiary figures, leads to a fin' amors that was unique to and died with Machaut. But it had parallels which are meaningful and explicit in other realms of man's moral, scientific, and political life.

Notes

1. Troilus II.25-28.

2. Lionel J. Friedman, “Gradus amoris,” Romance Philology 19 (1965-66), 167-77. The “typical” did not preclude adaptive variations, as in Matthew of Vendôme's “ordinaria successio” of six steps described in the Ars versificatoria, p. 183, § 13; see Friedman, “Gradus,” pp. 170-71.

3. Cf. Machaut's Dit de la harpe, v. 259, Karl Young, ed., in Essays Albert Feuillerat, ed. H. Peyre (New Haven, 1943). See also Calin, Poet, p. 228.

4. Cf. also “niceté” (v. 847) and irrational love (vv. 856-62), suggesting the Rose's description of love by oxymoron (vv. 4293-358 [4263-328]) and that in the Remede (vv. 1129-60).

5. The lover's “idolatry,” kneeling before his lady's mansion to beseech aid and encouragement from Amour and Esperance, corresponds to the lover offering homage to the god of Love in the Rose (vv. 1932-58 [1930-56]). See Wimsatt, Chaucer, pp. 110-12.

6. Ursprung, p. 16: “Und zwar liegen jene Elemente, deren Auflösung aus den Phänomenen Aufgabe des Begriffes ist, in den Extremen am genauesten zutage. Als Gestaltung des Zusammenhanges, in dem das Eirmalig-Extreme mit seinesgleichen steht, ist die Idee umschrieben. … Das Empirische … wird um so tiefer durchdrungen, je genauer es als ein Extremes eingesehen werden kann. Vom Extremen geht der Begriff aus.”

7. Åke Blomqvist, ed. (Karlshamn, 1951), v. 4991.

8. Eds. John E. Matzke and Maurice Delbouille, (Paris, 1936), vv. 1-2; cf. vv. 3-74.

9. Köhler, Ideal, pp. 187-88. See also Raymond Lincoln Kilgour, The Decline of Chivalry as Shown in the French Literature of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1937).

10. Jauss, Grundriß, VI.1, 150-151, 163-64.

11. Cf. the Fonteinne amoureuse, ed. Hoepffner, Œuvres, III, xxv-xxviii; and Froissart's Bleu Chevalier. On the latter, see Normand R. Cartier, “Le Bleu chevalier,” Romania 87 (1966), 289-314.

12. In the Remede Complainte, Machaut refers to Boethius as a useful aid in resisting Fortune, vv. 982-84.

13. It is also emphasized in Alain Chartier's Traité de l'esperance. See Les Œuvres, ed. André du Chesne (Paris, 1617), pp. 277 ff. It thus corrects a state of melancholy analogous to Chaucer's in the Book of the Duchess: “En ceste dolente & triste pensee, qui tousiours se presente a mon cueur, & m'accompaigne au leuer & au coucher, dont les nuiz me sont longues, & ma vie ennuyeuse; ay long temps trauaillé & foullé mon petit Entendement, qui tant est surpris & enuironné de desplaisans frenesies, que ie ne le puis exploictier à choses dont me viegne liesse ne confort. Et comme n'agueres la memoire des choses passees, l'expouentement des dispositions presentes, & l'orribleté des perilz auenir eussent reueillé tous mes douloreux regraiz, mes adoulees imaginations, & ma paour deffiee de seureté; ie demouray comme homme esperdu, le visage blesme, le sens troublé, & le sang meslé ou corps” (p. 263).

14. This is not dissimilar to Tristan's use of the “salle aux images” in Thomas d'Angleterre. But Tristan's Images lead to “errance” and jealousy rather than reasonable expectation (see Turin¹, vv. 14-17).

15. Machaut cites his authority again in the Voir-Dit, v. 5447.

16. The following discussion owes much to Martha Wallen's unpublished Ph.D. minor thesis (University of Wisconsin, 1971) “The Illumination of Guillaume de Machaut's Confort d'ami.”

17. Here self-knowledge is awareness of one's duties.

18. Cf. Robertson, Preface, pp. 233-34: for Machaut, “love should be allied with virtue rather than with Fortune, so that its aims are consonant with the principle that true happiness rests in God”. Similarly, Froissart has Love proclaim, “après Dieu je puis sur tous” (“Cour de may,” v. 963).

19. In Balade CCIII, the poet complains that his “idol,” unlike Pygmalion's, does not become “une vive creature” (vv. 15-16).

