Azure Maxwell

Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Reid, Amy

Area of Concentration

French

Abstract

This thesis considers the legacy of 14th-century French poet and musician, Guillaume de Machaut, focusing on instances of self-presentation in Le Livre dou Voir Dit and how that is reflected in both the scholarly record and contemporary representations of the neo-medieval. The Voir Dit foregrounds the first-person narrative and the poet-narrator figure common in dits from the late Middle Ages, yet goes further by promising to recount a true (voir) story. My first chapter examines scholarly debates over truth and accuracy surrounding Machaut and his Voir Dit, because very little information about Machaut’s life survives other than what he himself wrote – and, as my analysis shows, the poet explicitly sought to control his musical and literary legacy. Chapter two introduces passages from the Voir Dit, where Machaut focuses on themes of accuracy and falsehood. Despite promising to tell the whole truth of his relationship with Toute Belle, he justifies his choice to omit certain letters. His deployment of allegory and the courtly love tradition further problematize the concept of truth. My translation of Machaut’s Ballade 17 is included in appendix B. The conclusion links Machaut’s concerns with authenticity to modern reconstructions of medieval songs and the development of a fictionalized neo-medieval genre within modern popular culture. What lessons does Machaut hold for our understanding of both medieval musical culture and its representation in 21st-century popular media?

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