DESCHAMPS, EUSTACE

(ca. 1346–1407)

Eustace Deschamps was a prolific French poet who wrote hundreds of lyrics and wrote, as well, a satire on women called theMirour de Mariageand a prose treatise on versification called theArt de dictier(Art of writing poetry). Deschamps held positions in the government of Charles V, and was a close friend and disciple of the most influential French poet of his age, Guillaume de MACHAUT. He was well-acquainted with the Savoyard poet and knight Oton de GRANSON, and he also dedicated poems to his two most famous contemporaries, Geoffrey CHAUCER and CHRISTINE DE PIZAN.

Deschamps, also called Moreal, was born in about 1346 in Champagne, in the town of Vertus near Reims. He received a typical early education in Latin grammar and logic, and as a young man apparently studied law, perhaps at the school in Orléans. He does not seem to have received a degree, but apparently entered the service of King Charles V in about 1367. For the last 40 years of his life, he worked in various capacities for the king and for his sons, Louis of Orléans and Charles VI. A number of his poems are highly partisan, anti-English lyrics stemming from Deschamps’ experiences in the Hundred Years’War, in particular after 1380 when the English burned his boyhood home in Vertus. He was, however, not without sympathy for some individual Englishmen: He was a personal friend of Lewis Clifford (member of the English Privy Council and later well-known as one of the “LOLLARD knights”), and his poetry acknowledges his admiration for the English hero Guiscard d’Angle. HisBALLADEaddressed to Chaucer praises the English poet as the “grand translator,” and extols his translation of theROMAN DE LA ROSE. Playing on the imagery of theRoseitself, Deschamps says that Chaucer has sown his works in the soil of England, and made it a garden—the garden of theRose.

Deschamps learned the art of poetry from Machaut, who he says “educated” him.One early source claims that Machaut was Deschamps’s uncle, though there is no independent verification of that assertion. Apparently he began a relationship with the older poet that continued until Machaut’s death in 1377. At that point he wrote a doubleballadein praise of Machaut, expressing his admiration and affection for the master and his poetry, and describing Machaut as the “flower of all flowers” of poets.

Deschamps’sballadeaddressed to Christine de Pizan seems to have been written in response to a complimentary letter he had received from her in 1403. In his reciprocal letter of praise to her, he refers to her as an “elegant Muse,” and praises her for her “philosophy,” although he avoids saying anything about her skill as a poet.

These short occasional poems are probably Deschamps’s best known compositions, but his most ambitious work is certainly hisMirour de mariage, the anti-feminist satire that, like Chaucer’sWIFE OF BATH’S TALE, relies on St. JEROME’s letterAdversus Jovinianum, Matheolus’sLamentations, and Ovid’sArs amatoria. This unfinished allegorical poem of 12,103 lines focuses on a young man namedFranc Vouloir(“Free Will”) and the question of whether he should marry. The young man’s false friends, with names like “Desire,” “Folly,” and “Servitude,” are quick to advise marriage. But Free Will decides to discuss the matter with his true friend,Repertoire de Science(“Wisdom”), who argues a marriage of the spirit is far superior to a marriage of the flesh, and convinces Free Will not to marry. Deschamps’sArt de dictierdescribes the various “fixed forms” of French poetry—ballades, VIRELAIS, RONDEAUX,LAIS—and, more important, introduces the idea of poetry as “natural music.” Deschamps argues that poetic texts do not need musical accompaniment, but can stand alone because poetry in itself is a form of music. This was not a revolutionary idea, but it was not characteristic of medieval literary theorists. It was more typical to think of poetry as a branch of rhetoric, as DANTE does inDe VULGARI ELOQUENTIA. Deschamps even tried his hand at dramatic poetry, including a farce called theFarce de Maîrtre Trubert et d’Antroignart, concerning the defeat of a cunning lawyer, and theDit de quatre offices de l’Ostel du Roy, a morality play. But of the some 80,000 lines of verse Deschamps produced, the vast majority constitute lyric poetry, including 1,017ballades, 171 rondeaux, 139chansons royals(a form descended from the earlier CHANSON), 84virelais, and 14lais. In addition, he wrote 12 lyric poems in Latin. Deschamps does not limit himself to conventional love poetry, but writes on a variety of topics—moral, comic, satiric, patriotic, and often personal, as he alludes to particular circumstances in his own life. Deschamps was an important poet, prolific and interesting, though in terms of quality and influence his verse has been overshadowed by the major contemporary poets with whom he was associated: Machaut, Christine, and Chaucer.

■ Deschamps, Eustace.Selected Poems. Edited by Ian S. Laurie and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi. Translated by David Curzon and Jeffrey Fiskin. New York: Routledge, 2003.

■ Laurie, I. S. “Deschamps and the Lyric as Natural Music,”Modern Language Review59 (1964): 561–570.

■ Olsen, Glending. “Deschamps’Art de Dictierand Chaucer’s Literary Environment,”Speculum48 (1973): 714–723.

■ Wimsatt, James I.Chaucer and His French Contemporaries: Natural Music in the Fourteenth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.