20. Cf. the reference to Morpheus' importance—and thus the significance of dream visions in the Fonteinne amoureuse and the Voir-Dit—in the latter dit's allusions to the former; see Hoepffner, ed., Machaut, Œuvres, III, xxi-xxii.

21. On Machaut's borrowings from Boethius in the Remede, see Hoepffner, ed. Œuvres, II, xix-xxxii; and Calin, Poet, pp. 57-62. Esperance's independence from Fortune is perhaps adumbrated in passages from the Consolation like “Quid si haec ipsa mei mutabilitas iusta tibi causa est sperandi meliora?” (II Prose ii.43-44) Spes is elsewhere described as “lubrica” (IV Metrum ii.8). Machaut's adaptation is neither profound nor servile; one may indeed apply to Machaut what Edward Kennard Rand has written of Boethius' own art of adaptation. It “is not a thing of shreds and patches, of clippings and pilferings, of translatings and extractings, but springs from two main sources, ingenium and memoria” Founders of the Middle Ages, p. 164. This is applicable to Machaut's conception of art as expressed in the Remede, vv. 1-44, and the Prologue; for the art of love, see the Remede, vv. 61-86, 135-66.

22. Cf. such passages as “O felix hominum genus, / Si uestros animos amor / Quo caelum regitur regat” (II Metrum viii.28-30); “Sic aeternos reficit cursus / Alternus amor” (IV Metrum vi. 16-17); or “Hic est cunctis communis amor / Repetuntque boni fine teneri, / Quia non aliter durare queant, / Nisi conuerso rursus amore / Refluant causae quae dedit esse” (IV Metrum vi. 44-48). See Rand, Founders, p. 169.

23. De amore, p. 1 [p. 28]. Both extant Old French translations of the definition, by Jean de Meun and Drouart la Vache, retain only carnal desire. Drouart, vv. 143-46: “Ainsi com Venus le commande, / Par qui chascuns amans demande / Plus l'acoler et le baisier / Que lui d'autre chose aaisier.” Jean, Rose, vv.4381-86 [4351-56]: “ardeur nee / De vision desordenee, / Pour acoler et pour besier / Pour els charnelment aesier. / Amant autre chose n'entent, / Ains s'art et se delite en tant.” Jean then adds by way of clarification: “De fruit aveir ne fait il force; / Au deliter senz plus s'efforce” (vv. 4387-88 [4357-58]). As such the definitions include only what Andreas classifies as love for peasants, nimia voluptatis abundantia, or, at best, a hasty amor simplex. No time is left for hope, or for inquiring into Love's praecepta. This is the reason for Christine de Pisan's attack on Jean de Meun's inadequate survey of love.

24. On these distinctions, see my article “Courtly Love,” pp. 119-47. Also, on the prominence of the distinction before Andreas, see Cropp, Vocabulaire, pp. 253-74; and Topsfield, Troubadours, passim.

25. In Guillaume's Rose, vv. 3959-4058 [3931-4028]. His lover fluctuates between hope for love and unrequited desire.

26. See Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, Mass., 1927), pp. 90-98; Chrétien de Troyes, Der Percevalroman, ed. Alfons Hilka (Halle, 1932), vv. 4646-47 note (p. 715); Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, II, xvii-xviii; Pickering, Literature, pp. 168-222.

27. See also the lady in the Fonteinne amoureuse, vv. 2207-10. The Bestiaires d'amours also equates death with despair (p. 29, ll. 3-6).

28. Especially vv. 1619-26, 1701-6, 2403-10; and De consolatione, I Prose vi.39-62. The lai, like the other fixed forms in the Remede, provides a thematic structure for the discursive and narrative elaboration in the octosyllabic couplets; see Calin, Poet, p. 71; Robertson, Preface, p. 233.

29. Vv. 2467-71; and De consolatione, II Prose iv.79-84.

30. De consolatione, IV Prose iii. See as well Richart de Fornival's Consaus d'amours, pp. 6-7 (§§ 3-4).

31. C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge, 1964), p. 86.

32. Note the lady's allusion to the ambiguity of bien in La Belle Dame sans mercy, v. 425.

33. Cf. again La Belle Dame sans mercy, vv. 569-76.

34. Poirion, Poète, p. 131. Cf. Remede, vv. 347-51.

35. Richart de Fornival makes the same case, stressing at the same time that seignorie has no place in good love (Bestiaires, p. 89, ll. 1-2). The problem comes up in Chrétien's Erec as well; see Douglas Kelly, “La Forme et le sens de la quête dans l'Erec et Enide de Chrétien de Troyes,” Romania 92 (1971), 343, n. 1, and 349-52.

