Guillaume De Machaut Historical Account Term Paper

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What has been determined to date is Machaut's masterful use of language and syntax to help amuse and entertain his intended audiences, and in an era absent the Internet, cable television and the popular press, it is not surprising that his works were well received. For instance, as De Looze points out, "Guillaume de Machaut gravitates toward equivocal signs: insomnia, colors that can have diametrically opposed meanings, plays on words, and so on" (1997, 13). This point is also made by Leach, who reports that Machaut was titillating without being vulgar about it: "In middle French courtly lyric the word merci signifies a broad range of favors that the lady may grant her lover; its meaning overlaps with 'pity,' but it also carries the sense of remuneration, reward or even salary -- the pay-off in the economy of noble love. Within Machaut's usage it has a specific resonance and range of meanings. In his last major long poem, the Voir Dit, Machaut defines merci twice: once for Toute Belle in a letter; later for the reader in the narrative just before the erotic climax of the dit" (2003, 2)

There were some other techniques that Machaut used to help keep his audience amused and entertained. For example, Brown reports that medieval authors frequently employed various textual signatures to either encode their names or otherwise provide their readers with plays on word. In Machaut's case, he named himself directly in his Jugement dou roy de Navarre and the Prise d'Alexandrie, and usually followed the style established by Nicole de Margival in the Dit de la panthere d'amours (ca. 1300) and in almost of all his other dits: "[P]unctuation of the text with anagrammic signatures that were not always easy to decode" (Brown 1995, 154). The growing body of research concerning this era in history confirms that composers such as Guillaume de Machaut played a key role in the production of their works and that this involvement informed their literary enterprise in significant ways. As Brown emphasizes, "Indeed, subsequent to Machaut's involvement in the organization of his own compositions, compilation and ordering became part of a poet's work" (1995, 212). According to Huot (1994), an analysis of the Machaut's motets shows that he extended the use of courtly and devotional rhetoric in these as well.

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For example, "Helas! pour quoy virent onques mi oueil / Corde mesto / LIBERA ME (motet 12), one of Machaut's two bilingual motets. This piece is governed by the topos of the conflict of the eye and the heart. The triplum treats the motif within a courtly framework, that of the pining lover whose heart has been captivated through visual contemplation of the lady" (Huot 1994, 223).

It would seem that Machaut's legacy continues to be celebrated as well. In fact, in recent years, Machaut's Voir Dit, one of his last poetic compositions, first published by Paulin Paris in 1875, has been republished in both French and English by separate publications houses within a year of each other (Huot, 2001). Finally, beyond the small sampling of Machaut's work reviewed above, the composer was clearly prolific and a comprehensive listing of his works in provided at Appendix a.

Conclusion

The research showed that Guillaume de Machaut was a 14th century French poet and composer who is recognized today as the leading composer of the ars nova in France. The research also showed that Machaut's fine sense of word play and innovative use of various literary elements helped make him enormously popular during his day. An indication of his expertise can be seen in the recent resurgence of interest in Machaut by 21st century scholars, but the author himself can be credited with much of this attention since he was so careful in leaving them so much material for study. In the final analysis, it is reasonable to assert that based on the dearth of comparable historical accounts of his contemporaries, 22nd century scholars will be studying Guillaume de Machaut as well......

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