Se construire en maître. L’exemple de Guillaume de Machaut

Abstract

I examine the construction of authority in two texts by Guillaume de Machaut, written in the first person. These two texts ‹Le Remede de Fortune› and ‹Le Voir Dit› are both a love story and a reflection on writing, but they take place at two points in the poet’s life: youth in ‹Le Remede de Fortune›, old age in ‹Le Voir Dit›. In the first text, the poet uses an allegory, Hope, to teach a young lover about love, Fortune and poetry. In the second, the elderly poet, who is loved precisely because he is a poet, delivers his teaching directly to a very young girl in these three areas: Love, Fortune and Poetry. Both texts refer to the term treatise, ‹Fortune’s Remedy› at the end of the story: «But at the end of this treatise / Which I compiled and composed» (v. 4257–4258), the ‹Voir Dit› at the beginning where the poet speaks of «This treatise that I make for her» ( v. 519). Why? I examine the displacement of the elements of didacticism from one text to another and their reason.