36. De consolatione III Prose ix.80-98.

37. The use of sublimatio in a parallel sense is attested in Chenu, “Imaginatio,” pp. 595-96; and in his “Spiritus,” p. 232, n. 79.

38. De amore, p. 10; Wace, Brut, vv. 10513-20.

39. See Hoepffner, ed. Œuvres, II, xiv n. 2; Brinkmann, Wesen, pp. 89-90; Wimsatt, Chaucer, p. 174, n. 6. Machaut makes the same assertion in the Lyon, vv. 1136-44, and in Balade CCLXXII. Richart de Fornival also stresses the significance of appearances, both in the Consaus (pp. 17-18, § 33), and in the Bestiaires (pp. 22, l. 5-23, l. 1; 71, l. 1-72, l. 7). See also the Response du Bestiaire (pp. 129, l. 14-130, l. 11). Note as well the distinctions made in the Epistolae duorum amantium: “Raro quenquam invenimus in hoc salo tam composite felicitatis, tam perfecte virtutis, quin corpus eius non bene politum, deesse sibi peniteat multum, nisi tu solus, qui per omnia et in omnibus extas virtuosus” (Letter LXXXVIII); see also Letter CIX.

40. Wimsatt, Chaucer, p. 111. Cf. the judicious remark of Calin (Poet, p. 28): “The semantic range of courtly vocabulary is sufficiently wide, especially in the late Middle Ages, to allow for a sensual or a chaste interpretation of joie and don. I believe that readers or listeners were free to interpret such words each in his own way, according to his own temperament.” See also p. 61.

41. On this subject see Steadman, “Courtly Love,” pp. 20-26; Robertson, Preface, pp. 108-10, 457-60; and Calin, Poet, p. 245.

42. Cf. von den Steinen, “Sujets,” p. 171, on Hildebert de Lavardin: “Hildebert est évêque de tout son cœur; il n'en revient pas moins toujours à la figure idéale du sage, épris de vertu et du désir de connaître, donc à l'abri des coups de la Fortune.” There is thus common ground in Hildebert's and Machaut's love poetry. The Vir in the Epistolae duorum amantium also distinguishes his and his lady's love from the kind subject to Fortune (Letter L). The exchange between the Vir and the Mulier, tentatively attributed to Abaelard and Heloise by the editor, Ewald Könsgen (pp. 93-103), is markedly similar to that evinced in the letters of Machaut and Péronne d'Armentières in the Voir-Dit.

43. See the Jugement Behaingne, vv. 938-47, 989-99, 1941-56, and especially 1934-35: “Que cils amans est plus loing de confort / Que la dame ne soit, que Dieus confort.”

44. See for example Love's companions in the Vergier, vv. 613-14, 621-22. In the Jugement Behaingne, see vv. 896-99; the counsellors in debate include Desirs (v. 1482, 1991), and it is obvious that love may be hopeless. The Vergier was greatly influenced by Guillaume's Rose; see Hoepffner, ed. Œuvres, I, lvi-lvii. Machaut does not acknowledge explicitly his debt to Guillaume de Lorris; however, he alludes to the Rose in the Prise d'Alexandrie, vv. 8492-93, and the Voir-Dit, p. 28. In both the Vergier and the Jugement Behaingne, the lover has at least a modicum of hope while suffering from desire: the promise of reward sometime in the future. The same is true in Guillaume's Rose (vv. 2765-67 [2745-47]).

45. Hoepffner, ed., Œuvres, I, lxix. Calin, Poet, p. 45, correctly points out that the roles could easily be reversed, and thus do not depend on the litigants' sex.

46. There is no general agreement on the precise chronology of the two Jugement poems and the Remede, but the sequence Jugement Behaingne, Remede, Jugement Navarre enjoys favor. It seems certain that the last two follow the first and are nearly contemporary with each other.

47. The theme acquired a certain actuality in the Hundred Years War; see Chartier's Livre des quatre dames and the evocation of the plague at the beginning to the Jugement Navarre. Cf. Robertson, Preface, p. 236, n. 158.

48. See vv. 1989-95, where however Noblesse is missing.

49. Appears later, v. 1597.

50. Is Machaut adapting Andreas' definition?

51. For example, at the end of Chaucer's Troilus; and, with slight variations to account for aging, in Gower's Confessio amantis, Froissart's Joli buisson de jonece, and Charles d'Orléans' Songe en complainte.

52. Poète, p. 101; see also pp. 102-3.

53. “Ce que je di n'est pas contrueve, / Car chascuns le dit et apprueve; / Et pour ce que chascuns le dit, / L'ay je recordé en mon dit” (Jugement Navarre, vv. 3055-58); cf. Jean de Meun, Rose, vv. 15222-32 [15192-202].

54. In the Remede, see vv. 653-80. The lover's service in the last part of the dit exemplifies this.

55. Fonteinne amoureuse, vv. 2267-70, 2335-50. The change is striking, since these lines are in the complainte, which thus corrects the Remede's complainte.

56. This is related to the conflict between astrological determinism and human freedom. Bernardus Silvestris accorded it special emphasis; see Stock, Myth, pp. 26-30, 164-67, and Wetherbee, Platonism, pp. 153-58.

57. Rose, vv. 21573-82 [21543-52]. Cf. Paré, Idées, pp. 31-32. It is current; cf. Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (Darmstadt, 1964), I, 58-59.

58. By analogy, survival of the plague corresponds to passing through the misfortunes of love; only death is irremediable, for death dissipates all love. On the analogy between the poem's subject and its melancholy introduction, see Robertson, Preface, pp. 235-36.

59. See especially pp. 141-42. On p. 167 and following, Esperance intervenes as a personification, reminding the lover of the “Lay de l'esperance” alluded to in the Confort, and inserted here in its entirety (pp. 172-80). See especially strophe 10: “Si, n'est vie / Si jolie / Com de desiree amie, / En espoir / Qui chastie / Et maistrie / Desir, si qu'il n'ait maistrie / Ne pooir, / Qu'il detrie. / Vie lie, / Quant Espoirs ne l'amolie” (pp. 178-79). There is an allusion to Boethius in v. 5447 (p. 231), and Fortune and Souffissance are contrasted further on: “si vivrons en joie & en plaisance, & si aurons parfaite souffisance. Et aussi, nous serons hors des dangiers de Fortune” (p. 367). In general, see pp. 352-60 of the Voir-Dit; also Calin, Poet, p. 233.

60. See especially Chichmaref, ed. Lais VIII-IX, XIII-XIV, XVII-XXI. In XXI, the “Lay de la rose,” the rose represents hope. Even in lais in which despair prevails, it is because of death, as in the Jugement Navarre. Cf. the “Lay dou plour” at the end of the Jugement Navarre and the “Lay mortel,” XII, vv. 171-79: “Si prent la venjence / De m'outrecuidence / Amours qui me lance / De mortel fer da sa lance; / C'est desesperence / En lieu d'esperance.” On the lai, Deschamps notes in the Art de dictier: “C'est une chose longue et malaisée a faire et trouver” (Œuvres, VII, 287).

61. Ed. Gaston Raynaud (Paris, 1905).

62. Johannes de Hauvilla, Architrenius, ed. Paul Gerhard Schmidt (Munich, 1974), VII, vv. 416-18 (p. 247).

63. Vv. 1520-26, 2195-286.

64. Vv. 1863-934. See Poirion, Poète, pp. 63-66.

65. See also vv. 1776-804, 3837-40.

66. De Boer, ed., Ovide moralisé, XV, 28-43; Froissart, Espinette, p. 33 and passim in notes.

67. Demats, Fabula.

68. Marc-René Jung “Poetria: Zur Dichtungstheorie des ausgehenden Mittelalters in Frankreich,” Vox Romanica 30 (1971), 44-64.

69. Joli buisson, vv. 1554-707, 5078-438. Cf. Froissart's Espinette, v. 125, and vv. 402-4, note (p. 175).

70. For example, Machaut's Dit dou Lyon and Dit de l'alerion.

71. Jauss, Grundriß, VI.1, 179-80.

72. As in Gace de la Buigne's Deduis, ed. Blomqvist, pp. 9-12.

73. Imagery, pp. 21-22.

74. The distinction argument-exemplaire is rhetorical. An argument is the substance of topical amplification at a suitable place (locus, here “point”) in the matière. One means to amplify is exemplification, another is discursive analysis. See Lausberg, Handbuch, pp. 197-236.

75. On the recurrent inspiration of the lady's Image, see the Vergier, vv. 193-95; Jugement Behaingne, vv. 409-15; Jugement Navarre, vv. 4150-56; Voir-Dit, passim.

76. On the interchangeable pair external grace = inner vertu, see the Remede and The Marguerite Poetry of Guillaume de Machaut, ed. James I. Wimsatt (Chapel Hill, 1970), where the two are used interchangeably in the “Dit de la fleur de lis et de la marguerite.”

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